They literally had to turn down a government grant because they had a DEI policy. They're not lying about the liability risk they faced. And this is what the overwhelming majority (like 99%) of real-world DEI policies look like.
Imagine if those failed and we'd have to take the Shinkansen to our destination instead of the monorail to the airport...
I hear those things are awfully loud.
Way beyond golems - tons of old religions have notions of "craftsmen deities" making mechanical beings (like Hephestus making Talos, the Keledones, the Kourai Khryseai, etc) or self-controlled artifacts (such as Vishvakarma making an automated flying chariot, Hephaestos making self-moving tripods to serve the gods at banquets, etc), or even things that (mythological) humans created, such as the robots that guarded the relics of the Buddha, or a whole city of wooden robots made by a carpenter mentioned in the Naravahanadatta. And then you have actual early human attempts at automatons, such as robotic orchestras and singers in ancient China, a robotic orchestra and mechanical peacocks in the Islamic world, etc (China also had some mythological ones in addition to actual ones, such Yan Shi's automaton, who enraged King Mu by winking at his concubines).
Humans have been thinking about robots and "thinking machines" since time immemorial.
AI isn't going to disappear just because the stock prices of these companies crash, or even if they close together. It's too late. The models already exist, inference is dirt cheap to run (and can even be run on your own computer), and vast numbers of people demonstrably find it useful (regardless of whether you, reader, do).
It's funny, when you see "The AI bubble will collapse", you get two entirely different groups of people agreeing - one thinking, "AI is going to go away!", and the other thinking "Inference costs are going to zero!". Namely, because all the investors who spent their money building datacentres are going to lose their shirts, but those datacentres will still exist - and with much less demand for YOLOing new leading-edge foundations, it'll mainly be "inference for the lowest bidder, so long as they can bid more than the power cost at that point in time". Mean power costs for an AI datacentre are like a third of the total amortized cost of a datacentre, but with datacentres in broad geographic regions, spot prices can go well under that due to local price fluctuations. And any drop in prices triggers Jevon's Paradox.
The question for investors is really the correction timing, not whether it will happen. IMHO, as weird as it sounds, it likely has to do with highly visible inflation (groceries, fuel, etc). Inflation leads to voter rage, which leads to politicians pursuing anti-inflation strategies, which dry up capital in the market, which cause capital-hungry growth fields (like AI) to starve. Once investors catch wind that their previous growth field is no longer going to be in growth mode, they bail, causing a collapse in stock prices.
It was rate hikes that caused the internet bubble to pop.
Right now, Trump seems obsessed with rate cuts to juice the stock market, but at some point, the administration's chaotic, pro-inflation policies (tariffs, hits to the ag and construction labour supply, the war on wind and solar, etc) will catch up with them.
Define what you mean by "well". Vs. a database? No (but that's what RAG is for). Vs. humans? Absolutely yes. They achieve a much denser data representation than we do (albeit with a slower learning rate).
It's an apt description of what it's doing: allowing each given layer to pay attention to a small subset of its input at any given time instead of drowning in the noise of trying to process the whole thing at once.
My hyperbole got the better of me again. You are not the only one. Little House on the Prairie is remarkably good television. It definitely beats doom-scrolling on your phone.
Getting together with my college friends to watch Star Trek the Next Generation was awesome. Those are definitely core memories. But even then there were issues. I never got into Babylon 5 because I worked while that was on. I recently decided to watch them, but it's not the same thing.
My kids (I have 6) get together every Sunday to watch "Dancing with the Stars." They are always a bit sad that they are days late to be able to vote, but the fact that they can watch on their time means they get to watch it together. I feel that's progress. Quite a few of those style of shows have call in votes specifically to drive viewership at the same time to boost numbers.
Netflix Disc was awesome. I also miss that a lot. If you aren't interested in live content you should be able to get the shows that you want at an incredible deal. These days I personally mostly watch Youtube. But I sometimes sign up for a month of one of the services to watch a particular show. They basically all allow you to cancel any time. There are also DVR tools that record over the air television that are pretty good. Depending on where you live you might be surprised at what is available. Plus, there's always piracy. Another advantage that sports television has over serial shows is that live television is much harder to pirate. Chances are good that your friendly neighborhood pirate site has all of the episodes of whatever it is that you want to watch.
If you are paying sports fan prices for television without watching sports, then you are definitely not getting a good deal.
If they could get people to give up $20 in exchange for ESPN and ABC Sports that is the best deal they could possibly make. Most of YouTubeTV's customers pay for the sports package. They could get the other content somewhere else for less. YouTubeTV is hoping that they can stave off the mass exodus as people realize that they won't be able to watch the games that they signed up for, and that their cable TV replacement is basically worthless.
You have this almost completely backwards. Sports fans currently subsidize scripted television to an almost outrageous extent. I used to work for Sling. Disney doesn't have to push ESPN and ABC Sports on the providers. It has to convince them to carry (and pay for) the rest of the channels. If sports fans could get access to the games that they wanted without having to pay for scripted television scripted television as we know it would disappear overnight. What we would be left with is the sort of thing that is currently available on Youtube.
As an example, Apple has spent over $20 billion on content over the last 6 years. Amazon Prime, on the other hand, spends just over $1 billion a year for Thursday Night Football. That's basically the worst possible NFL football game, and it still regularly has about half as many concurrent viewers as Apple TV has total subscribers. That's basically the case across the board. Sports is why YouTubeTV currently costs about 4 times as much per month as the most expensive Netflix package or 5 times what Disney+ costs. Sports fans are willing to pay for their television in a way that other viewers simply aren't willing to do. Disney and the other networks are doing their best to keep sports tied to the rest of their empires. It will be interesting to see how things end up.
For most people paying for live television ESPN (and ABC Sports) is the part that they actually want. That's why these negotiations always happen during Football season. Disney is trying to get YouTubeTV to pay for a bunch of channels whose viewership drops every year and they use the access to the live sporting events that people care about as a club.
The DVR revolution was a huge deal, and it also created a split between scripted and unscripted television. Once DVRs came out they quickly became a very popular way to watch scripted television. Since you were already time shifting your programs, it made sense to also skip over the ads. Live sports (and news), on the other hand tend to be watched live. People might wander off to get a snack when the commercials come on, but they rarely miss all of the commercials. Some sports fans will record a game and watch it later, but in those cases where they can't watch the game they mostly just watch the highlights. This is so popular that highlight news shows (with advertisements that generally don't get skipped, or are embedded in the content) are basically the most popular type of news.
Heck, for many sports fans the ads are basically part of the experience. They tune in early for pre-show events where there is nothing but advertisements. The talking heads either promote later shows, or they do product placement spots literally for hours.
Viewers of scripted shows, on the other hand, often go to great lengths to skip the ads. They set up VCRs and later Tivos and other DVRs. They bought (or rented and ripped) DVDs so they could own a pristine copy. Heck, as you know that's literally how Netflix started their business.
That's why Hollywood complained (at every step) about these technologies, while the sports people largely didn't care. They worked for the same companies, but their realities were very different. Moving into the modern era it is becoming more and more clear that sports fans have been subsidizing other television fans for decades. As the needs and wants of these two groups grow further and further apart expect interesting things to happen.
Right now Disney capitalizes with every negotiation on the fact that many YouTubeTV subscribers are actually sports television subscribers looking for a reliable way to ESPN and ABC Sports. If they can't watch ESPN on Saturday and miss their alma mater play the big game they aren't going to be mollified with a $20 on their bill. They are going to cancel. So the average sports consumer pays for hundreds of channels that they never use, and their money pays for 90% of the television that gets produced, despite the fact that they don't watch it. As this disconnect becomes more and more apparent expect Hollywood to have an even harder time funding the creation of content.
I definitely tend to speak in hyperbole. I actually appreciate that reminder. That sort of thing really doesn't help make any of my points.
The reality is that there are lots of people that have televisions on all day long, and there are plenty of businesses (for example restaurants) where they might have multiple televisions on all day long. Television is still a very powerful way to reach a fairly wide audience, even if live television has fallen a long. Heck, much of the content that gets the most views on platforms like YouTube also tend to be established television shows. So even if people aren't watching the content live it is still getting watched in a timely manner. And to advertisers (and viewers) that definitely matters.
My point is that most people, especially most people on
Not only are people willing to pay money for sports, but sporting events have a proven track record of putting people in seats, and even keeping them there during commercials. That's why Superbowl ads are so ridiculously expensive. Advertisers realized that people were actually watching the spots during the games.
To give you an example of how skewed the numbers are individual NFL football games regularly have more viewers than Apple TV has subscribers, and they air three to four competing NFL games basically every Sunday. We think of television in terms of Hollywood and the shows that they produce, but the reality is that most of the television that we watch is just filler for the next sporting event. Since the commercialiation of television these two types of shows have worked together to build the market that collectively we call "television," and serials got most of the credit for the growth. Hollywood has always been very good at self-promotion. However, it has always been live sports that has had the largest audiences. People come together to watch Superbowls, Olympics, etc. As our modern way of watching increasingly divides live television from scripted television we are likely going to see far less money going towards scripted television. My Apple TV is germane. Apple has spent billions of dollars trying to create a scripted television service that people will pay money for, with very limited success. Amazon Prime did far better by paying $1 Billion a year for Thursday Night Football.
If you really like scripted television, you might want to consider paying more for subscriptions to some of Hollywood's services. Personally, I like watching people restore old sailboats. That's pretty niche, but in a world where YouTube has made publishing content so inexpensive there are content providers that apparently can make a living that way. So I tend to agree with your opinion that it is fun to watch evil tear away at evil.
The disks are getting full; purge a file today.
