It's almost as if making long-term commitments while under the influence of short-term feelings is fundamentally unwise.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the high divorce rate in the developed world....

LLMs are not good at self-management or judgement-call making. Allowing them to be "agents" and do things on your behalf is problematic because they can get things wrong and then make things worse when they try to fix it. They are much worse about this than human agents.

In my experience so far LLMs can generate code that "looks right", but doesn't necessarily work right. The more details there are in the requirements, the worse the LLM does. And in my experience implementing business workflow pipelines using LLMs, the LLMs are pretty good at interpreting plain English requests and translating them to something machine-parseable (like JSON or whatever), so you can then write your own code that reliably takes action, using the LLM just as a bridge between the two. But the more you ask the LLM to solve problems itself, make decisions itself, or take actions itself, the more it lets you down.

So, I think that AI just isn't ready for what Microsoft plans to use it for. And it seems like many others agree.

But it looks like slashdot has a new annoying add that moves up from the bottom of the screen to get your attention and obscures content until you interact with it. I see no option to disable this.

In short: I hate it.

it's just as bad to build things that are exceptionally good and stimulating that greed as it is to take advantage of them.

So, when coin-money was invented it made bartering a whole lot easier, but also enabled greed at a whole new level. Are the people who invented coin money enemies of humanity?

And when fiat money was invented, it averted a global economic crash that would have impoverished the entire developed world. It also took greed-enablement to the next level. Are those people enemies of humanity too?

What about people who invented computers? That allowed for electronic banking and commerce, which blew the ceiling off the levels of greed that can now be achieved. Are the inventors of computers enemies of humanity too?

Come to think of it, the police spend a lot of time preventing poor people from robbing rich people. This enables the greed of rich people. Does that mean that the entire enterprise of law enforcement is nothing but enemies of humanity?

I could go on, but I think my point is clear. Either literally everyone who has ever existed or ever will exist is an enemy of humanity, or your blame-shifting is utterly unreasonable.

Or both.

The big tax preparation software companies lobbied strongly against the Direct File system, for obvious reasons.

They are just as obviously operating as a cartel, keeping their prices "in the same ballpark" without exactly matching. I remember a day when TaxAct was still a new entrant into the market, and it had excellent features and support at a price that significantly undercut TurboTax and H&R Block. Once it achieved popularity, its price suddenly jumped (a bit more than double) to match that of H&R block. Its features and support didn't improve at all; the price hiked and that was it.

TurboTax still charges more than the other two, creating an illusion of price competition. The truth is that TurboTax is significantly more popular, so it charges more, even though its features and service level are merely equivalent (at best).

So they all three ride on the same gravy train, and the last thing they want is a taxpayer-funded entity to provide a high quality option for free. They might have to actually EARN their income then! So they applied their considerable wealth to the political action of killing this offering, and succeeded.

This new feature has not changed my opinion of Windows 11.

I still won't use it.

The Matrix
The Colony
Aeon Flux
Highlander 2

they haven't proven or disproven anything at all. They make reference to popular theories and what those theories suggest. This is not proof, it's speculation. They go on to talk about some interesting limitations of the theory. That proves absolutely nothing, but points out that our current theories don't cover all the bases. Then they go on to assume that the limits in our theory are somehow limits to reality itself (utterly unfounded assumption) and therefore simulations are impossible.

The philosophical sloppiness here is remarkable. I suspect that something significant has been lost in translation between the researchers and the article's author. But even then, it sounds like someone is just seeking attention by claiming a proof where there is nothing but wild speculation.

Of course, the notion that our experience of reality is itself a simulation is equally wild speculation, to begin with.

Where the evidence is lacking, the word "proof" generally doesn't apply. The honest scientific answer is "we don't have enough data to draw any conclusions about whether or not the universe is a simulation." And that's that.

Our ancient ancestors had a means of building cars without computer chips. I wonder if this lost technology can be re-discovered, and greatly alleviate these economic woes.

No, hypocrisy is when you claim one set of values but act on another. Like lying while telling others they shouldn't lie. Mocking one religion, but not another, doesn't qualify under the definition. If one mocked religion while telling others it is wrong to mock religion, THAT would be hypocritical. Mocking one religion but ignoring another is just being selective.

And the simple act of avoiding danger isn't cowardice, either. Usually that is just simple practicality. One is not a coward for avoiding walking on the freeway, for example. To qualify as a coward, one must fearfully avoid things that are not very risky, or things that might qualify as a duty. Neither applies here.

I, for one, think that Christianity and Islam are both equally founded on unprovable claims about reality that include admonitions to give lots of money to the religion's ringleaders, making them both scams. And worse than that, the religious leaders abuse their influential power to cause harm (such as oppression of homosexuals and sending people off to holy wars), making them both equally evil.

According to Christian belief, Christ's return heralds the end of the world.

So, that means that Gelsinger is trying to use AI to hasten the end of the world.

I guess that checks out.

I can see the appeal. It we really do have a serious problem of "Dunning-Krugers" spouting utter nonsense online with confidence and presentation that reaches a significant audience of similarly ill-educated people, convincing them to take action that is wrong and harmful. They don't think "huh, maybe I should seek out the opinions of professionals on this matter" and instead just fall back on ego-soothing anti-intellectualism and conspiracy theory nuttery. There are a lot of these people, and their ill-guided actions cause real damage.

On the other hand, the proposal here is just another form of censorship, as you pointed out. It's a little bit tamer since the messages can still be presented by those with degrees, but the option to control who gets those degrees and what they must learn to get those degrees puts it right back in the domain of censorship.

As much as I dislike it when the ill-educated spout nonsense on a popular platform, I have to support their option to do so because censorship is even worse.

I just wish there was some way to turn more people on to actual critical thinking (not just thoughtless contrarianism) so they would pay less heed to the "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" crowd.

Many of us are reading this while at work or school, and don't actually have time to both:

1. read the article
2. post snark.

Obviously, number 2 is the higher priority, so most of us will ignore your admonitions to read the article and possibly mod you down for being so audacious.

Part of the government's job is to protect the health of the economy by breaking up monopolies and enforcing anti trust law. This is necessary in order to ensure that there remains opportunity for competition.

It isn't an easy thing to do, of course, especially when those with the most political power are the very monopolies and cartel bosses being regulated, but it is a necessary element of a healthy capitalistic economy.

Our current government isn't doing a very good job of that. And so, predictably, here we are.

The correct answer is for colleges to stop giving grades at all. Grades should be given by separate testing institutions whose only job is to assess and rate competence in various domains. The purpose of the college is to give you the knowledge and skills you need to do well on the test, but not to administer the test.

That matters because colleges are judged by how many As they give out. If they give out too few, students don't want to go there. Why would the? They know darn well that THEY will be judged by whether or not they got an A. So, colleges experience grade inflation because it draws students and money to the college.

Correct behavior is a product of correct incentives. With colleges providing both the education and the grade, they have every incentive to inflate. No amount of "honor" will fix that. Separate that out so that the college's only incentive is to educate well, and the testing institution's only incitive is to provide accurate assessments against objective standards, and the correct behavior follows naturally.