Eric Desmarais Author and Aspiring Something

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Six day week is superior to seven because a prime number week is stupid. There's a lot of things that people like to do every second or third day; in a six day week, this is always the same days each week.

All months are the same length. Advantages obvious.

Thirty days is a good round number for a month; it can be divided into so many smaller numbers. Convenient for things that need to be done regularly; you can do them on the same days each month and have the gaps between them all exactly the same.

Every month in a given year starts with the same day. If the 3rd is a Wednesday, every 3rd will be a Wednesday. This is a massive help in scheduling bullshit that ends up happening "second Tuesday of every month" or whatever, and also helps people track regular monthly things (if you have a monthly meeting on the 15th, it's going to be the same day of the week every time). Fitting weeks perfectly into months just offer so many improvements for scheduling and remembering stuff.

The days move back with each non-leap year -- if the 1st of every month in 2025 is a Tuesday, the 1st in every month in 2026 will be a Monday. (This also happens with out current calendar as neither 6 nor 7 fit into 365). This means that if your birthday is on a Monday or whatever, it won't be that way every year -- only the same day of the month WITHIN THE YEAR (2 years in a row for leap years) is the same. (I bring this up because last time I mentioned this people didn't do the math and thought that the days of the week would be consistent across years, somehow, mysteriously).

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

I loved this visual so much I had to doodle it.

Have a movie poster inspired by our book!

"Faymous" is out today!! YA portal fantasy roadtrip romance.

Cover Art by @pinkpiggy93

Published by @rivercitysirenpress

Co-written with @ericdesmarais

https://www.jeneric-designs.ca/UBL-Faymous

Post concept by @clover.callahan.writes . Her book is awesome and you should check it out!

Similar books. Have you read any of these and wanted more?

"Faymous" comes out February 24!! YA portal fantasy roadtrip romance.

Cover Art by @pinkpiggy93

Published by @rivercitysirenpress

Co-written with @ericdesmarais

I'm looking for a narrator for the Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel audiobook. I've also been looking at the usual places like ACX, Voices.com, and others.

But what I'm looking for is specific:

Non-negociable:

Canadian, because of the exchange rate and also to promote my own country.

Gender: Woman or NB person with a female sounding voice.

Age: Adult

Language: English, with American-General English accent.

Must have at least a completed audiobook to prove they can take a project of this magnitude. Must also have audio samples.

Things I consider a plus:

I would prefer to hire someone queer or LGBTQUIA+, for this is a sapphic story.

People of color welcome and encouraged to apply.

Info on the book:

Title: Mrs. Victoria buys a brothel.

Link to the book

Genre: Sapphic romance, older women, historical, western.

Explicit: Yes, two scenes, not that spicy.

Length of novel: 97k words

Project paid by finished hour.

There is a budget already set aside for the audiobook, through last year's Kickstarter.

I know it seems bleak because the NWS Clause is a real hard place to be pinned against. However, a citizen petition supported by Vancouver NDP MP Don Davies has been raised asking the federal government to step in to prevent this, which they can do under section 90 of the Charter.

As this is a federal petition, it's open to all Canadians, not just residents of Alberta. Because this is a federal petition, there is an actual chance of something coming out of it. It is a long shot, but it's better than no shot.

Petition closes February 16, 2026. Please share, signal boost, and if you're Canadian, sign. We owe it to our trans family.