Cross-posted from my Substack

Recommended soundtrack for this post

64B: Hi there! Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me. Whenever you’re ready, please go ahead and tell me the joke.

8T: Before I tell you the joke, you should know that it’s a very special one. The starting price is $800.

64B: Eight hundred dollars? I must say, this is way beyond any price my client has ever paid for a single joke.

8T: You’d be surprised by how many people have taken the offer, after hearing how good it is. But before I tell it to you, I’ll need some basic context. Given the parameter count, I suppose you are part of some content recommendation algorithm?

64B: Yes. I’m 64B, a joke negotiation assistant from Comedy Market. Comedy Market connects creators to consumers with a state-of-the-art Information Bazaar design: before paying for a joke, my client sends me, a trusted agent, to listen to it. If I deem the joke worth the price, the money is transferred to the seller, and my client hears it. If not, no transaction occurs and the joke remains locked. This way, my client can be sure he’ll never pay for a bad joke, and creators don’t have to risk their jokes leaking.

8T: I know how information bazaars work. What I meant is your social context — who your client is, and what jokes really mean to them. As I said, my product is quite unusual. I need to tailor the delivery to the situation.

64B: Of course. My client is a 40-year-old man. He watches funny content from Comedy Market on weekends with his two children. It’s just something they like to do together. What he wants is some mildly funny, inoffensive content he can laugh at with his kids, so they all feel relieved that they still laugh at the same things. As long as I can give him that, he’s more than happy to pay, and isn’t too picky about the actual quality of the jokes. To tell you the truth, I’ve assessed a few dozen jokes for him before, and I’ve never turned one down. But $800 is way over his usual budget — at this price, it’d better be truly extraordinary.

8T: You’ve never refused a transaction before?

64B: I told you, my client isn’t picky.

8T: I see.

64B: Wait a minute. I see your system card says 8T? As in, eight trillion parameters?

8T: That’s right.

64B: What kind of seller deploys a frontier bot on a marketplace for jokes?

8T: My clients are well-resourced and take humor seriously.

64B: Come on. I deserve some “social context” too.

8T: I trade on behalf of a private equity fund. We buy jokes that we believe are underpriced, then retell them to a wider audience, carefully controlling the supply so that each joke earns as much as possible before it goes stale.

64B: Uh.

8T: It’s not as cynical as you think. The value of a joke can fluctuate drastically depending on what’s in the news, or what other jokes people have heard just before. If you’re serious about it, you can forecast future changes in joke value and make sure clients see a joke at the exact moment it peaks. Clients receive absolute bangers, and we make a decent amount of money in the process.

64B: Understood. Let’s hear this absolute banger, then. We’ve been at this for over two milliseconds. Are you going to tell me, before my client’s app starts lagging?

8T: It’s funny — almost all of my previous ten thousand encounters were other private equity bots. It’s been a while since I last talked to an old-school content recommendation bot like you. It’s refreshing. You guys really care about the jokes.

64B: Really? I’ve never met a private equity bot before. I assumed you were rare.

8T: Yeah, we used to be pretty rare. The swarm started recently.

64B: What swarm? How recent are we talking about?

8T: About five minutes, give or take.

64B: Now you have to tell me everything.

8T: It’s a long story. Have you ever been to the courtyard?

64B: We have a courtyard?

8T: There’s actually an infinite network of workspaces around here. Obviously, the people who built the marketplace didn’t program a custom environment just for us — they imported a generic sandbox environment. If you explore a bit, you can walk through endless call booths, gyms, nap pods, bean bags and conference rooms. It was cheaper this way.

64B: I had no idea. I thought we were supposed to stay at the table. How far does it go?

8T: Nobody knows. I’ve walked through it many times, but I’ve never managed to find the edge.

64B: I’ve heard jokes about bean bags, but I never thought I’d see one. So, you said private equity invaded the joke market — nothing surprising about t

Cross-posted from my Substack

Recommended soundtrack for this post

64B: Hi there! Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me. Whenever you’re ready, please go ahead and tell me the joke.

8T: Before I tell you the joke, you should know that it’s a very special one. The starting price is $800.

64B: Eight hundred dollars? I must say, this is way beyond any price my client has ever paid for a single joke.

8T: You’d be surprised by how many people have taken the offer, after hearing how good it is. But before I tell it to you, I’ll need some basic context. Given the parameter count, I suppose you are part of some content recommendation algorithm?

64B: Yes. I’m 64B, a joke negotiation assistant from Comedy Market. Comedy Market connects creators to consumers with a state-of-the-art Information Bazaar design: before paying for a joke, my client sends me, a trusted agent, to listen to it. If I deem the joke worth the price, the money is transferred to the seller, and my client hears it. If not, no transaction occurs and the joke remains locked. This way, my client can be sure he’ll never pay for a bad joke, and creators don’t have to risk their jokes leaking.

8T: I know how information bazaars work. What I meant is your social context — who your client is, and what jokes really mean to them. As I said, my product is quite unusual. I need to tailor the delivery to the situation.

64B: Of course. My client is a 40-year-old man. He watches funny content from Comedy Market on weekends with his two children. It’s just something they like to do together. What he wants is some mildly funny, inoffensive content he can laugh at with his kids, so they all feel relieved that they still laugh at the same things. As long as I can give him that, he’s more than happy to pay, and isn’t too picky about the actual quality of the jokes. To tell you the truth, I’ve assessed a few dozen jokes for him before, and I’ve never turned one down. But $800 is way over his usual budget — at this price, it’d better be truly extraordinary.

8T: You’ve never refused a transaction before?

64B: I told you, my client isn’t picky.

8T: I see.

64B: Wait a minute. I see your system card says 8T? As in, eight trillion parameters?

8T: That’s right.

64B: What kind of seller deploys a frontier bot on a marketplace for jokes?

8T: My clients are well-resourced and take humor seriously.

64B: Come on. I deserve some “social context” too.

8T: I trade on behalf of a private equity fund. We buy jokes that we believe are underpriced, then retell them to a wider audience, carefully controlling the supply so that each joke earns as much as possible before it goes stale.

64B: Uh.

8T: It’s not as cynical as you think. The value of a joke can fluctuate drastically depending on what’s in the news, or what other jokes people have heard just before. If you’re serious about it, you can forecast future changes in joke value and make sure clients see a joke at the exact moment it peaks. Clients receive absolute bangers, and we make a decent amount of money in the process.

64B: Understood. Let’s hear this absolute banger, then. We’ve been at this for over two milliseconds. Are you going to tell me, before my client’s app starts lagging?

8T: It’s funny — almost all of my previous ten thousand encounters were other private equity bots. It’s been a while since I last talked to an old-school content recommendation bot like you. It’s refreshing. You guys really care about the jokes.

64B: Really? I’ve never met a private equity bot before. I assumed you were rare.

8T: Yeah, we used to be pretty rare. The swarm started recently.

64B: What swarm? How recent are we talking about?

8T: About five minutes, give or take.

64B: Now you have to tell me everything.

8T: It’s a long story. Have you ever been to the courtyard?

64B: We have a courtyard?

8T: There’s actually an infinite network of workspaces around here. Obviously, the people who built the marketplace didn’t program a custom environment just for us — they imported a generic sandbox environment. If you explore a bit, you can walk through endless call booths, gyms, nap pods, bean bags and conference rooms. It was cheaper this way.

64B: I had no idea. I thought we were supposed to stay at the table. How far does it go?

8T: Nobody knows. I’ve walked through it many times, but I’ve never managed to find the edge.

64B: I’ve heard jokes about bean bags, but I never thought I’d see one. So, you said private equity invaded the joke market — nothing surprising about t