Back in my day we called 'em shills.

Well, it's not really AI in any sense of the honest term; it's not a self aware machine. AI has become a marketing term for servers running a bunch of fancy scripts that produce dialogue that can pass for human speech fairly well. BUT... AI is a game changer economically because those fancy scripts are already killing jobs, jobs that won't be replaced by something else. So in that sense, AI isn't "bullshit". It's an extinction level event for entire classes of formerly human work. And the economic and social and political crisis that it will create has clearly already began.

Something which makes it easier and more convenient for people to file taxes cannot be tolerated.

Whatever it takes, you will pay. That is their goal.

This presupposes that they don't get plenty of "real world" while they're homeschooling. As if they're in some hermetically sealed environment where bad things never touch them. When we homeschooled ours, one of my wife's single friends objected, asking us "what about socialization?". Well, what about it? There's still plenty of it with friends and family, church, and play. And when they're young adults, they're better able to deal with the scum of the world than a pre-teen or teenager thrown into the cage match that is modern public schools where you can't get to them. School is supposed to be about education, not be a Thunderdome where the weak are weeded out for the coming apocalypse. Whatever my sons missed in public schools, they're far better off not being in a concrete box where some hulking delinquent 3 to 4 years older than all his class peers is punching teachers or pulling a gun on students.

Naw. Somehow, this will be Obama or Hillary's fault.

It's the Christmas season. Everybody loves a two-for-one deal.

We cannot even agree not to do wars that are essentially just stealing from others.

Nonsense. My people lived on that land centuries ago even though others were already there so it's my land by default. It's not stealing. I'm just taking back what is mine.

2007/8 was also the result of fraud and the interdependence of the banking and rating system. For a study on how this worked and what happened, you can read this paper.

Also, I distinctly remember banks giving a loan to anyone with a pulse despite the rules saying otherwise as well as double or even triple mortgaging the same property.to different people.

As for the banks, it did end badly, right up to the moment the taxpayers were once again held at gunpoint and told to hand over their money. That is why Bear Stearns is no longer around. Unfortunately, others involved weren't allowed to fail as well.

If I tell you to buy 'Y' from Amazon using my account, I have given authorization for that purchase even though it is not me, the owner of the account, making the purchase.

In a similar fashion, Perplexity can claim the user telling their software to make the purchase is no different. That it is not a human is irrelevant. The owner of the account has given permission to make the purchases.

Keep cutting down trees and paving over grass. What could possibly go wrong?

Oregon isn't Nigeria. All of the worker creature comforts aren't being flown in at great expense because local infrastructure and services are shit. Houses and restaurants are being built. Stores are being built. That means employing the locals for the most part, raising their wages and improving their infrastructure.

There are downsides to big companies coming into small towns. I live in one, and the increased traffic and general hassle of more people annoys the fuck out of me. But our standard of living has most definitely gone up, not down.

This is heavily dependent upon what the major is. Huge numbers of college grads get degrees that do them absolutely no good in the workplace. There are legions of grads working in jobs that don't require college.

A chemical engineering major is going to make so much bank that he can pay off his loans in a very short time and have a high amount of disposable income. The Sociology grad working a telemarketer job, not so much. He's sitting at a table with co-workers that in many cases didn't even graduate high school.

How to make succulent looking eggs or giant mechanized robots?

He says he doesn't think college is worth it, yet his company is being run by people who went to college and then graduate school.

Or does he think all that AI stuff is just pulled off a cereal box?

An actual game changer (literally) would be native Steam and GOG clients for Linux and BSD. Windows would still be, percentage-wise, the king of desktop gaming, but you'd see a mighty river of players move over to Unix systems if those two things came to fruition.