Comment by panarky
5 days ago
A wave of nausea hit when I first saw the warm, fuzzy, cutesy, kawaii, Teletubby-like avatar that Meta gave its Muse agent.
And now OpenAI has done the same thing with their fuzzy, friendly, colorful dots.
I am physically sick.
im crying and throwing up everywhere. everything i use must be brutalist.
even seeing the linux penguin makes me want to punch my monitor and commit sudoku
> commit sudoku
Hilarious.
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> even seeing the linux penguin makes me want to punch my monitor and commit sudoku
Puzzling, indeed!
I think you missed the point. Things should look like what they are.
The Linux kernel is ultimately a friendly open-source project. There's no harm in it being marketed using a cartoon penguin.
These AI services, meanwhile, are the dangled lights on the heads of data-hungry environment-threatening job-killing leviathantine anglerfish.
Making the dangled light present as non-threatening is not a good thing for society, no matter how much you may personally like pretty lights.
The one time a similar mascot to FreeBSD's would've made sense.
Are you suggesting AI companies should intentionally make the visual representations of their products look overtly terrifying?
And also, if they should look like what they are, what exactly does an AI agent that follows you around in all your devices _look like_? Surely they have to take some creative liberties, and it's hard to blame them for wanting something that looks appealing and friendly.
Would you be satisfied if they made it a floating skull with glowing red eyes that periodically screams vague threats at you?
Idk after Toy Story 3 where the cute cuddly bear was the bad guy, and after 5 nights at freddys, I no longer trust cuddly mascots.
I agree with your general point though.
Imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey with Meta's "Jolly" avatar as HAL instead of a blinking red camera lens.
So much more terrifying for a cute, round, fuzzy, friendly, rosy-cheeked plushie trying to exterminate the crew.
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I miss o3 in that regard. if GPT-4o led people into virtual romance and over-validation, o3 gave me the same sort of "madness" but with work.
when I tried GPT-5, I was sad mostly because GPT-5 had some added wordiness. fluff, if you will. o3, though, is a black hole you can talk to, and it only gave information back if there was something to give back. that kind of vibe is my dream coworker
I miss o1-pro :/
south park christmas critters
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The best part about Muse is they think that the Enterprise is going to start buying things from Meta that looks like it belongs in a preschool. Muse and Ray-Ban surveillance glasses, Zuck must live in one hell of an echo chamber!
From the careless people woman we learn that he is unaccustomed to losing at Settlers of Catan because they all let him win.
If you're not much of a board game person this is _wild_ because Catan gets annoying with 1 beginner since you can see how they end up gifting the win to someone else.
So he either knows people are letting him win (and got mad at the newbie who didn't?) or he's too stupid to see them make mistakes or he thinks they're idiots but he keeps playing with them?
I dunno there was a lot of stuff from her that was damning but somehow this is the most damning thing to me, real insight into the man.
Reminds me of the UK prime minister's close protection officer and inner circle all gambling on the election date and getting caught.
What degree of corruption did you witness that this seemed OK?
With any luck he'll change the company name again, this time to "Surveillance Glasses", months before shutting down the whole division due to everyone hating the idea.
He even named it, Metaverse.
Yes, it is hard, psychologically, to grant trust to some silly perverse little thing I want crush like a surreal cartoonish cockroach.
You wouldn’t survive 5 minutes in Japan
I can't speak for parent poster, but it's not the cuteness. It's the "putting a cute face on something that's actually a bit sinister."
Hello Kitty isn't trying to harvest anybody's data or take anybody's job. Sanio makes cute things and they hope that you will exchange money for their goods. That's the whole relationship.
(I'm not even remotely anti-AI)
They should license Hello Cuthulu as a mascot
It's not for us. It's for people who didn't see value in these products. And for the press. Doesn't make it good, but it can still be effective.
It’s really remarkable isn’t it? These are the very same people who are cosplaying Oppenheimer and comparing these products to the bomb.
Youre probably not the target audience, but at the same time, who exactly is?
It looks to me like non-LLM specialist who would like a prepackaged simple, ‘safe’ way to have an always-on personalised agent.
Senior and middle managers? (not using those as pejoratives, by the way - I am one)
Physically cringed at this comment
Absolutely ridiculous comment can't believe anyone would actually post this seriously.