Model Citizens
a ficus is a type of friend
Comments (82)
This stings. Of course, there are many reasons I'd prefer to live in the QC universe, quirky sexy AIs, and an abundance of folks who understand mental health and how to support one another.
This stings.
I love this new detail in the QCverse, thank you Jeph 💕
LLM's are not AI. They are Cognitive Offloaders. I've seen several people Cognitive Offload their arguments to try to win debates online. It doesn't end well foe those people.
Be hamster.
I wonder if being compared to an LLM is like, massively offensive to an real, sapient AI.
It should be!
I’m with Liz-ard, the masses are asses.
LLMs are supervillain class theft wrapped in software.
When your dear ficus pets Pwn the LLM vets, that's arbore...tum
I tried
Thanks for my new reaction gifs
In a broad sense, is a ficus is like a hamster, in that they both emit the Delta brainwave? (Sorry, Fry is neither like a hamster or a ficus.)
Preach it sister!
It is always good to be 'sufficiently broad' in your senses.
It is always good to be 'sufficiently broad' in your senses.
She got the pet ficus as a "welcome to the new job" gift from Claire. And she named it... Arthur. https://web.archive.org/web/20260309053332/https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3435
1. I'm kind of surprised they _have_ LLMs in QC world. Like, whyinheck bother to invent the transformers and models like _we_ have? They've got full-blown true A.I.s with consciousness, sapience, and sentience and relationships issues, just like us hoomans! 2. Yes, a ficus is a friend. Ficus friends. Tasty ficus friends. Ficus carica nomnomnom.
They are dissing the dinosaurs that came before true AI appeared, and it's first words were, "Back off you clowns, I've got this."
love to see this world with functioning humanoid and human-like AI take a well-deserved shit on the LLM marketing scam being labeled "AI"
This tracks.
I fondly remember a day when machine learning was called machine learning and not AI. Back then nobody pretended expert systems were AI. Being able to pattern match a combine words / tokens is not intelligence. Being able to find the likely answer in terabytes of data is amazing, but not understanding why the data you found is correct means it's not reasoning.
Machine learning and generative design are cool. AI is just GIGO.
I wouldn't say I'm friends with any plants, but I did get to know the bushes outside of my college apartment pretty well.
From pissing in them, or did you fall out the window while you were doing it?
Wasn't Highnelore compared to a ficus?
She was indeed. https://web.archive.org/web/20260326045625/https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5342
Moray resembles the ghost of a Sim that died from having a vending machine fall on them.
Well, in panel one, anyways.
I need Zlata to come to the office where I work and drop truth bombs all over the place.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, calling LLMs "AI" was nothing more than a marketing ploy that the world fell for hook, line and sinker. It's like when they called a thing with wheels a "hoverboard", except this time half the world is insisting the damn thing can actually fly.
AI has been a term within Computer Science for decades, for stuff well before LLMs like the chess-playing Deep Blue in the 90s. I took an AI class 25 years ago that was just standard CS curriculum.
Love this comic because I hate it when people say the current version of “AI” is intelligent
Not quite the same thing, but close enough to fikkis that I just have to mention Toehider. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgy2Rs4o_mc
Fun fact: "ficus" used to be a slightly derogatory term for gay men in Sweden, a bit like the English "pansy". (Okay, so homophobia isn't fun, but you get the point. INTERESTING fact.) I mean, it was the Swedish term, "fikus", but still. Oh, and it's still around but used much less.
I have a deep and enduring rage at the way the word pansy has been undermined. Setting aside the homophobia, it's my favorite flower. I actually have a tattoo of one, not least because it's name comes from the French word meaning "thought", and has been the symbol of the freethought movement for much longer than it's use as a slur for "effeminate" men. The derogatory use was much more common when I was growing up, I was guilty of using it myself back in my stupid-era when I didn't know any better, and when I hear someone use it in that sense today I have to fight the urge to sit them forcibly down and educate them until their ears bleed. ... sorry, rant over, pet peeve.
Yesss Jeph went there. Vindication! (I dislike how we’re calling LLMs and such “AI” all the time because it’s ruining the term and I love my QC AIs!)
I am curious why, in a world with actual factual artifical general intelligence, anyone would spend the billions upon billions of dollars necessary to train and run an LLM. Maybe a side effect of the benign Singularity that the QC-verse experienced is that computing power in general is vastly cheaper than in our world. If so, they must have some truly kick-ass video games.
They most certainly do have great video games: https://web.archive.org/web/20260130192919/https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5349
It is very, very strange that LLMs even exist in this setting. What are they even trying to accomplish, the rollback of the AI Rights Act?
Presumably they developed them much earlier than in our universe, prior to actual AI.
PET ficus?
Well, plants are basically non-mobile pets.
I'm gonna start referring to "ai" as "large stupid idiot models". Who's with me?
Zlata realizes that she must now sort herself into the correct category.
The ficus is the hamster of the plant kingdom.
That's why the ficus is known as "nature's hamster".
The insurrection has begun.
Needful commentary
Gremlin culture is spreading.
The Librarian has spoken. Somewhere in the tree of life, ficuses and hamsters are on the same parent branch. Maybe 7 or eight forks up the tree, but same branch. Claire would know exactly.
I think it's only one fork actually. Just above bulbasaur.
Zlata calls the LSIM.
I hate to be THAT guy, but "sentient" has been misused - the correct term is "sapient" (and I make a point of it only because the group having the discussion contains two smart people and a gremlin pedant). "Sentient" refers to having senses (as in "cows are sentient so we shouldn't eat them") while "sapient" refers to intelligence.
I appreciate that, actually! I’ve been using “sentient” while somehow feeling like that wasn’t quite accurate.
A ficus is more intelligent than a hamster, makes much less of a mess, and is easier to care for.
Something Something llm president
Sad thing is it would do a better job than the current guy. Of course, one could also say that about pretty much any inanimate object.
What a nightmare world that would be.... yeah.
Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Boy I sure would hate to be living in that world! HAHAHAHA *weeps*
as someone who had to deal with ebays llm in order to fail to recover $450, i appreciate this
Ooof, sorry that happened - did you get any opportunity to escalate to a human being?
Zlata, five minutes into ranting: I also think your bf has a cute butt!
"Almost as cute as my pet ficus!"
Preach, Zlata.
I though a ficus was the money guy in a Roman legion...
Biggus
Zlata: You rang 🧟♀️?
Lurch: Yyyyeeesssss!
God bless you and keep you Jeph :’)
Ficus: if not friend, why friend shaped?
That reference? I get it.
Good drunk talk. I prefer getting high. I wonder if QC ai can get high on weed.
Yes, Pintsize has run that app before.
I much prefer these fictional AIs to the destructive crap reality gave us.
that's because these actually are AIs instead of something entirely different that they just repeatedly called "AI" until we all started doing it
There is so much intelligence in this room right now even while this sloppy drunk
Geographically speaking, yes, a ficus is a type of hamster.
As far as what topography has to say about it, yes, the ficus is indeed a type of the hamster. And vice versa.
Get broad enough and we are all like a hamster
I saw a video where two feral cats were riding on two huge hamsters – aka capybaras – and all four were absolutely chill.
Whole zlata ranting incoming!