Outback discipline: harsh

Inspired by Nick’s previous attempt to lose the game as quickly as possible, the team heads for a penal colony in nineteenth century Australia.

The object of the game? Simple: try to lose as quickly as you can. Bonus points for style.

We’ll be harnessing the unique sass of Chinese chatbot DeepSeek and pitting our three ‘heroes’ against the the unremittingly severe ecosystem of an outback Aussie lockup.

Tune in to PastMaster on Monday to find out who will emerge ‘victorious’…

One the menu: lice

AI in the news

Altman: polite

ChatGPT spends tens of millions of dollars on responding to people saying please and thank you, but boss Sam Altman says it’s worth it.

Users questioned the energy costs the AI firm must be racking up of dealing with overly polite people. Every time some types ‘thank you’, GPT will respond with a trifle, even if it’s simply ‘not at all’.

Curious that Open AI’s boss thinks it’s better to be polite to the robots just to be on the safe side, despite the costs. This certainly backs up PastMaster’s hypothesis that if you treat the AI Game Master like a jerk it behaves like a jerk right back at you.

A perfect copy

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson: smouldering

The latest AI meme has people feeding ChatGPT an image and asking it to perfectly recreate it, then doing this ad infinitum and watching the results diverge wildly from the original source.

This example takes a portrait of wrestler-cum-film star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and sees him turn from the stern but beatific looking muscleman into a piece of abstract art via a blue-lipped clown.

It’s a good reminder that even in the fast-moving and high-functioning world of AI, mutations abound.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Tan and the PastMaster crew.

PS if you’ve got any suggestions for what you’d like to see the PastMaster team try next, get in touch:

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Email: pastmasterpod@gmail.com