Jackson Cox

UT ‘24 | political science major | i play guitar for @slurptheworld

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

why did they make a robot crowd killer

[NEXTA @nexta_tv]

A Chinese robot wearing a clown wig kicked a child in the stomach.

[AG @hissingchoir]

it’s called “life.” You walk to the store. Maybe you see someone you know on the way. You find a dollar on the ground. The sun shines on your face. You are participating in the world.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

@RichardCisneroe @PengIsntOne starters generally have around 530 bst when fully evolved, which puts them on the higher end of the stat spread. they are definitionally above average.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

@Tanukemon053 this has to do with them looking more like “main characters” to me. they don’t fit in a natural landscape bc pokemon company is trying to make every new pokemon a mascot (further anthropomorphizing, etc.)

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

buying a $100 couch from facebook marketplace and a $500 TV would not impact the age you retire at. this is performative.

[RT @RT_com]

High-paid tech workers are cutting life down to the basics so they can invest and retire by 30

One Meta engineer makes over $300K a year and still owns no car, couch or TV

More successful Gen Z are choosing calm life over career and money

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

i believe so strongly that the role of government can and should be to make our lives better. not just with things like infrastructure, but things like this. help people access the arts, build community.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Young people are always told what not to do. But what should you do?

Did you know that most public libraries have a Nintendo Switch to use? That parks show free movies at night? That there's a map of pickup basketball games?

https://t.co/Nb8rOAGO4T is a map of free and affordable things to do this summer that we made just for you.

Because public programs mean nothing if you don't know how to access them. 


[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

@victory_taste imagine if the nba was structured so that lebron had to play his way through local tournaments of intramural teams in order to compete for the finals

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

my first car like 8 years ago was a 2015 with 60k miles on it for $10k .. 8 years ago. now for a similar price point they’re saying you have to go dumpster diving and find something where the maintenance probably costs more than the car

[LibertyJ @LibertyJen]

“Oh but I said 2011!”
Here’s a bunch of 2012. 🤷‍♀️
All under 9k. All with less than. 150k miles.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

i think we all learn to socialize a little bit in every interaction we have. some people will accidentally say something weird and then you can walk away or you can try to learn how to dig yourself out if you accidentally say something weird and acquire a new skill

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

unfathomably based

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

Minnesota has just become the first state to ban prediction markets.

Gov. Tim Walz has signed a bill that makes operating or advertising prediction markets a felony.

This sets a major precedent for those seeking to regulate or ban Polymarket, Kalshi, and other sites.

[Jacobin @jacobin]

Mayor Zohran Mamdani mocks Ronald Reagan’s infamous quote.

“I can think of nine words more terrifying than ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help…’”

“I worked all day and can’t feed my family.”

[Lazzyyyyyy @em_Lazzy]

Mamdani closed a $12B deficit in 132 days, fixed 100K+ potholes, secured millions for gig workers, fined corrupt landlords millions, raised snow workers to $30/hr, and violent crime hit historic lows.
THIS IS WHAT A LEADER DOES!!

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

every day there’s headlines coming out of new york that make it sound like a different country than the rest of the US

[Pop Base @PopBase]

Zohran Mamdani has turned blocks in front of 50 NYC public schools into car-free ‘Soccer Streets’ where children can play in celebration of the upcoming World Cup.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

honestly fuck you @PlayHearthstone and @Blizzard_Ent let me use my gold to buy the battlegrounds pass. i don’t even care about the other shit, i just want access to 4 hero options.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

this should probably be a bigger deal but we’ve got so much going on rn they can basically get away with anything

[FactPost @factpostnews]

At least 32,000 gallons of jet fuel has leaked from a military base into Maryland watersheds.

The Defense Department refused to disclose the spill for at least 3 months.

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

@DanHarmone where’s the cannon that says she’s a better earth bender?

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

not very right wing to admit that you don’t have to work hard to be successful. almost like it isn’t a meritocracy but a luck based system? he then goes on to clarify he is not a good person. interesting.

[bloom 𖧧 @bloomjpg]

Asmongold responds to people judging his lifestyle after revealing his beef jerky and candy diet

"The reason why people get so mad about me is because a person like me existing in the way that I do refutes their entire world view."

"Because it's like.. Work hard? Not really.. You have to be a good person? Not really.. You can't just sit at home and play video games all day? Yeah, you can.. You can't just eat fast food all day? Yup, yes you can.. Everything that they learned in their entire life not to do, I used as a checklist."

[Jackson Cox @jackson_cox12]

pretending like aba is some fine dining restaurant is pretty funny. just bc it’s expensive doesn’t make it all that