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Comment Re:I donno... (Score 1) 186

Can a non-biological entity feel desire? Can it want to grow and become something more than what it is? I think that's a philosophical question and not a technological one.

LK

Don't agree at all and I think that's a morally dangerous approach. We're looking for a scientific definition of "desire" and "want". That's almost certainly a part of "conscious" and "self aware". Philosophy can help, but in the end, to know whether you are right or not you need the experimental results.

Experiments can be crafted in such a way as to exclude certain human beings from consciousness.

One day, it's extremely likely that a machine will say to us "I am alive. I am awake. I want..." and whether or not it's true is going to be increasingly hard to determine.

LK

Comment Re:I donno... (Score 2) 186

An LLM can't suddenly decide to do something else which isn't programmed into it.

Can we?

It's only a matter of time until an AI can learn to do something it wasn't programmed by us to do.

Can a non-biological entity feel desire? Can it want to grow and become something more than what it is? I think that's a philosophical question and not a technological one.

LK

Comment Re:What's the problem? (Score 1) 262

If it was a meritocratic idea, it'd be sold as such. Instead it's racism with a colorful candy shell and a cute-but-false heartwarming story about "equity".

Can you provide examples where this is the case? Right now it feels like you are discomforted by the idea of something that challenges "'straight' white male privilege"?

Comment Re:Before you dunk all over this van... (Score 1) 93

You made a rather huge leap there, and I'm not sure why you committed to doing so.

I've never heard of this van. I work in several metropolitan areas on a regular basis and I've never seen one anywhere. I fully acknowledge they exist, but I've never seen one. I could well be unique in having never seen one, but if they aren't in any of the markets where I frequently drive then there are likely a lot of other people who have never seen them in the wild either.

The point I was after is that there are a lot of people who love to dunk on the automotive industry - particularly the American Big Three - any time they can. The Big Three are far from blameless. However, ripping to shreds a discontinued vehicle that you've never seen isn't exactly a fair thing to do.
Republicans

Journal Journal: The under-discussed MAGA broken promise 2

The Epstein files are still - to King Donald's disappointment - getting quite a bit of attention. He is paying his government quite a bit of money to try to bury that "problem" but the people aren't falling for it.

However I'd like to shine light on a different promise that has been cast aside.

Comment Before you dunk all over this van... (Score 2) 93

I'd like to hear if even one person in this discussion had ever heard of it before this was posted here. I follow quite a bit of automotive news myself and had never heard of this van before now. Granted it is a commercial vehicle that would have been difficult to obtain as a regular consumer here (similar to the larger current model Ford econoline (not transitconnect) vans) but I had never heard of this at all. I've seen news on the new USPS delivery vehicles, the new NYC taxis, but never on this.

It's awfully difficult - at least in real space - to claim to be an expert on something you never heard of. I'm sure that won't stop people here but nonetheless it is worth pondering why we had never heard anything of this vehicle. If regular consumers hadn't heard of it, how many potential commercial customers hadn't either? Plenty of commercial customers exist in this country who would do well with an electric van, if only they knew this one existed.

Comment Re:And the first to cry foul. (Score 1) 93

Just ignore the virtual (and actual) slave labor, skipping R&D costs by stealing IP hand over fist, strip mining for materials with no regard to environmental concerns, disregard of consumer safety, and massive subsidies from the authoritarian single-party government.

Are you sure you're talking about China there? That sounds like the MAGA party to-do list, especially if you add on corporate extortion and mandatory bribes to the leader of said one party state.

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