Ben Hilty

18 June 2025

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

en.wikipedia.orgELIZA effect - Wikipedia

People have been getting tricked into thinking computers are intelligent for 60 years, even by very rudimentary programs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_e...

The US GDP is the greatest in the world. If the peasants have no beef, then let them eat bank fees.

I don’t think we should have an industry where the rich steal from the sick.

To me, all the people freaking out about AI becoming conscious are about the same as someone staring at a magic eye image of a horse until the horse pops out at them, and then going into hysterics about how there's a horse trapped in there and we need to help it.

You are not talking to a chatbot. You are taking turns writing a conversation with a text generator.

Ben Hilty reposted

Sat down to write a YouTube comment, and ended up writing a short essay. So here's my short essay about how "AI" chatbots work and "AI" consciousness:

Ben Hilty@benhilty.bsky.social

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

Sat down to write a YouTube comment, and ended up writing a short essay. So here's my short essay about how "AI" chatbots work and "AI" consciousness:

Ben Hilty@benhilty.bsky.social

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

P.S. I wrote this by hand, but I tried pasting it into Gemini and asking if it was accurate, and it told me it was "spot on" and "highly accurate." LOL GET REKT

P.P.S. It did take issue with me calling the data stolen.

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

It isn't magic. It isn't any kind of intelligence. It's just a crapload of statistics. It's kind of amazing what it's been capable of from that one trick. (Granted, that one trick is insanely complicated.) It might almost be something cool except that it's all built on stolen labor, its impact on

humanity is devastating because of its misuse and the misunderstanding of its nature, and that a drug-addled billionaire death cult basically worships it. (Literally. Look up Roko's Basilisk. This is the actual reason some of them want to build it. I'm not kidding.)

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

the prompt for every request to throw the statistics off. That's also why it hilariously caused it to bring those things up seemingly "unprompted" when it was actually just being added to the prompt for every request behind the scenes. Adding it to the prompt on the server puts a

lot of statistical weight onto those words to appear in the same way that what you write into the prompt does.

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

intention. Every token in the input text tugs at the probability for what the next output token will be, based on an absolute sh*tload of numbers from the training process. The numbers define the statistical relationships between words and phrases based on the stolen training

data. That's why Elon can't make a version of Grok that isn't just naturally a N*zi, because statistically most of the text that was fed into it for training wasn't N*zi sh*t. It only morphs into MechaHitler and starts spouting off about white genocide when he explicitly includes that in

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

the document would be the task it's working on. Just running the same function over and over again in a loop having it produce more text, but now some of the text could be a command to execute somewhere or some code to compile and run, all produced by statistical probability.

It doesn't know what the end of a sentence will be when it starts the sentence because it's literally producing a part of a word at a time, going from left to right, adding to what's there until it's made a sentence (or a line of code, etc.). Repeat. No thought goes into it. There's no

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

It's literally the only thing it does. Everything else is just a fancy way of using this one function that it has, by creatively manipulating the input and output.

It's just appending tokens over and over to create a new paragraph or a new summary or whatever output the prompt asked it for, and then doing that over and over again with each new prompt to add to the document that is your "conversation." Or in the case of an "agentic" AI,

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

Like I said, there's nothing there to remember anything, nothing there to have thoughts. There isn't even a "there!" "There" could be in a different state or even country from one message to the next depending how the servers are arranged. No matter which server gets the prompt, it

takes your conversation (or summary of it, etc.) along with your prompt, feeds that in as the input, and then generates a new message to add to the conversation. It predicts the next token over and over again until it's finished producing its output.

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

other message could be coming from a different server. The only reason it appears to be a coherent conversation is because it's loading the stored conversation as part of the input and reading that as the "context" for the conversation. (I say loading "the conversation," but it may

be a summary of it, or otherwise compressed version of it for keeping the text at a manageable size, and which is why things start to fall out of the context over the course of longer sessions.)

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

A request is received. A (any!) server takes the text from that request, does a bunch of calculations on it (like literally a hundred trillion!), and responds with some new text.

It's very likely when you're "talking" to "one" of these things that you aren't even hitting the same server from message to message. Servers are set up in clusters and the request load is balanced between many servers to be able to handle large numbers of requests at once. Every

I can't emphasize enough how these things are not conscious.

There's nothing there to be conscious. They're just having it read in everything in the conversation that's been said as a document, and asking it to add to the end of the document. It takes in all that text, transforms it based on the statistical weights from training on all the stolen data,

and produces the next chunk of text one token (basically parts of words) at a time. There's nothing there, nothing happening when it's not translating the input text to the output text. No thoughts. No memory.

22 Sept

Meatwheel

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Ben Hilty reposted

shaunt

@shaunvids.bsky.social

4 Sept

the big AI danger is not companies suddenly inventing skynet - that's marketing rubbish, musk promising mars colonies by 2030 type stuff. the danger is companies claiming to have invented skynet and then putting what they actually have, a chatbot, in charge of stuff that's important

youtu.beCanada ERUPTS IN FURY As Trump Trade War BACKFIRES SPECTACULARLY!! | The Kyle Kulinski ShowYouTube video by Secular Talk

25 Aug

Man, fuck everyone who supported RFK Jr. and his god damn nonsense. I'm sure we can trust that Secretary Roadkill will ensure we aren't eating some kind of fucked up mystery meat. youtu.be/TBU-0wkUlsE

Ben Hilty reposted

WIRED

@wired.com

13 Aug

Records obtained by WIRED detail hundreds of allegations of Customs and Border Protection workers misusing internal tools to look up romantic interests and track colleagues’ cell phones. www.wired.com/story/cbp-wo...

wired.comCBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and ColleaguesRecords obtained by WIRED detail hundreds of allegations of Customs and Border Protection workers misusing internal tools to look up romantic interests and track colleagues’ cell phones.

Ben Hilty reposted

Jack Mirkinson

@jackmirkinson.bsky.social

11 Aug

Today in @thenation.com: a harrowing piece written from inside the Dilley ICE detention center by Maryam Tahmasebi, a green card holder who's been locked up along with her husband and son for months despite none of them committing any crime. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

thenation.comOne Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE DetentionMy husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.

Ben Hilty reposted

Hart Cunningham

@hart28.bsky.social

10 June

Michigan Governor caught on hot mic with Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, discussing citizen opposition to AI data centers, bragging how she ignores their concerns: “We’re used to people saying 'f*ck no,' & doing it anyway.”🇺🇸

7 June

A lot of people don't know that the J in Donald J. Trump is short for Jeffrey Epstein.

4 June

Congratulations, Mr. President, on single-handedly reducing global fossil fuel use by double-digit percentages and forcing increased adoption of electrification and renewables. And you did it all without creating any new jobs or economic benefits to Americans. It's the Green No Deal.

youtu.beJeffrey Sachs: Global Economic Meltdown & Destruction of EuropeYouTube video by Glenn Diesen

9 May

youtu.be/J4r9Wo29FzU

youtube.comChris Martinsen: The Consequence of the Iran War of Choice: an Oil ShockYouTube video by Daniel Davis / Deep Dive

9 May

youtu.be/3hFux59b16A

@naomikritzer.bsky.social

9 May

I fear that things are going to get much worse than people are expecting much faster than people are expecting and for much longer than people are expecting.

Ben Hilty reposted

Naomi Kritzer

4 May

Minneapolis celebrates spring with a parade of giant handmade socialist puppets and a festival where people row the sun across the lake. This year's Mayday festival was today, and I'm going to try to share some photos and videos (many taken by others) to try to explain it for my non-local friends.

Ben Hilty reposted

Bethany Brookshire

@beebrookshire.bsky.social

21 Apr

Measles is NOT "just like chickenpox". It can kill years later. This woman was so brave for coming forward with her story. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

Ben Hilty reposted

WIRED

@wired.com

19 Apr

“This has never happened before,” one government employee tells WIRED. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.”

wrd.cmGovernment Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion“This has never happened before,” one government employee tells WIRED. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.”

youtube.comNavy Combat Vet: HORMUZ BLOCKADE NIGHTMARE /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Steve JermyYouTube video by Daniel Davis / Deep Dive

18 Apr

This interview spelled out in great detail the kind of consequences I've been ruminating about for the global economy if we don't immediately cease hostilities against Iran and begin mitigation efforts for the damage that's already been done. It's extremely bleak. www.youtube.com/watch?v=etxm...

huffpost.com5-Year-Old in ICE Detention Is Sick, Says Top School OfficialThe 5-year-old who was taken by federal agents in Minneapolis is being held behind bars with his father in Texas.

18 Apr

Ironically, Russia, China, and Iran are some of the countries best positioned not to be—as they are so fond of saying—sent back to the Stone Age by our actions.

Ben Hilty reposted

Jen Bendery

@jbendery.bsky.social

28 Jan

NEW: Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who ICE agents in Minneapolis nabbed last week and shipped off to a Texas detention facility with his dad, is now in poor health, his school superintendent told me today www.huffpost.com/entry/liam-c...