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Posted by CliffStoll 3 days ago

Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated

AI hallucinations are getting ambitious.

A couple people recently emailed, asking whether the Klein bottle business was still operating after my death.

“Huh?” I thought. “I ain’t dead yet.”

After some digging, I discovered the source: an AI-generated review of The Cuckoo’s Egg circulating on Facebook. Alongside the usual synthetic praise and fabricated details, it confidently announced that I had died in May 2024.

Apparently AI has now advanced to the point where it can kill people off before they notice.

Mark Twain once wrote, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” I never expected to field-test the quote personally.

source: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=989939243570691&id=100076638743004

Cheers, -Cliff

1615 points | 248 commentspage 8
zakfis 1 day ago|
This happened to Michael O. Church a few years ago. One of the YCs started a rumor that he died in some weird scheme to steal data. It didn’t work, and he tweeted a few minutes later to say he wasn’t dead.
bwoah 1 day ago||
Glad to have you back, Cliff! How was your trip?
aykutseker 1 day ago||
the real test is whether the Klein bottle business got a sympathy bump in sales
CliffStoll 1 day ago||
And yep, there was a huge bump in sales today. Almost a dozen orders. I'll have to buckle down and stop reading Hacker News.
BenjiWiebe 1 day ago||
It likely will. Those of us who want a Klein bottle but haven't yet ordered one are reminded of mortality, procrastination, and missed chances.
BenjiWiebe 2 hours ago||
And by the way - I did finally order a Klein bottle shortly after reading this post.
DonHopkins 1 day ago||
Oh thank god you're alive! I have an urgent customer service request for you. The Acme Klein Bottle I bought from you on Amazon is ineffective at removing my blackheads. Am I holding it wrong?
CliffStoll 1 day ago|
Oh Jeez, Don! That nuttiness still haunts me five years later. I still cannot sell Klein bottles on the Canadian Amazon site -- the Amazon hijacker somehow held onto the listing for my klein bottle listing for Amazon/Canada.
JoeAltmaier 1 day ago||
Spending a year dead, for tax purposes?
varjag 1 day ago||
Relieved to know you're doing well!

(but I ordered one of your bottles just in case)

FrankWilhoit 3 days ago||
The larger point is that AI is being developed by people who think everything is performance (in the artistic sense of the word), and therefore, it, expectably and probably even necessarily, thinks so too. This manifests in many contexts and will manifest in many more; but hardly anyone will care about any of them, because just about everybody has succumbed to the performance delusion.
PsycoRobot 1 day ago||
so you are dead or not?
NooneAtAll3 21 hours ago||
what's the deal with completely broken scrolling on that facebook link?
dnnddidiej 1 day ago|
HN is fun sometimes
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