Readit NewsIt reminds me of Google Dart, which was originally pitched as an alternate language that enabled web programming in the style Google likes (strong types etc.). There was a loud cry of scope creep from implementors and undo market influence in places like Hacker News. It was so poorly received that Google rescinded the proposal to make it a peer language to JavaScript.
Granted, the interests point in different directions for security software v.s. a mainstream platform. Still, audiences are quick to question the motives of companies that have the scale to invest in something like making a net-new security runtime.
Pointless nitpick, but you want "undue market influence." "Undo market influence" is what the FTC orders when they decide there's monopolistic practices going on.
I just have to conclude 1 of 2 things:
1) I'm not good at prompting, even though I am one of the earliest AI in coding adopters I know, and have been consistent for years. So I find this hard to accept.
2) Other people are just less picky than I am, or they have a less thorough review culture that lets subpar code slide more often.
I'm not sure what else I can take from the situation. For context, I work on a 15 year old Java Spring + React (with some old pages still in Thymeleaf) web application. There are many sub-services, two separate databases,and this application needs to also 2-way interface with customer hardware. So, not a simple project, but still. I can't imagine it's way more complicated than most enterprise/legacy projects...
A coding agent just beat every human in the AtCoder Heuristic optimization contest. It also beat the solution that the production team for the contest put together. https://sakana.ai/ahc058/
It's not enterprise-grade software, but it's not a CRUD app with thousands of examples in github, either.
Technology is already so insane and advanced that most people just take it as magic inside boxes, so nothing is surprising anymore. It's all equally incomprehensible already.
I'd expect de-biasing would deflate grades for well known users.
It might also be interesting to use a search-grounded model that provides citations for its grading claims. Gemini models have access to this via their API, for example.
https://www.amazon.com/Ideology-Discontent-Clifford-Geertz/d... [1]
calls into question whether or not the public has an opinion. I was thinking about the example of tariffs for instance. Most people are going on bellyfeel so you see maybe 38% are net positive on tariffs
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/14/trumps-tarif...
If you broke it down in terms of interest groups on a "one dollar one vote" basis the net positive has to be a lot worse: to the retail, services and constructor sectors tariffs are just a cost without any benefits, even most manufacturers are on the fence because they import intermediate goods and want access to foreign markets. The only sectors that are strongly for it that I can suss out are steel and aluminum manufacturers who are 2% or so of the GDP.
The public and the interest groups are on the same side of 50% so there is no contradiction, but in this particular case I think the interest groups collectively have a more rational understanding of how tariffs effect the economy than do "the people". As Habermas points out, it's quite problematic giving people who don't really know a lot a say about things even though it is absolutely necessary that people feel heard.
[1] Interestingly this book came out in 1964 just before all hell broke loose in terms of Vietnam, counterculture, black nationalism, etc. -- right when discontent when from hypothetical to very real
So, instead of having everyone vote on tariffs (or vote for a whimsical strongman who will implement tariffs), have everyone vote for the package of metrics they want to hit. Then, let experts propose policy packages to achieve these metrics, and let everyone vote on which policies will achieve the goals.
Bullshit gets heavily taxed, and the beliefs of people who actually know the likely outcomes will be what guide the nation.
Anthropic has weaponized the safety narrative into a marketing and political tool, and it is quite clear that they're pushing this narrative both for publicity from media that love the doomer narrative because it brings in ad-revenue, and for regulatory capture reasons.
Their intentions are obviously self-motivated, or they wouldn't be partnering with a company that openly prides itself on dystopian-level spying and surveillance of the world.
OpenAI aren't the good guys either, but I wish people would stop pretending like Anthropic are.
Watts is like brain candy, keeps my mind buzzing from all the ideas for weeks. Charles Stross can have the same effect, a sort of future shock.