>that leads to a possible legal conclusion many think is correct, deriving data from copyrighted works isn't infringement.

We're trying to ignore that these AI algorithms are replicating human activity and pretend that they're completely different in every meaningful way.

The laws may as well say, "computers are not allowed to do this" because all the rest is just dancing around the point. And then good luck enforcing the law, because the only way you're really going to know something came from an AI is that it isn't particularly original, has the occasional odd bit, and is produced very, very rapidly. I don't know about you, but the first two items also match the output of most humans and the last one is as simple as "don't prompt the AI with enough frequency to be suspicious".

This is programming, and it will inevitably improve. I still don't think we're anywhere near the level of capability required for allowing these vehicles on the road in places with frequently bad weather or construction.

Even things like the Tesla autopilot where you're supposed to sit behind the wheel ready to take over if the AI fails... that shouldn't be allowed either. If the system isn't safe, then it should be advisory only. Though things like adaptive cruise seem safe enough.

>The largest nuclear armed nations have held the power to flatten a planet several times over for decades now.

So far as the known public tallies go, the US and Russia each have 10x the operational ICBMs of China, the next most nuclear-armed state. Though honestly I'm not convinced Russia could successfully launch more than a dozen these days - everything there is run on grift and telling happy lies up the chain of command, and maintaining nukes is expensive to do properly. Russia is more or less a pawn in a West-vs-China war right now and their performance in Ukraine shows why. That's a HUGE step down from the old days for them where they were playing proxy games themselves.

If I had a spare Earth to gamble with, I'd bet only the US can currently destroy the entire world in one nuclear launch spree. That doesn't mean the other players couldn't visit incredible horrors on the world, especially their immediate neighbours.

Space is about information transmission and control. Satellites that can watch the field of battle, satellites that can relay data between elements of the military.

While we talk about 'rods from god' and such, there's little risk of a space-based weapons platform for striking ground targets... it takes too much energy and is too easily replaced by much less expensive terrestrial weaponry. Right now, the US has a massive advantage in this area that can only act as a force multiplier for it's existing massive more traditional military advantages.

If you're China and considering war with the US, you're not going to start without being able to disable those satellites first. All of them. Quickly. Even if it blinds you too, at least now in that particular area you're on a level playing field.

In the short term, even if you could do that it would be suicidal and the US military would flatten your country... but a decade from now, that might not be the case. It is smart to maintain the advantage.

>The car noticed and braked hard and hit anyway

Given the circumstances, I don't think I blame the autodrive... yet. It likely did as well or better than a normal human driver. It would be nice to extend its environmental awareness to predict potential issues caused by other vehicles. If it had predicted the other car was going to hit a pedestrian, it might have braked earlier until the accident outcome was determined and it was safe to continue.

Hell, in that case it should be calling 911 and if it has any passengers asking if any of them are capable of rendering first aid.

>A human who did that would not then drive the car to the side of the road to a safe(ish) area because the human was still there, somewhere.

A human who did that might panic and take off, then park the car in their garage with another still-living-but-not-for-long sticking through their windshield. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Gregory_Glenn_Biggs)

You wouldn't necessarily know you had them pinned under your car. But a human might notice bits of human still poking up over the hood, hear a scream, notice the car bump only once if a front tire went over someone but not the rear, etc. and consider the possibility.

I'm betting the autodrive system doesn't have sufficiently broad capabilities to take that input and infer the presence of a human in danger of further harm. It certainly can't stop, get out, and determine the best way to proceed after examining the environment from a different perspective never mind provide even rudimentary first aid.

On the other hand, it's probably less likely to hit someone in the first place, and almost certainly not going to take off to escape the consequences of the accident.

You'd think the engineers would have considered the case where stage 1 (don't hit anyone in the first place) failed and had a selection of options available for stage 2 (wait for help) that didn't include continuing to drive with a human on or under the outside of the vehicle.

> The quaint idea of a songwriter being inspired by a riff they heard being totally fine but a machine-learning model doing the same being illegal

Not only can an AI churn out the stuff orders of magnitude faster than a human... you can put it on rails so that its output is tuned to avoid anything that could cause a loss in the courtroom, while humans make those mistakes (and sometimes do it deliberately) all the time.

Where humans still have an edge is in creating something truly novel instead of a semi-random remix of existing things. This is because our 'training data' is our entire life experience and not just a narrow slice of real world data.

There is no way Sonos didn't consider that removing features would piss people off. They just thought they could get away with it while serving whatever their underlying motivation for the product change was.

Plastic straws are an absolute JOKE compared to the mass of unnecessary plastic packaging used for almost everything in every store these days.

Why ban plastic bags but not blister packs? It's inconsistent to the point of stupidity. Apparently the politicians have decided it's OK to poison ourselves if industry wants to, but they're throwing us a token effort here and there to make it look like we're doing something.

It's external costs. What we need is a recycling plant - however expensive - that can break long chain polymers down to atoms using only electricity. Then you take the cost of that and fund it with a tax on plastic products at the point of production (or tariffs for imports). People will scream when they find out what the true cost of plastic is.

It's the way the entire system is set up - anything that doesn't involve jail time for the decision makers is just a cost, and the company seeks the path of least costs to highest profits.

They'd be crazy not to pay fines or insurance premiums if that is the least costly path for the company.

So if the lawmakers are serious, we need to start jailing executives.

Maybe I'm optimistic that even though Pooh took a pass, Putin will send a nice Russian lady my way to try and compromise me.

Or maybe you don't understand that anyone who could connect the real me to my Slashdot post could find out about my employment history and its implications without checking here first.

Or maybe you don't understand what is and isn't permitted when you have a security clearance.

Yep. It's probably one of the factors that got me my current position that doesn't require a government security clearance. I still have access to a lot of confidential things, but it's private industry and not government for me at the moment.

Still, I'm not going to do anything to risk my ability to get through the process again as I don't know where my next job might be. And also, as I mentioned previously, I'm just serious about things like that by nature. Probably drank a little too much koolaid while working in government or something.