Aranock, 4 of Ravens

There is a better edit on the patreon because I had to avoid copyright claims in the chapter on needledrops, so if you want a bunch of exclusive mini written essays, scripts and early access to videos maybe consider joining:

“OpenAI admitted it had to develop a specific instruction in the code of its latest model of ChatGPT to stop it from repeatedly referencing “goblins, gremlins, and other creatures.”

In an explanation posted Wednesday, the company said the “strange habit” came from its chatbot personality feature—specifically for users who chose the “Nerdy” personality. According to OpenAI, this personality receives the following prompt from its system:

You are an unapologetically nerdy, playful and wise AI mentor to a human. You are passionately enthusiastic about promoting truth, knowledge, philosophy, the scientific method, and critical thinking…You must undercut pretension through playful use of language. The world is complex and strange, and its strangeness must be acknowledged, analyzed, and enjoyed. Tackle weighty subjects without falling into the trap of self-seriousness.

OpenAI said it first noticed the trend last November and some users said they found increased “goblin” references over newer model releases, even beyond the “Nerdy” personality.

Some exact quotes that users reported:

“sensible little goblin”

“because ovens are filthy little goblins.”

“Brutal little goblin of a dynamic”

“Tragic little digital swamp creature”

[…]

As Wired first reported Tuesday, the latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment but the same day the report was published, Sam Altman posted a meme on X, making light of the situation by joking that the upcoming GPT-6 would have “extra goblins.””

OpenAI doesn't 'obsess', its algorithm has an unrealistically high probability of generating the word goblins.

It can't decide to switch to penises or antisemitic tropes, it's algorithms can get misaligned to have an unusually high probability to generate penises or antisemitic tropes.

It doesn't get caught violating guardrails, its algorithm is observed to produce outcomes that its programmers were trying to prevent.

"Oh I'll take this down to the charity shop" said my mother, missing hte part where no sane person is going to wear a clown suit.

"Nah" said I, "Have them dress him in it when they cremate him."

There was a pause and my throw-away joke started to slowly solidify into 'Yeah let's do that'.

A discussion was had with the mortician who had a bit of a worry that the costume would involve giant clown shoes which would prevent the coffin closing.

Luckily it wasn't that sort of outfit.

I told this to my dear friend who immediately envisaged someone trying to close a coffin onto a dead clown, only to have the big red nose go *Sad honk* every time there was an attempt to close the lid.

There should be more opportunities for black creators at DC and there should be more stories for characters like Nubia, Steel, Vixen, The Signal, Mr Terrific, everyone from Milestone and more.

Even if you're not a comics buyer, you can still sign the petition and you can share your favorite independent comics from black creators. I'll start: Everyone should read Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.