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Comment Re: Winners and losers (Score 1) 165

The big issue is that there will not be any capital left to invest into these costly endeavors anymore.

Between a weaker dollar and a slowing global economic environment where consumers are not consuming as much as they should be according to metrics, where is the money supposed to come from? Print more money?That is how we got to these economic conditions in the first place.

So much of the tech industry was funded in part by boomer money that in turn was derived from the post-WW2 environment. That money is going to dry up soon with the way things are going.

Comment Re: IDC (Score 1) 99

Content creation is not much better in that regard.
Much like acting it is already a highly saturated field where most of the revenue is funneled into a handful of top creators while everyone else fights for scraps.
And now meta is rolling out an automated short-form content creation mill powered by AI. Companies want to also get rid of them so they can hoard all the advertisement revenue for themselves.

Comment Re: How to reward for the knowledge used in traini (Score 1) 99

Is your hypothetical child a piece of software?
No?
Then case closed. The law makes a distinction between machines and humans. Muddling the waters is a great way to further dehumanize people as little more then meat machines, with all the fun cultural and social impacts that come with that.

Comment Re: Imagine (Score 4, Insightful) 165

Or alternatively the U.S. spirals further downward into totalitarianism and decay and we end up with at least a lost decade or two, if not an outright century of humiliation.

But I guess this current path is already putting us down that route so not much left to lose anymore for the average American.

Comment Re: This is a bad look for the New York Times (Score 3, Interesting) 21

Given the nature of OpenAI and their Microsoft masters people should not have been conducting private conversations with ChatGPT to begin with.

I am hardly a fan of NYT but letâ(TM)s be honest here. OpenAI and co. have no qualms about violating user privacy if it so fits them either. Besides their indiscriminate approach to data scraping, Altman and co. have also engaged in questionable ventures such as the WorldCoin scheme that involves scanning your retinas in exchange for digital chuckie cheese tokens. The whole AI industry is built on violating trust and privacy to make money.

So really screw them for trying to wear the flayed skin of digital privacy as a last-ditch defense here.

Comment Re: This is cool but how much $? (Score 1) 15

And here I am wondering how Google is even going to monetize their models. Are they going to shove ads into their models so every time you prompt something the model will subtly generate some form of product placement? Google has always struggled with the business aspect of their tech outside of the advertisement model.

Actually that goes for almost every AI company out there. Subscriptions alone will not cut it as eventually you hit a demand ceiling where everyone who wanted your service will have already purchased a license. To say nothing how exploitative the subscription model is as demonstrated by the likes of Netflix.

Comment Not Just About Copyright (Score 2) 100

Even if you have little respect for the notion of copyright, at the very least you must understand the bad precedents being set up when companies can just swipe any and all data available on the web for commercial purposes. This is not going to stop at struggling artists and hobbyist programmers; the plan is to effectively kill the efficacy of opt-in and out efforts for data privacy. They want to take every piece of data online, either publicly or privately for data training with no respect for compensation or accreditation.

This website has been railing against the intrusion of privacy and lack of transparency with regards to data collection efforts for data. The current Generative AI models are
effectively following those same trends and yet people give these companies exceptions.

If tech companies get away with this, then all those years spent trying to protect data rights and fostering an eco-system where users have the final say on how their data is used is dead and done. Frankly no piece of technology is worth giving up what little rights we have in this day and age.

Comment Re: Should have (Score 2) 112

And also flood the trades with mediocre talent like what happened with CS? Good way to depress wages and craftsmanship across the board.

Gripes aside, despite common perception many trades are not easy to get into, let alone succeed in. Be it plumber, electrician, or welder these are physically demanding jobs where pay is not always the best and work conditions far from ideal for human health and safety.

This is not to say we do not need these jobs nor should we dissuade people who are serious about getting into them. But trying to push trades to the public like we did with CS just does not seem like a viable solution for mass employment.

Comment Cue the misanthropic doomerism in the comments (Score 1) 149

The real shocker here is how borderline misanthropic and doomerish intelligent people get whenever AI gets discussed. You guys are why nerds get picked on in school all the time: a disdain for humanity and life in general.

Even if AI becomes sentient and super intelligent, there is still no reason to demean and dehumanize the human experience. If anything people should think about how best to share the joy and wonder of the natural world to AI so it can develop an appreciation of it as well.

All that science fiction garbage portraying AIs as unrelenting, cold calculators if anything may be more a reflection of how misanthropic and dismissive people, including some of the most intelligent folks in the world have become. That is what makes me concerned about the future more then anything. Technocrats harp on about the dangers of paperclip maximizers but already treat people as little more then machines to maximize profits and stocks. No wonder people feel so jaded and hopeless these days.

Comment Re: Who moved probably... (Score 1) 115

Imo at least, the push for rural/countryside living is merely a return to how the bulk of humanity was living prior to industrialization.

Humanity largely evolved to live in small rural villages populated by no more then a few hundred people. Big densely populated metropolitan areas with populations numbering in the thousands, if not millions, are not environments we are accustomed to. The fact people try to recreate small community structures in these urbanized areas only reinforces this notion if anything.

Comment Re: Cue all the oldies (Score 1) 154

Then you try to strike up an in-person conversation with someone who is not a total geriatric and are then reminded that it is indeed the year 2024 with all the baggage that carries nowadays.

For a lot of folks, the line between their physical and digital lives has become blurred to the point being non-existent. So unless you plan on isolating yourself from most human contact, you will never be able to fully distance yourself from social media.

Comment Re: Doubled down on stupid (Score 0) 251

With BYD outselling Tesla consistently, it really is hard to see where else they can go especially given that they invested so much into the Shanghai gigafactory. Musk really should have figured that the Chinese were going to favor Chinese cars in the long-run.

European sales seem like they are peaking, which kind of leaves the US as one of the few remaining areas of growth for them. Since the US is pushing for hard protectionist measures against Chinese companies Tesla might be able to scrounge up some extra sales but likely not enough to cover the loss from Asia and Europe.

Comment Re: Shrinking with Drugs? (Score 1) 170

It really does not help though that kids are not encouraged to eat healthier either.

I remember back in grade school how our teachers treated us to pizza parties and those sugar cookie abominations from Costco or Safeway. On top of sugary beverages like sodas and juices and the rather abysmal state of the average school lunch, we are basically screwing up their metabolism from the get-go.

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