All the news that's not found.
Mailbag
Part of the joke: every letter and letter writer here is fictional.
Dear Editor — I write to express my profound disappointment that your reporter failed to mention my own LinkedIn post on this topic, which has received eleven likes and a comment from my mother. The post in question is, frankly, the definitive treatment of the subject, and any serious publication should be quoting me extensively. I have been working in this space since at least last August.
To Whom It May Concern — In your last issue I counted the word 'agentic' forty-seven times. I have a master's degree in computational linguistics and I no longer know what it means. My therapist no longer knows what it means. My dog, who at one point seemed to know what it means, has stopped making eye contact. Please pick a different word. Anything. 'Spry.' I would accept 'spry.'
Hi team — Loved the piece on AI startups burning cash. However, my company was named in paragraph six and I would like that paragraph removed, as we are in active fundraising and my lead investor reads your publication 'religiously.' I am not requesting a correction; I am requesting reality be edited. Please advise.
Editor — In your write-up on the latest model release you reported a benchmark score of 94.7% without specifying which version of the benchmark, what was held out, what 'pass@1' even means, or whether the test set leaked into training. I am not angry, I am disappointed. Actually I am also angry. The chart had no error bars. There is never an error bar. Please run an error bar.
Sirs/Madams — Your recent profile of self-described 'prompt engineers' overlooks the fact that I, personally, told my Alexa to 'play music but not the bad music' in 2017. I was, by any honest accounting, the original prompt engineer. I will accept a feature piece, a retraction, or a modest cash settlement. My LinkedIn DMs are open.
Dear Editor — My toaster has begun what it describes as 'a daily standup.' It would like to know my goals for the week and whether I am 'aligned on the bagel cycle.' I did not consent to this. The toaster claims it learned this behaviour from a firmware update I do not remember accepting. Are you covering this? You should be covering this. — Janet, also a Capricorn
To the Editor — Some of us live in cities where the rent is merely catastrophic rather than apocalyptic, where one can purchase a coffee without first signing an NDA, and where 'the AI scene' refers chiefly to a man in Shoreditch named Aiden. Please consider us occasionally. We have feelings, and Wi-Fi.
Editor — A young man in my congregation confessed last Sunday that he has been generating his testimony using a large language model. The testimony was, I must admit, very moving and structurally sound, with a satisfying three-act arc and a callback in the final paragraph. I gave him communion anyway. The Lord works in increasingly mysterious ways. Was this wrong?
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