it's quite possible that thoughtful, original, human-generated writing will become even more valuable"

Much as I would like to think that's true, I don't buy it. If one thing has become true in the last twenty years, it's that thoughtful, original anything seldom strikes enough of a chord to reach mass appeal. Straight up the middle schlock aimed at the lower half does far better, and AI can do that already. In fact, for a large portion of the populace, nuance and subtlety of thought isn't just wasted on them... they're actively antagonistic towards it, and popular culture has made that a laudable stance. Willful stupidity. Taking enjoyment in deliberately missing the point. AI may do vastly better at reaching them than a human author could hope for.

I admire Francesco's optimism, even if I don't share it.

Exactly. That's why comparing the positions of Japan and the US isn't valid. They are very different situations. Japan is pretty well insulated. The US is far more vulnerable.

I still don't understand. Are you agreeing with me regarding the fragility of the US dollar's status? Because I did not bring up BRICS, nor did I put forward any candidate currencies. I even went so far as to point out you don't even need one to step up right away.

I don't understand your question. Only India and Brazil's hold mentionable amounts of US debt, and neither are in the global top 10. Can you clarify your point?

Yes, ... sort of. I'll bet my understanding iis flawed.

Japan is the crazy outlier. But almost none of the Japanese debt is held by foreign entities. Almost all of it is held by the Bank of Japan, other Japanese banks, and Japanese citizens. As such, they remain functional because nobody is weaponizing their state of indebtedness. Everybody knows that fleeing the market en masse will destroy the value for everybody.

It's precisely because the US currency and debt are the global standards that it's open to the circumstances that will contribute to its demise. And in this case, he who panics first, wins. Large holders of that debt have no political or sentimental reason to keep it.

That will be tested soon. As the price that the US has to pay to find buyers for their new issuances rises, they should find buyers in the short term. But eventually the market simply won't want the new bonds at any price. But risk will outweigh reward soon enough, and those bonds people hold will be illiquid. Or, liquid at fire sale prices, well below face value.

But the reality of a global reserve currency is less than 200 years old, and there really have only been two. The dollar and the pound sterling. So currency exchange is not new. And given technology today, managing it would be (tentatively) easier than ever. Even today some trade happens out of the dollar ecosystem.

I think we'll figure it out. If something doesn't bubble to the top in short order, we'll get by. Trade won't stop for something as trivial as that.

Show me how your insights have enabled you to create more advanced functionality, and then I'll be interested.

Much of the critique seems irrelevant to AI other than LLMs, such as self-driving cars which map visual input to actions.

My wife and I bought a used 2024 Mini Cooper EV just last weekend, for roughly that amount. It seems well-built and is very fun to drive. However it is only useful for driving around town because its range is only 120 miles. Technologically this is clearly out of date. I couldn't help but think that if not for trade restrictions we could be paying the same for a new car with more advanced batteries and motors. In fact the Mini Cooper EV, the 2025 model with almost double the range, is not available in the US because of trade restrictions.

I never liked the framing of 'their brain hasn't finished maturing.' You could as well say that after 26 the brain begins its decline into risk aversion and senescence. Somebody has to go out and slay the beasts and fight the enemies and make the babies and young people in their physical prime did most of it.

The last thing NVidia wants to do is advance TPUs as a viable and more affordable alternative to the GPUs that are a gusher of profit for NVidia. Even if it's inevitable, delaying the erosion of the GPU market is worth billions per month to them.

This is some big-league gambling! $200B in a morning! That's the entire market cap of Apple in spring of 2010. (For reference that's when the iPhone 4 came out - they were at the top of their game.)

I had forgot about Altman getting fired by the board for not 'being candid' (presumably tantamount to lying). Admittedly if there is a business equivalent to being expelled for academic fraud, that might be it.

If nothing else, Kennedy and his cronies can duck behind really expensive equipment while flinging feces at each other. We can leave some bones amongst the servers for them to discover and perhaps use to beat each other.

Vast amounts of money flowing to companies that will leave precious little as they fail out. The rich who are willing to play the game will get richer.

Haven't heard much about DOGE lately. I'm sure they have an unbroken track record of success marrying disparate datasets of a scale that is microscopic compared to what's being proposed here.

Won't matter who wins in 2028. They're going to inherit sweet fuck all except for a half finished White House.

48 months, and I just had Apple put a new battery in. Unless the actual protocols get deprecated, or it flies off my motorcycle to a grisly demise, I expect to have my iPhone 13 for another 4 years.