That the statistical model for word prediction is far more complicated that the autocorrect in my text editor does not in any way a refutation of what I said. The more complicated algorithm IS the steroids part of "autocomplete on steroids".

You are doing a fine job of stressing the profoundness of the difference. But it is a difference that is immaterial to the point I was making. The algorithm underlying an LLM is not intelligent, despite being able to create a convincing simulacrum of intelligence.

Intelligence has to do with being able to learn and understand new topics and situations. No LLM can do that. When you hold a conversation with an LLM, the API sends all your previous correspondence (your prompts + its own responses) as a prelude to your next prompt. It is a clever hack (by the LLM designers) to create the impression of having a conversation where one is not actually occurring.

The problem there is you believe what the AI tells you about its own reasoning. It doesn't "reason" when it answers your query. It predicts the next word, until it is done, based on information in the training set. When you as it "Why did you give me that answer" it does the exact same thing again. Predicts the next word that would appear if you asked a person to explain that answer, until it is done, based on information in its training set.

One of the AI devs over at Kagi posted something recently, that AI is not a liar, but a bullshitter. A liar knows the truth and wants to deceive you. A bullshiter does not know, or care, what the truth is, it just wants to convince you. LLM have been engineered to use convincing tone becuase that gets you to use it again.

There is no reasoning, only bullshit.

You make an interesting point. Not as much about the dollar... the world has been dealing in disparate currencies for a very long time. It'll get sorted out.

But about an America becoming aggressive in desperation... that's a concern. But not as much as people think. The world is not that of the British Empire, and there are some strong militaries. Countries don't need to beat the US. They just need to stave the off. And the history of the US trying to take and hold resources in other countries is abysmal.

Unless you have some system in place to distill the "will of the people", you can't say anything about any group. Thankfully, in the US you have your democratic election cycle. And whether it's who voted, or who didn't vote, your aggregate spit out this guy.

TWICE.

This is who you are.

Those of us not in the US can just pull up a chair and watch it burn down. I'm buying popcorn. They're opting out of health and education, which underpin the future of everything. The future is not theirs - they are steadfastly committed to near irrelevance in a couple of decades. I spent the last decade feeling concern for the citizens of the US, but I'm out of empathy.

"This isn't who we are!" Sorry, that rings hollow now. It is, in fact, who you are.

>repeated addition to solve 5x3. Kid writes 5+5+5=15. Teacher marks it wrong. No explanation. Turns out she wanted 3+3+3+3+3=15.

And this is probably clearly explained in the teaching. It's five times three. that is, take three and make five of them. 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3. 3x5 take five and make three of them = 5x5x5.
Totally different concepts of what is going on, even if both produce the same answer. There are different roles for the multiplicand and multiplier.

This only is true (5x3 = 3x5) because multiplication is defined as a commutative operation. If it was not commutative then 3x5 != 5x3 except by accident.
Simple.

This aspect is troubling to me too. You know they keep making changes because "studies show..." Yet so much of the time, what studies show does not pan out IRL. I am (was) a researcher (in a technical field), I am not anti-intellectual. I want there to be an evidence-based argument for designing programs that work better than before. Yet it seems like it is not working.

I feel the same about discipline (or rather the lack thereof) in the classroom, "studies show" being coerced is bad for them, but now one problem kid that can't be controlled or moved out of the general population classroom is destroying it for 24 others in that class. There are certain kids who don't respond to instruction, and once they realize nobody can actually do anything to stop them (and I mean that literally, even while they are physically assaulting other students) it's all over.

Precisely. LLM systems are, ultimately, auto complete on steroids. That they can present a reasonable simulacrum of intelligence, does not change the fact that there is nothing else intelligence involved. No reasoning, no knowledge. Just probability based word assemblies.

that is why we are not sufficiently impressed for this douche. We see the limitations, and the harms that come from ignoring the limitations, and end up underwhelmed. They are promising something they are not actually delivering.

In a sense his puzzlement is justified; when the tech demo works an LLM is probably the most obvious candidate for 'just this side of sci-fi'; and, while may of the capabilities offered are actually somewhat hollow (realistically, most of the 'take these 3 bullet points and create a document that looks like I cared/take that document that looks like my colleague cared and give me 3 bullet points' are really just enticements to even more dysfunctional communication) some of them are fairly hard to see duplicating by conventional means.

However, I suspect that his perspective is fundamentally unhelpful in understanding the skepticism: when you are building stuff it's easy to get caught up in the cool novelty and lose sight of both the pain points(especially when you are deep C-Level; rather than the actual engineer fighting chatGPT's tendency to em-dash despite all attempts to control it); and overestimate how well your new-hotness stacks up against both existing alternatives and how forgiving people will or won't be about its deficiencies.

Something like Windows trying to 'conversational'/'agentic' OS settings, for instance, probably looks pretty cool if you are an optimism focused ML dude: "hey, it's not perfect but it's a natural language interface to adjusting settings that confuse users!"; but it looks like absolute garbage from an outside perspective both because it's badly unreliable; and humans tend not to respond well to clearly unreliable 'people'(if it can't even find dark mode; why waste my time with it?); and because it looks a lot like abdication of a technically simpler, less exciting, job in favor of chasing the new hotness.

"Settings are impenetrable to a nontechnical user" is a UI/UX problem(along with a certain amount of lower level 'maybe if bluetooth was less fucked people wouldn't care where the settings were because it would just work); so throwing an LLM at the problem is basically throwing up your hands and calling it unsolvable by your UI/UX people; which is the an abject concession of failure; not a mark of progress.

I think it may be that that he really isn't understanding: MS has spent years squandering the perception that they would at least try to provide an OS that allowed you to do your stuff; in favor of faffing with various attempts to be your cool app buddy and relentless upsell pal; so every further move in that direction is basically confirmation that no fucks are given about just trying to keep the fundamentals in good order rather than getting distracted by shiny things.

Sorry, but poor excuse for racism is poor and wrong.

Europe has far more tourism, especially to developing countries and does not have the same issue. This has also been going on for decades so if it were those evil foreigners, why is it only now just becoming a problem.

The answer is, it isn't the foreigners. The cause is the large anti-science and anti-vaccination movements that have sprung up in the last 20-30 years and have become particularly popular in the last 10. If we drew a Venn diagram of anti-vaxxers and racists we'd also find a lot of overlap.

"Free" clinics... What are you, some kind of Columnunist like those dang people over in You-Rope?

Poor people should die without medical care because they cant afford it... That's Freedom Fries health care. None of that caring about people, helping the sick or poor... That ain't in the bible.

If we don't stop this kind of thing now the next thing you'll they'll start demanding European style happiness.

I'm not talking about the *content* of the site. That doesn't matter to if it runs and works and produces revenue.

The *content* is almost entirely due to Musk's political leanings, and is a shitshow. But it still manages to create feeds for millions every day.

>Yeah they've managed to keep their website from completely collapsing, mostly thanks to you ridiculously overworked H1B employees.

Remarkable, though, isn't that? Twitter continues to run just fine after firing over 70% of the engineers who worked there. Seems like he may have been right and it was a bit bloated? Lol. Your hatred for Musk has blinded you to when he's right.

>Before 2000 the government paid for 70% of college tuition.

What ever are you talking about? The government never paid 70% of college tuition. That may have been the case in some small parts of the country but was never nationwide by any means.

The so called 'viable competitor' would have to abide by this law as well.

It's just not viable for this level of company to be liable for what travels over it's networks. It's the site streaming the work and the comsumer that is to blame. The carrier is neutral.