so I can spend my mental cycles on something more better...

Don't forget lobbying and consulting.

Loan sharking.

Underground gambling.

bitcoins are highly trackable; most activities that can convert large sums of crypto to spendable cash are typically trackable. At least by nation state actors.

The norm right now and they way they get away is people say - "Oh Salt Typhoon, nothing more we can do than have the ambassador send a pointed but respectful letter" is in China.

If instead we just had some human intelligent asset, kill some of those operators, things might actually change. They could also escalate of course, but then that is really just acknowledging we are in a real conflict rather than letting our enemies bleed us and gather all the intel they'd like.

For private enterprise I'll agree you might we right that private enterprise paying ransoms emboldens criminals, and encorages more of the same. I don't agree people should be told they can't pay. It is not *MY* responsibility to fall on my sword suffer the destruction of my enterprise because law enforcement / national defense can't or won't do what is needed to protect me. Kinda like I have a dead bolt on my door, someone could still kick it in. I rely on the local sheriff to create an environment where few criminals would be so bold.

AI is some sort of technology, whoever develops this technology better wins something supposedly. Governments have nothing to do with this, technology doesn't belong to the governments.

we are talking about different things. You are talking about class division, all of this, I am talking about a person who does not have to work and yet he does it because he wants to, yes, but personally for him there is nothing to be gained except more headache, it is not about earning more, it is about doing something with yourself.

I am saying that doing something is an important part of living, doing something useful, where you feel useful, this is what this example shows.

Certainly, if you worked as an office cleaner most of your life, probably you will not be missing that work if you were able to get a pension and stop working, but I think you will still be missing the entire aspect of being useful in a wider sense of the word.

I think what makes us people is desire to be useful, doesn't matter how much money you make. I think people who do not have that desire are actually less than developed people.

What does it matter. The CIA will just step up their cloud seeding efforts to offset anything the Iranians try to do instead.

I have no knowledge of any such plan by the CIA to use any kind of weather manipulation techniques to cause droughts in Iran, but you all have to admit that it sounds like exactly like the kind of thing they would do and based on what they've done to other countries historically is not outside the realm of possibility for them. I'd be more surprised if they weren't doing this as it's a great way to destabilize an enemy country.

You may want to source numbers for your claim. I looked at unemployment rates for the U.S., the UK, and Germany in the lead up to WWI and none of them had unemployment rates near 25% or any higher than usual. The Unemployment rates prior to WWII were much higher, but as a result of the Great Depression as opposed to any kind of mass unemployment resulting from advances in technology.

As another poster already pointed out, no one can perfectly foresee the future of the economy. If they could, communism would actually have worked as the central planners could predict where the economy will move. It doesn't matter that no one individual can predict this every time. All that's required is for someone to have an idea and a need for human labor and it will create jobs that previously never existed.

Everyone needs to pick up a Koran and read those sword verses at the very least.

Islam isn't just a religion it is also a political system and it hell bent on conquest. We are at war with Islam, it is wholly incompatible with western culture. Islam does not make any room for pluralism, unless subjugation of people 'of the book' counts and you are alright with death for everyone else.

That is what the text says, there ain't any getting around it. Anyone who especially if they claim to be islamic either actually isn't, or is lying to you (something the Koran also tells them to do).

Anyone professing to be a follower of Islam fundamentally can't be trusted, full stop! We need a Muslim ban, or the very instant they think they have the numbers, our culture, our freedoms, our very lives, will be lost!

The genie is already out of the bottle. Nothing is stopping developers where from using AI and they will do so if it gives them an edge. Unless countries are going to start banning content (good luck with that in the U.S.) this won't matter. Nothing can force people to play games they don't want to anyway so if these human developers can't make something compelling they'll be out of the job regardless. Right now the AAA industry seems over saturated with people who shouldn't be there. They only drag down more qualified developers and waste everyone else's time and money.

There's a difference between being able to run a AAA game and having 120 FPS 4k with ray tracing and other bells and whistles. The integrated graphics on mainstream Intel and AMD CPUs can run most titles at low settings. The 30 FPS that you may get isn't considered acceptable these days, but back in the day that was something that often required a high-end setup. The integrated graphics are good enough that the low end of the GPU market no longer exists as it did two or even one decade ago. The built-in CPU graphics became good enough to eliminate those cards.

How many of those games need to be connected to anything? Unless it's an MMO or a strictly multiplayer FPS, I can do without the online component. It usually only exists to make the experience worse in my opinion. It's also often less functional than online capabilities of prior generation titles which allowed for LAN play or custom servers. Some games still use that model, but they seem like a dying breed.

None of it matters unless the threat actors believe there is no degree of pain to severe they could inflict that would make governments chose to pay.

These are at least in some cases foreign state sponsored actors - there is no reason to think say that when attacking hospital / public health administration, that some number of people literally dying because care can't be manage is 'a problem' for them.

So all no ransom payment policies do unless they are truly absolute is make the threat actors so their are serious first. Just like resisting ransom payments in kidnapping results in a few severed fingers or an ear in the dead drop.

I don't think society has the stomach for an absolute under no circumstances, even if that billion dollar power plan will be permanently disabled as a resulting in local industry will be crippled for years, we won't pay policy. It just does not relfect real world needs. Better to pay the ransom and make a big show of then following the money and running down the people responsible, taking kenetic action against them. Like when you find the guy the CIA/MI6 or whatever takes care of them with a car-bomb, or you have the air-force stike their yacht in Caribbean. What will stop these guys is making it clear they will be treated as terrorist-combatants and doing this shit will have them looking over their shoulder for the rest of their lives, and force them into hiding, because if found they will be killed, no trials, no plea bargins, just BANG

LLMs make a lot of mistakes but the tech bros don't care - they're using them for all sorts of things including supposed self driving cars. If the AI fucks up and causes issues , well , on appendix section 16, sub section A, paragraph 21 there'll be a clause explicitly exempting the AI company from any responsibility and in jurisdictions where that disclaimer is void then what the hell, they've made billions anyway and they'll just settle out of court.

My point is that a guy with all the money still chooses to do it, shows that people lose themselves when they have nothing to do that involves more than just enjoyment.

Would he actually be more comfortable with our Elected non-tech elites making the big decisions?

I just don't see our legislative process, or administrative state terribly equipped to deal with shaping AI technology.

I think their job is to:
1) Ensure societies existing guard rails are uniformly and fairly applied to all, independent as to if AI has anything to do with the activity or not.
2) Respond reactively. If we identify a specific activity when coupled with AI is in some way corrosive to the society we generally want to have, then enact legislation to curb it in that area. While generally speaking anticipating problems and trying to avoid them is good practice, with something like this evolving this rapidly, I believe you usually create more issues if you go trying to solve problems you don't really know you yet have.

A good example is work force reduction, a lot of people are convinced there is going to be a huge wave of job losses that are directly attributed to AI, we don't really have any evidence of that yet. There are plenty of equally plausible explanations for unemployment rate increases right now. So if you go legislation a bunch of 'things' companies are not allowed to use ML/AI tech for and it turns out the UE uptick isn't ai related all you have done is limited productivity gains and created more economic drag.

It is important to keep in mind this is mostly just computers filling out paper work, taking down orders, and churning out questionable quality music and video clips. Hardly things we can't 'shut off' if need be. It isn't like nearly as destructive and irreversible as all kinds of development projects we often give the private sector a long leash to run with.