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Comment Re:Nope. (Score 3, Informative) 87

Yes, the AI-revolution will be hugely different to various "revolutions" that came before and not in a good way.

The industrial revolution saw manufacturing automated -- but the jobs that were eliminated were usually low-skill laboring ones. People could retrain and take on more skilled work with higher pay so the net earnings of the workforce actually increased.

The IT-revolution once again saw relatively unskilled roles automated by computers and once again people could retrain for more skilled rolls that grew due to the productivity improvements that IT systems offered.

However, the AI-age is hugely different.

That's because the roles being displaced are what we already consider to be "skilled" ones. Programmers, artists, writers, musicians, management -- in fact a huge swathe of professional or semi-professional roles will be hugely affected by AI systems. There no *new* jobs being created by AI (other than a handful of people to dust the server racks in the data-centers) so this will mean unemployment will rise.

Rising unemployment means less money in the pockets of the average citizen so the economy as a whole will suffer - despite the vastly improved productivity of AI-enabled companies. Without a market for the products and services that AI-enabled companies make, their revenues and profits will also be negatively impacted, despite that higher productivity.

This downward economic spiral could be even worse than a bursting AI bubble and lead to huge socio-economic problems with massive destabilizing effects.

I'm pretty sure that during the great depression of the 1920s, lots of people were on four, three or even zero day working weeks and that didn't work out too well for them.

Comment An economic necessity (Score 3, Informative) 39

With the potential for the Kessler syndrome to kick in any time now, it's an economic necessity for Starlink to do whatever it can to reduce the risk.

As Anton Petrov points out in this video, a Kessler syndrome catastrophe could be just around the corner and the only way to reduce the risk is to reduce the levels of congestion in certain parts of LEO.

In the event of such an event, Starlink would become worthless and SpaceX's stock price would fall through the floor so I guess someone's crunched the numbers and figured that they now have little option but to do everything they can to reduce the possibility.

Comment Public domain means nothing (Score 4, Insightful) 36

Sadly, simply placing a work into the "public domain" means nothing these days.

I regularly see YouTube creators who are hit with copyright claims/strikes for using public domain footage from the likes of NASA -- because broadcasters have used that same footage in their own production and YT's content-ID system automatically issues a claim/strike when anyone else uses the same footage.

This wouldn't be a problem if YouTube's appeal process worked -- but it doesn't, it's so badly broken that even big creators like Scott Manley are being hit and having the revenues stolen from their efforts simply because a broadcaster like Channel 4 in the UK has claimed his video for using the very same PD NASA footage that they used in one of their videos.

Copyright is so easy to abuse and misuse that is now almost laughable.

Comment Re:Ouch (Score 4, Interesting) 38

It can't be reversed but it can be mitigated to a degree.

As someone who was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (PD) about five years ago I can tell you that one of the most impactful effects of that disease is *not* the tremors but the sleep disruption. A fairly high percentage of PD suffers go on to develop dementia and I'm pretty sure that this progression is hastened by the fact that sleep is so disrupted and limited.

My mitigation for the effects of sleep deprivation associated with my PD is creatine monohydrate. I've been taking this for several years and it does make a huge difference to my ability to function when sleep deprived as well as with other effects of the disease.

One thing to remember is that sleep naturally occurs in a cycle of about 90 minutes duration so even if you can't get a full 8 hours in one session, if you can accumulate multiple 90-minute sleeps during the day you're a lot better off. Of course that's not practical for someone whose in paid employment but for us older folk it means that catching a nap whenever we can is essential.

I'm nearly 73.

Comment Re: Feel free to ignore the facts.... (Score 1) 166

The notion of an Islamic State would never be accepted

Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen just asked "What about us?"

Right, you did say ethnicity, and not religion (which ethnicity is 'Islamic'?)... and admittedly it is a bit tricker because Jewish is often an ethnic group and religion, while much of the Islamic world, complete with state religions have countries more based on a dominant ethnic group going back some time.

Heck, with Somaliland in the news this week (and it's recognition by Isreal), it's flag contains the Shahada, which is also on the Saudi flag.

Comment Devil in the detail? (Score 1) 22

Is there critical information being left out?

Impressive response times -- but is that just for the panel alone? Is it only when in the non-upscaling mode perhaps?

There has to be some degree of overhead (aka latency) involved in AI upscaling so I would be very cautious that they're carefully referring to many key performance metrics when in regular monitor mode and seemingly not clearly stating the effects (if any) of introducing the upscaling.

Of course it's "AI" so it must be good... right? Sigh!

Comment Re: To be fair (Score 1) 78

Whatâ(TM)s interesting here is that as a professional musician, this guy is a public figure and the âoeactual maliceâ standard for defamation applies â" a standard that was designed when defamation could only be done by a human being.

This requires the defendant to make a defamatory statement either (1) knowing it is untrue or (2) with reckless disregard for the truth.

Neither condition applies to the LLM itself; it has no conception of truth, only linguistic probability. But the LLM isnâ(TM)t the defendant here. Itâ(TM)s the company offering it as a service. Here the company is not even aware of the defamatory statement being made. But it is fully aware of their modelâ(TM)s capacity to hallucinate defamatory âoefactsâ.

I think that because the tort is based in the common law concept of a duty of care, we may well see the company held liable in some way for this kind of thing. But itâ(TM)s new law; it could go the other way.

Comment So we're trying to make cassettes happen again? (Score 1) 144

Back in the 20-aughts, someone tried to make cassettes happen again. It was so Fetch. You couldn't get cassette tapes to save your life except for exorbitant prices on ebay. Any machine that would record or play one shot up in price as the mouth-breathing automatons jumped on the bandwagon.

Let's be clear here - cassette tapes have precisely zero redeeming qualities other than portability (compared to their predecessor - the 8-track). They were a bad compromise to get portability. To think you could put 4 tracks on a 1/8th inch tape running at a very unregulated 1 7/8 inches per second and retain some semblance of audio quality was ludicrous, but it was portable, and that's what people wanted. It turned out that audio quality didn't matter, because of car noise, crowds of people noise, commuter train noise, wind noise, exercise noise, the inherent noise created by the format, and most of the other use cases for portable audio, made audio quality obsolete.

Many efforts were made to deal with the high frequency noise that was a characteristic of the format. "High bias" tapes treated with a chrome additive allowed recording of high frequencies at much greater amplitude, which it was hoped would increase the S/N in the higher frequencies and allow for flat playback. It worked, sort of, but not really.

But seriously, if you want to "take risks" then you have to stick to album tapes. Making mix tapes eliminates risk just like creating your own playlists on Spotify. If you want to "be a rebel" and "take risks," then listen to the playlists that Spotify curates for you, without skipping. Don't dig up half-century old technology and call yourself erudite.

Comment Re:This has nothing to do with tapes (Score 2) 144

The laborious, linear interface is of course another limitation of all kinds of tapes -- digital or analog. But getting rid of this also changes human behavior. People don't listen as much to long form collections; they don't even necesssarily listen to entire songs.

A mix tape is essentially a long format program manually and personally curated for you by another human being, unmediated and indeed untracked by any third corporate party. Losing the mix tape was a real cultural loss. Sure they didn't sound great, but they didn't have to.

I suppose every technological advance is potentially double edged. When people get books and literacy, verbal storytelling declines. That doesn't make books bad. the technical limitations of verbal stories -- say limited repeatbility -- are real limitations, but that doesn't mean something wasn't lost.

Comment Re:Not just drones (Score 5, Insightful) 66

Something else to consider... Donald Trump Jr has millions of dollars in Unusual Machines stock and also has a position on the board. UM is one of the companies that stands to benefit hugely from this ban, as commercial drone users are forced to find alternative sources for their equipment.

Parents like to take care of their children when they can, or so I'm told.

Also, this isn't a ban on imports from potentially enemy states such as China, it's a ban on imports from *all* countries -- including the USA's closest allies. This is pretty clear proof that the reasons behind this ban are purely financial and that Trump's son reaps a significant amount of that benefit through is stock-holding and position on the board of Unusual Machines.

The USA has the best government money can buy I guess.

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