So, uh, remember that call for stories set in a world where we ‘somehow’ don’t get AGI and instead get modern-style LLMs providing such incredible value to the world that it is transformed? That tells people not to use LLMs to write it because its writing is low quality? https://www.gpuworld.org/

Premise Imagine that AI frontier progress stops as of 1 September 2026: AI becomes faster and cheaper, but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board. So the Singularity never happens—but GPUs keep getting made. By 2040, there may be the equivalent of 8 billion GPUs globally and everyone has access to a frontier LLM. What happens in this ‘business as usual’ future?

(Incidentally, this reminds me strongly of ‘Project Heiroglyph: Stories and Vision for a Better Future’, also by Neal Stephenson, somewhat desperately trying to pretend that there is a bright future ahead of us rather than slow grinding decline)

Somehow we got… this. I can’t even. I really just can’t even.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/u6hFByFwDLxtnbvje/a-normal-friday-in-2042

I thought I had lost my ability to be surprised by these people. In here we get:

• anthropomorphization of current LLMs as conscious beings
• Graverobbing
• Trump magically doing everything these people want
• Married couples paying each other for chores
• Prediction market language
• Weird sex stuff