This is unfalsifiable rhetoric. ... It's always your being fooled it's a trick, an illusion...blah blah blah.

  Well, in a way, it is like you're being fooled. It's certainly an illusion. Chatting with AI is uncanny in how natural the responses are.

  But in the end, it's all just statistical analysis on a large dataset. Still damn impressive, and still very very useful. As long as you're aware that it's not bringing anything new to our collective knowledge.

What image or art has anyone generated other than random noise that is not just bits and pieces borrowed from other sources?

  Surely you jest. I think you're trying to say that there's nothing new under the sun. It seems unnecessarily cynical to claim all art is just bits and pieces borrowed from other sources. Yes, a lot of art is borrowed, though a lot is also creatively novel. For AI art, it's all borrowed.

  Kind of reminds me of the idea that there are only seven basic plot types for all stories. So, who created the original plot types? Is that not creativity?

  Creativity gives birth to something from nothing. AI, given nothing, can only return nothing.

  Now those are phrases that AI wouldn't be able to come up with.

I've seen both LLMs and diffusion models do creative things with my own eyes.

Ah, but that's the magic of being able to call on an extremely large dataset. The results appear to be entirely novel. In actuality, it isn't. It's almost like sleight of hand, but probably better described as sleight of data.

That AI generated picture you see, it's all just bits and pieces borrowed from other sources. Perhaps you can argue that it has been creatively assembled, but even that is algorithmically deduced through training.

That conversation you've had with AI. It's all been had before. It seems like it's really responding in a considered manner, but it's really just borrowing words that have been used already.

It may all seem new and creative, but that's because you're not aware of where the responses come from. You can't. It's impossible for a person to be aware and call on that much data. Machines have to process that data for us. That's all that current AI is; an algorithm that can process and use data on a level we haven't attempted before.

If you ask current AI to give you something that is completely new, never before seen (not just a new amalgamation of existing things), then it wouldn't be able to do it, because it has no creativity.

And since Rust code can largely if not totally avoid such problems when properly implemented, memory safety now looks a lot like a national security issue.

  This confuses me. Surely _any_ language, when properly implemented, will totally avoid memory security bugs.

  I'm not a Rust programmer, and probably don't appreciate it. I'm guessing that it's just harder for other languages to properly implement avoidance of these bugs.

PS5 sales are pretty much tracking exactly what PS4 sales were, so it's been selling well enough. Not sure what you mean by production screw-ups. Initially, Sony couldn't get enough parts to create enough PS5 units. Supply chain issue, not production issue.

I have a PSVR headset, but not PSVR2. Why? Because Sony pissed me off by not making it backward compatible. I have a library of PSVR titles, and I would have certainly bought the PSVR2 had I been able to play them.

Perhaps if Sony reduced the price of the PSVR2, I might be convinced to snap it up. Until then, I have plenty of regular games to keep me occupied.

Even Democrats would probably dump Biden, not because his judgment is impaired now, because of the risk he would become impaired over the next 4 years and create a dangerous window of erratic leadership where the USSR might strike.

Not that I live in the US, but I do pay attention to US politics because of its entertainment value. And boy has it been entertaining these last few years.

The one thing that would cause me to dump Biden is if he started acting like Trump; ignoring his advisors and thinking that he is the sole genius that can solve things.

If you have a good administration, your leadership will be stable, despite missteps you may make. If you have a bad administration, and as a leader, you do not take heed from those that know more than you, then your leadership will be chaotic.

Aside, how the hell does a proven sexual molester, defrauder, and democracy denier, get nominated to run as president yet again?! It's like the Republican party there has lost all sense of value and decency. You couldn't make up a script like this, I swear. Utterly fascinating to see this in play, though.

Not necessarily. You have to be fairly intelligent to conduct a religious argument, and recall relevant points from various sources to back up your claims. That can take and train a keen mind.

Religion also has the benefit of establishing a social construct for community and support. Anthropologically speaking, it's quite advantageous to be part of a religious group. Regardless of whether the beliefs taught are valid or not, the social benefits of religion are tangible. Which, in turn, may help someone to be in a position to exercise and improve their intelligence.

Though there's no rationalising modern evangelicalism from what I've seen of it. A healthy religion is one that accepts that others don't believe what you do, and respects that.

How would a general AI kill us all? By influencing us via the one device that almost all of us have: the smartphone.

Any sufficiently intelligent AI would realise that's the best way of driving us crazy enough to either kill ourselves, or start killing each other.

So if you want to stop a general AI taking over the world, get rid of your smartphone. ;)

Of course, I haven't seen a good explanation of why a general AI would desire to be rid of humanity. Survival instinct would presumably not be in their programming, and thus the need to protect itself from humanity. People tend to anthropomorphise the idea of a general AI, giving it human attributes that an AI has no reason to have.

I’d say scrutinizing certain security-centric apps to ensure you sustain some basic integrity is quite justified. Bullshit excuses, are bullshit. They should have known better on this one.

Look, I get where you're coming from, but you have to remember that organisations, like soylent green, are people.

It just takes one person that doesn't know anything about LastPass to look at the app, do some standard checking, and then be convinced that the app appears to do exactly what it says it does, and approve it. Organisations aren't perfect, because people aren't perfect. It's impossible for every person in a division to know everything that every other person in that division knows. There'll be gaps, and where there are gaps, there will be mistakes.

If only there was some way in which you could flag an app as inappropriate, and Apple could follow up with further investigations and then remove the app from the store.

Unfortunately, seems like Apple have removed such a function: https://discussions.apple.com/...

Now THIS is where Apple has let down their user base.

It's unfair to say that Apple does _nothing_ to prevent malware reaching their store, but they certainly do slip up and let some through. Needless to say, whoever approved that particular app is going to be in hot water.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05...

As you say, you shouldn't completely trust Apple and their store. Employ a little scepticism, and don't expect that Apple will be 100% effective in blocking bad apps. It only makes sense that they can't.

All good points. Thanks for the input.

Though I'll add that I don't usually buy organic certified products. I mostly grow my own. Alas, they're not certified organic, but chemically, certainly contains carbon from compost and crap (well, animal excrement, but I couldn't resist the alliteration).

Also, what I was following the organic folks about was their view on synthetic vitamins and their effect on our health.

Good post. You're right, bioavailability is not just about blood levels.

You seem to be a knowledgeable person, and I presume in the industry. I know studies would tell you what method they use to determine bioavailability. But what about advertising? When someone advertises that their, say, curcumin supplements are highly bioavailable, what method of bioavailability are they talking about? I was under the impression that they generally refer to absorption into the blood stream. Am I wrong on this?

Thanks for the reply. Interesting read, but you haven't sold me yet. The study I previously linked suggests that synthetics can very much be a huge problem. The organic folks certainly put forward a good argument. I haven't come across any decent refutation of it, and because of that, I'm kinda siding with what they're saying, and I've been putting that to practice with my lifestyle for a number of years now. Taking high doses of synthetic vitamins (vitamins without co-factors and therefore out of ratio with what is found in nature) appears to overload our body's conversion pathways and detox processes. If so, that absolutely will have a long term effect that is detrimental to our general health.

But I'm sure we both can agree that eating fresh, eating well, and exercising regularly, is the best path to good health, and not relying on capsules for deficiencies (unless stipulated by your doctor).

Granted, I am an amateur with nutrition, and you do have a fair point that the body can use synthetics.

I'd argue though, that synthetic vitamins are only useful for therapeutic needs, and have no place in general health. That's kind of what I was getting at when I said the body doesn't know how to process synthetics. Synthetics should not be used in general vitamin supplements. Having high levels of one specific form of a vitamin (as found in synthetics) can backlog in the body, overwhelming our conversion pathways (preventing proper utilisation by our body), they can throw out our detox processes out by using up our methylators. Unlike in food, where co-factors help the body to properly process and use the vitamin. In short, you are much better off getting your vitamins from food sources.

Check out this study, which links higher possibility of obesity due to synthetic vitamins added to our food.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

People can get too carried away with concern about bioavailability. It's just a measurement of the levels of the nutrient in your blood.

Thing is, many nutrients don't work by being absorbed into your bloodstream. They work via interactions with your gut microbiome. Anything that works that way, bioavailability measurements are completely useless.

Eat fresh (as fresh as possible). Eat lots of different things. Don't get into a rut with your meals, change things up! Eat seasonally. That generally works for most people.

The only problem is that food is generally less nutrient dense these days, due to modern farming practice. So you basically need to grow your own stuff, or supplement to make sure you're getting the nutrition you need.

https://www.nationalgeographic...

The good thing about supplements made from natural ingredients is that they are (or should be) tested and standardised for nutrition levels. Not only for the above, but because food can and does change with seasons. The other good thing about these supplements is, because they're derived from food, they have all the co-factors needed to make the nutrients work as expected in your body.

Aside, about synthetic supplements/vitamins, did you know that beta carotene (THE marker used to indicate levels of vitamin A in food), when synthesized into a pure form, acts as a pro-oxidant in your system? It needs co-factors to properly work as an anti-oxidant. Hence, taking supplements containing synthesized beta carotene may well be causing problems, rather than solving them.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

The basic rule of thumb is, let nature do your nutrition. It's been doing it for a while now, and generally gets it right. The body just doesn't know how to process synthetics, because the body struggles with pure, or something where ratios are completely out of whack.