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Comment Re: Still flogging the dead "AI" horse? (Score 1) 60

The consistent pattern throughout history, is that new technologies tend to make people better off, not poorer.

Automation and mechanization has replaced 95% of human farm workers. It's replaced 90% of factory workers. It's replaced 99% of blacksmiths. And yet, people today are better off than they were 50, 100, or 200 years ago. Yes, even the poor among us are better off than the poor were in those days. The "good old days" weren't.

AI is the next wave of automation and mechanization. There's no reason to believe it will produce a different result than all the previous waves.

Comment Re:Still flogging the dead "AI" horse? (Score 1) 60

I agree completely that it's absurd to suggest that AI will "replace humanity." But that doesn't mean AI (or LLMs specifically) isn't useful.

AI is a tool. Used well, while understanding its limitations, can be a tremendous time-saver. And time is money.

AI will certainly provide some investors with a great return, while other, less savvy investors, will lose their shirts. But AI is here to stay, it's not going to suddenly disappear because everybody realizes it's a scam. Just as with the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, the AI bubble will burst, leaving behind the technologies that are actually useful.

Comment Re:$70 billion (Score 1) 20

The Oculus Quest couldn't have cost more than a few million to develop

You must be an executive. Executives always think it "shouldn't be difficult" to develop whatever thing they want to develop.

Meta wouldn't have bought Oculus for $2 billion if they believed it would only cost a "few million" to develop their own competitor.

Comment Re:BSoD was an indicator (Score 3, Insightful) 58

I don't think it's fair to blame Microsoft for cryptic BSOD logs. When a memory chip goes bad, the OS doesn't have any way to know whether the chip is bad, or whether some driver bug caused the memory checksums to fail. If a component overheats and starts spitting out garbage, how is the BSOD supposed to diagnose that? If hardware is installed that isn't quite compatible, is the BSOD supposed to be able to display a nice, human-friendly message telling you that the model number of your component is a mismatch?

A lot of errors that cause BSODs *are* technical and require a knowledgeable professional to diagnose. This is not unlike a doctor who has to take obscure human symptoms and piece together what is going wrong in a human body.

Comment Re:You do not want AI examining your X-rays (Score 1) 55

Actually, I have more confidence in the result an AI would produce, than the result a lot of human doctors. Not that human doctors are bad or incompetent, it's just that they get tired, they work long shifts, they get in a hurry. AI just keeps going.

That's not to say that AI doesn't need supervision, it does. But as an assistant to, say, do initial screenings, I like the concept a lot.

Comment Re:The only reason I'd want an app (Score 1) 117

Sure, you could do that. But you'd also have to open up an inbound route through your firewall. And who's going to write such an app, that also requires writing a server? If you can do all that, then go ahead and make your app and your server, and connect the server to a servo that connects the circuit of the hard-wired switch on the garage wall. That's a whole lot of work to control your garage door remotely.

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