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   Leonard Ritter (lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Thursday, 14-Nov-2024 21:11:39 JST Leonard Ritter

   gotta say, douglas adams prepared me better for our absurd future than isaac asimov. like, spending hours explaining to a replicator AI how to make an excellent cup of tea, only to have the AI then lock up 100% of the ships computers resources mid-battle as it tries to comply with the request, that does seem like an increasingly more plausible scenario than a scientist planning a techno cult centuries in advance to prevent a great calamity

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     Albert ARIBAUD ✎ (aaribaud@mastodon.art)'s status on Thursday, 14-Nov-2024 21:14:51 JST Albert ARIBAUD ✎

     in reply to

     @lritter Plus, generative AIs deliver results which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike what you need.

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     Bornach (bornach@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 16-Nov-2024 14:40:17 JST Bornach

     in reply to

     • Albert ARIBAUD ✎

     @aaribaud @lritter
     He predicted LLMs

     "Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion."
     -- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
     https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11259355-well-gordon-s-great-insight-was-to-design-a-program-which

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     Albert ARIBAUD ✎ (aaribaud@mastodon.art)'s status on Saturday, 16-Nov-2024 20:41:56 JST Albert ARIBAUD ✎

     in reply to

     • Christian Kent
     • Bornach

     @whophd

     There was at least one password manager out there in the late nineties and he died in 2001, and he was a geek so *maybe* he was aware of that. Hard to tell.

     @bornach @lritter

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     Christian Kent (whophd@ioc.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 16-Nov-2024 20:41:57 JST Christian Kent

     in reply to

     • Albert ARIBAUD ✎
     • Bornach

     @bornach @aaribaud @lritter He predicted password managers in one of his later books

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     Dan W (salvo@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 17-Nov-2024 18:47:45 JST Dan W

     in reply to

     • Briala

     @lritter @static
     Don’t forget the populous reelecting Zaphod Beeblebrox multiple times, even though everyone knew he was a criminal.

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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 17-Nov-2024 19:13:46 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     @lritter Douglas Adams wrote the later HHGTTG stuff on a Macintosh, and had been an early adopter of word processing. Isaac Asimov wrote on an IBM Selectric. There's your difference.

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     M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 14:51:34 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

     in reply to

     • Albert ARIBAUD ✎
     • Christian Kent
     • Bornach

     @whophd @bornach @aaribaud @lritter Fair.

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     Albert ARIBAUD ✎ (aaribaud@mastodon.art)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 14:51:34 JST Albert ARIBAUD ✎

     in reply to

     • M.S. Bellows, Jr.
     • Christian Kent
     • Bornach

     @msbellows

     Minus the editorial process though, which he'd kept from the publishing world of the time (and was necessary in order to set up the "mostly harmless" joke anyway).

     @whophd @bornach @lritter

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     Christian Kent (whophd@ioc.exchange)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 14:51:35 JST Christian Kent

     in reply to

     • Albert ARIBAUD ✎
     • M.S. Bellows, Jr.
     • Bornach

     @msbellows @bornach @aaribaud @lritter mmm, I would have said the iPad + Wikipedia, but sure

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     M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im)'s status on Monday, 18-Nov-2024 14:51:36 JST M.S. Bellows, Jr.

     in reply to

     • Albert ARIBAUD ✎
     • Christian Kent
     • Bornach

     @whophd @bornach @aaribaud @lritter And the Kindle, of course.