I'm a careful coder to the point of paranoia, as you'd expect for someone who came up writing life-critical software.
Yet, I keep falling for subtly-imperfect "helpful" AI suggestions for low-level, supposedly-simple code. Because humans are inherently susceptible to being led astray, lazy at some level. Because it's hard to un-see things that seem to make sense.
Let's face it: even in rich countries, price always matters. Even for the military.
Why launch 20 missiles @ $1M when you can launch 200 @ 0.1M? Sure some missiles will fail, but nobody's defenses can counter the remaining 150+ at once. This is why they have automatic guns: you point (as opposed to aim) & spray bullets. One of them eventually connects. I think the US army doctrine is on the order of 100 shots for a single hit.
They can do that because bullets don't cost $1M each. I can afford the $20 Harbor Freight tool to do a one-time job the right way because it's not the $120 pro equivalent. It'll break after I use it 5 times, but that's OK, more where that came from. And often as not the $20 tool is pretty good and does last; the $120 tool is nowhere near 6x better.
Oh, and let's not forget that even those super-pricey weapons still have duds, and anybody with an iPhone or a Toyota will tell you that civilian technology can be pretty damned reliable.
So why isn't the US military doing the equivalent of buying in bulk at Harbor Freight when appropriate, following its own doctrine of "overwhelming" force? Why does every single little thing have to be so high-grade and expensive? An Air Force officer recently was quoted "quantity has its own form of quality." I realize that carrying all that extra quantity is an issue, but these days we have machines and logistics systems for all that, even robot pack mules for the last mile.
You can have both text and icons like on most keyboards. Icons-only on keyboards, devices, on-screen, etc is a usability cop-out, often done to ease internationalization or save space.
I've very rarely ever seen an icon that's clear and obvious to all, not matter how obvious its designer and focus group (i.e. designer's friends) think it is. And there's the issue that there are a lot of confusingly-similar icons floating around.
Yes, people learn, but what about all the new people coming into your device, app, etc? Their brains are already pretty full... like with other people's icons which may look the same but do something different. "Lemme see... what does this square with lines sticking out of it do?" (Turns out it that it turns on a light... circle with lines coming out of it activates the self-destruct feature!)
SpaceX has a structural advantage that NASA can't ever match: they're allowed to fail. How many rockets have they blown up, etc?
Imagine all the congressional investigations, firings, political backlash if NASA did the same! NASA can't run, has to walk very carefully to make sure it doesn't stumble.
Ain't it funny how things never really change? The advertising revenue game is an oldy but goody that just inevitably keeps coming back: the entire WWW, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Slashdot...
Advertising will inevitably a major income line item once OpenAI opens it up. The thing about multi-$billion line items is that they get a lot of scrutiny. If OpenAI tries some cute "be nice to the user" policy that fails to absolutely maximize profit, Brinkman will be told in no uncertain terms to fix that **fast** if he wants to keep his job.
He might want to fight that but, he's not a known marketing genius who can make long-term strategic marketing arguments stick. If there's anything he's learned in the last few years, it's to pick his battles carefully. And when you're making $T commitments, well...
I understand his time is super-valuable, but a above all a CEO's first job is leadership. That is why they pay you the big bucks, Jamie. Leadership by example well might be worthy of your time and effort. 'Coz if commuting's not worth your while...
Something for other hard-ass CEOs to consider too.
This I wanna see! Maybe a simultaneous landing for show?
Let's say you're an advertiser and your ads are twice as responsive due to surveillance targeting, but they cost 2-3x more each than untargeted ones? The only people who ultimately benefit are the advertising networks because they can make more money from the same number of ads. There is, after all, a limit to how many ads consumers will put up with.
John Wanamaker once said, “I am convinced that about one-half the money I spend for advertising is wasted, but I have never been able to decide which half.” Targeted advertising seemed to be solution BUT the dream ultimately evaporated because the bid-for-placement system ended up multiplying the cost of each ad impression as it becomes more effective.
That's baked into the system because business will always spend every dollar that it can profitably afford on advertising to gain customers. Say customers are worth $150 average profit to you: you'll naturally pay up to $100+ to get them. The total number of ads shown is irrelevant -- all that matters is the cost per customer acquisition. For an advertiser, bidding $100 to show a 100% effective ad is the same as bidding $10 for 10% effective, or $0.10 for a 0.1% effective ad. Google or Meta's math is the opposite: they'd rather show less ad impressions to make the same $, thus freeing up "inventory" they can sell to someone else.
As to the alleged benefit to consumers that they see more-relevant ads, I can only say that I find it's actually easier to ignore an impertinent ad.
Health Inspector: I think it would be more appropriate if the box bore a large red label: warning lark's vomit.
Chocolate Company: But our sales would plummet!
Your good nature will bring unbounded happiness.
