The Sorensen Monologues

AI Gone MAD

This was inspired by an article about the Rice University study comparing self-consuming AI to mad cow disease, a topic practically begging for a cartoon. To quote one researcher:

“The problems arise when this synthetic data training is, inevitably, repeated, forming a kind of a feedback loop — what we call an autophagous or ‘self-consuming’ loop,” said Richard Baraniuk, Rice’s C. Sidney Burrus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Our group has worked extensively on such feedback loops, and the bad news is that even after a few generations of such training, the new models can become irreparably corrupted. This has been termed ‘model collapse’ by some — most recently by colleagues in the field in the context of large language models (LLMs). We, however, find the term ‘Model Autophagy Disorder’ (MAD) more apt, by analogy to mad cow disease.”

He added that “one doomsday scenario is that if left uncontrolled for many generations, MAD could poison the data quality and diversity of the entire internet.” 

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Prairie Progressives

I find it extremely refreshing to see Tim Walz upsetting the lazy narrative that middle America and rural places are a monolithic bloc of Trump supporters. It is true that these areas tend to vote Republican, but the reality is far more complicated. Having lived in so-called red states, I am consistently amazed by the courage and expertise of public servants, progressive activists, and conservationists. Yet you might not know his from political analysis in national newspapers.

Moreover, some tired pundits are still childing progressives for criticism of these ideas under the guise of not insulting Trump voters. I do not think calling Trump or Vance “weird” is the same thing as insulting rural people. I grew up in rural Lancaster County and worked as a server in a Pennsylvania Dutch family restaurant and grocery store cashier. My co-workers at these jobs had a good sense of humor and were amazingly quick with a snappy insult. If anything, it’s an elite perspective to say you can’t dunk on MAGA nonsense.

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