It's true, they had a shortage of shadow puppets, the early form of Netflix.

I wish more would choose Jainism over Islam and Christianity. Many crave some kind of religion, and if such people picked the more peaceful religions there would be fewer busybodies trying to force their beliefs on others.

can the researchers really say with confidence that the civilization would still be with us today?

Nobody claimed it would otherwise still be around. You are putting words in their mouths. It only solved, or at least partly solves a mystery. Usually declines of ancient cities can be traced to invaders, civil war, damaged soil, plagues, etc. This one had no known comparable cause.

Is it possible the smoke & soot from the city changed the local weather?

They have to wine and dine a few gov't officials before that step.

They found out somebody accidentally installed Boeing bolts.

The big invasion didn't occur until 2022 because in 2021 it became apparent to putin that there was no other way to contain the dissatisfaction of his populace with the rotting economy, but war powers.

Also, let's not forget that trump is viewed as an asset by Moscow. There's enough evidence of that, from the "Tramp - nash" campaign run by Moscow since 2015 to the campaign against supporting Ukraine that trump's been running ever since Zelensky refused to give him dirt on Biden, to the last leaked phone call of Comrade Vitkov to his SVR handler Ushakov.

What's the point of starting a war if you're sure your asset will, as we've seen, always be ready to hand to you all you ask for on a silver platter anyway?

For the US, Europe has always been the buffer zone between them and the Soviet Union, that theater on which that war that luckily didn't grow hot would happen.

Let's not pretend it has ever been otherwise.

Claiming that you're protecting your shield and getting angry that your hands have gone too little and weak to carry it is funny, but pathetic.

Yeah, indeed, when the peaceniks get too uppity, they're promptly dealt with by this violence that just happens.

No, that is not "super easy". The problem is the LLM needs to recognize it needs to hand-off a specific question. And that it cannot do reliably.

Do you know what happens if a robot-controller hallucinates? You end up with a broken robot, and maybe an injured or dead person on top of that. LLMs are not fit to control any physical actuators.

Do not mistake an impressive toy for a professional tool.

Agreed. Also the amount of waste, concentration of money that then does not cause productivity, significant parts of the population losing access to education, medical care, etc. are a factor in a society descending.

Let's hope this goes without a major war. That is at least a possibility, since global dependencies make wars much, much more costly than they used to be.

Not LLMs. In a robotics context they would wreck equipment and probably kill people.

Agree to all of that. While, say, a machine-learning enabled gripping tool is "AI" in some sense, it is not the current hype AI, but an entirely different breed that you can actually rely on, no hallucinations or other crap.

The other thing is that China tries to push its industry, and for good reasons. But eventually, this will need to be reduced and then they become another regular player. The question is who of the other players will be left standing at that time. It will not the ones that maximize short-term greed.