DeepMind's Geoffrey Irving draws Mandelbrot in pure Lean via Claude, reflects on halting AI progress
DKokotajlo · x · 2026-10-16
DeepMind's Geoffrey Irving had Claude render Mandelbrot set figures in pure Lean — no Python, using the public-domain Hershey stroke font for text. He uses the exercise to reflect: Mandelbrot fiddling is 99.99% useless fun, but it's worth reflecting on the sense of loss relative to what humanity could explore if we stopped AI progress now and worked with current (slightly rewound) models.
More from AGI Musings
- "An LLM doesn't understand anything" gets the perfect parody reversal: neither do you — VoidStateKate · 2026-10-16
- Nina Schick: Europe's Policy Circle Still Doesn't Believe FSD, Orbital Compute Are Real — NinaDSchick · 2026-10-16
- Meta's Superintelligence Lab Runs 200+ Direct Reports—A Lesson for Flat Multi-Agent Systems — peterjliu · 2026-10-16
- Andy Masley lays out his version of effective altruism, pluralism over utilitarian math — RobbWiller · 2026-10-16
- We're forgetting how much of a miracle GPT-3.5-level intelligence was, and it may cost us — EigenGender · 2026-10-16
- Ex-Anthropic's McDonagh Builds Compute Intelligence Agency to Study Frontier AI Costs — McDonaghMatthew · 2026-10-16