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Comment Re:Computers don't "feel" anything (Score 1) 31

Correct. This is why I don't like the term "hallucinate". AIs don't experience hallucinations, because they don't experience anything. The problem they have would more correctly be called, in psychology terms "confabulation" -- they patch up holes in their knowledge by making up plausible sounding facts.

I have experimented with AI assistance for certain tasks, and find that generative AI absolutely passes the Turing test for short sessions -- if anything it's too good; too fast; too well-informed. But the longer the session goes, the more the illusion of intelligence evaporates.

This is because under the hood, what AI is doing is a bunch of linear algebra. The "model" is a set of matrices, and the "context" is a set of vectors representing your session up to the current point, augmented during each prompt response by results from Internet searches. The problem is, the "context" takes up lots of expensive high performance video RAM, and every user only gets so much of that. When you run out of space for your context, the older stuff drops out of the context. This is why credibility drops the longer a session runs. You start with a nice empty context, and you bring in some internet search results and run them through the model and it all makes sense. When you start throwing out parts of the context, the context turns into inconsistent mush.

Comment Re:Society had better be ready for (Score 1) 47

Stockton Rush is a rare example of a tech bro who didn't get to walk away from his monumental fuckup and leave the rest of us to clean up his mess. Fortunately for us, his collapsible submarine only murdered a few people, along with the "genius" himself. We're just lucky Rush didn't decide he liked reactors more than submarines. No doubt that deficiency in America's tech bro-volution will soon be rectified.

If I weren't an atheist, I'd say, "God help us all".

Comment Re:way more than some irrationality (Score 2) 50

Here is the thing, you are posting on Slashdot. Don't tell me you are not sharp enough to find a broker, and buy some long dated at the money PUTS either on the AI and AI adjacent firms or just the market over all with funds like SPY / QQQ.

You If you really had conviction about truly big enough crash for Main Street to feel it to commit 18 or 20K; you'd make enough to keep the mortgage current and food on the table for a year right there after there return of the principle.

The thing is you don't really believe in such a crash. The bigger part of you thinks this will all just blow over in couple quarters, you might not get a great Christmas bonus either for 2025 or 2026 but mostly you don't think your financial life will be all that greatly impacted. I think that bigger part of you is right. OpenAI's investors are going to lose a lot of money, probably Anthropic and anyone else not actually in the business of making the compute hardware, or using the compute hardware to make physical things like drugs, better plastic, etc. I don't think there is going to be any 2008 like crisis..

And we're also smart enough to realize the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Newt Gingrich predicted the dot-com boom will crash... in 1996. It took another 5 years for it to happen.

The 2008 crash was also predicted - you might remember The Big Short. But you'll also remember there were serious issues with cashflow a couple of years before it happened.

If this stuff was easy to predict, I wouldn't be making puts. I'd be investing heavily in it knowing when it wouild peak and then sell just shortly before. Then once sold I would make put calls.

Comment Re:Meanwhile in the USA (Score 1) 115

There are many manufacturers that sell all kinds of vehicles in the USA. Some made completely abroad from various different countries. Some domestically. And a lot are a complex mixture of the two. But you think there is a grand conspiracy/collusion among them all of them to deprive consumers of lower-priced/lower-end models?

The big 3, which have American brand loyalty up the wazoo, realized in the 90s they made more money on bigger vehicles. They they've been marketing bigger and bigger vehicles to Americans. It's why the F-150 is the best-selling pickup truck (and how much larger it is now than in the past). Heck, for a few years in the mid 2000's, F-150's were sold with so much luxury they had no cargo carrying capacity once you loaded it up with a couple of adults - you had maybe 150 lbs of axle weight left.

It's also why SUVs are insanely popular, and not cheap small SUVs like the foreign makes, but the big ones.

It's why the Big 3 have been getting rid of less profitable sedans - they're marketing people to buy big cars. And the cars they do make in the lower end of the spectrum just can't compete - with major recalls going on.

The only reason America still makes cars are EVs like Tesla. The ICE cars are almost all foreign makes.

The Big 3 aren't worried about Toyota Camrys or Corollas because Americans are loyal to the Ford, GM and Chrysler marks. It would take a seismic shift to get them to consider a Honda or Toyota. And even more to go with a Hyundai or Kia. All of whom make low end vehicles that are cheap but relatively full featured.

Ford isn't going to sell F-150s to Japan - too big, too expensive, not very useful. But Ford doesn't care about the Japanese market. Toyota and Honda, meanwhile, sell very nice efficient cars to Americans to fill the lower end gap. Of course, Trump also goes around and does tariffs, but a lot of those are made in the US to be sold in the US.

But brand loyalty is a fierce thing, especially in red country.

Comment Re:Need a prescription. (Score 1) 49

As the other poster says, the reason for the shortage is because successive British governments have cut funding in the NHS in real terms, and are now flailing around as those cuts have really started to bite.

And every time the doctors or nurses strike to make a point, they get gaslit because "think of the patients".

Healthcare systems run on two things - staff, and good will.

The government has reduced the staff well below minimum, and burned up all the good will, so now theres nothing left. Fewer doctors are coming into the NHS through British training schemes because those are capped and indeed some have been reduced recently, and more doctors are retiring early or leaving the country.

And thats not counting the doctors who were forced to retire early because of the Tory governments cap on lifetime pension contributions - when the government dictates how much you pay into your pension, and also dictate that above a certain threshold of lifetime contributions you become liable for a huge tax bill immediately, and you cant withdraw from the pension contributions without also forfeiting the pension itself, then your only option to avoid a huge tax bill is ... retirement....

Comment Re:Regulations? (Score 1) 54

For a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist country, its astounding how much US law makers get involved in the running of businesses, whether it be with regulations, hearings or "opinions". US law makers love to do it.

Of course, its all performative - calling CEOs into hearings to berate them rather than actually doing fact finding, basically using the hearings as a court where the people appearing have already been judged and sentenced. Got to be seen doing something, but lets certainly not fix the issue through good legislation, because berating people in public is more fun.

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