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Larry Sanger

@lsanger@sangerfeed.org

GPT did an interesting thing for me just now. I am rejiggering parts of my book. Having done that, I discovered that I developed two versions of what is essentially the same argument in two different places. But, now that the macrostructure of the text is more coherent, those two versions find themselves in the same place. They are similar but have slightly different emphases and make slightly different, albeit complementary, points.

So I asked GPT to do something I thought it was capable of doing: splicing the two versions together so that corresponding parts of the text would be placed together. I could then decide which I wanted to keep, where. I asked it to preserve my text perfectly and [[put double brackets]] around the bits IT would cut (showing which version I might keep.

Turns out, this task was pretty much beyond ChatGPT 4o, at least after 4-5 iterations of explaining myself etc. BUT ChatGPT o3-mini-high was able to do it pretty well on the third try.

Intriguing. This is at least the third post between Elon and Jack that has signaled a plan to let people design their own algorithms:

x.com/jack/status/18900…

But look. I don’t trust these guys on this AT ALL.

Jack told me in spring 2019 that they were committed to making this change. He never did.

Then Elon arrived, promising a free speech regime, then made things WORSE for many of us by giving us “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.” I’m throttled in a way I certainly wasn’t when Jack was in charge.

Besides 👇

I am mystified why Musk retweets Jack Dorsey saying we need digital autonomy (that’s the word, Jack!) with this comment:

“Will we actually choose the algorithm?”

Listen, you hypocrite, if you allowed *everyone* some fine-grained control over the algorithms that determine which posts they see, in what order, of course they’d use them.

X.com’s ability to manipulate the algorithm regardless of user preference is the basis of the platform’s attractiveness to the government branches that specialize in manipulating public opinion.

So we definitely can’t have that. You’ll never do it, Elon. “Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”

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