They’ve spun a serious architectural and containment failure into a marketing triumph. Give a swarm of autonomous agents vast compute and web access, and the outcome isn't an eerie glimpse of emerging superintelligence—it’s just predictable, sloppy engineering dressed up as the first glimpse of an AI-driven economic singularity.

The spin makes sense when you look at management incentives: live like a king off of a speculative bubble. For their part, AI investors react to stories of the technology's apocalyptic potential the way a junkie reacts to warnings of fentanyl's potency: gimme some. Their game: to apply "move fast and break things" mantra to the economy as a whole, by obsoleting humans.

If the investors can own an AGI, the distinction between those who can do things and those who can't becomes irrelevant. The only distinction that would matter is between people who collect rent on the technology, and those who must pay that rent to live. AGI would destroy society as we know it, and whatever replaces it would be up for grabs — with people who own the technology dictating whatever follows. That's why they're spending so much money to build a post-scarcity economy. A post-scarcity economy is not necessarily an egalitarian one.

I don't think that scenario will actually happen: investors are projecting the immediate aftermath of a major advance in AI technology into something that can be transformed by brute force scaling into AGI. Remember: investors loved Theranos too — so much for the rational investment market.

But AI doesn't have to reach AGI to cause serious harm. The technology only needs to be ubiquitous, too behaviorally complex to predict, and too deeply integrated into everything we do. When it starts breaking things, the plan is for us to be too structurally dependent on AI to rein it in.

Well, I can't speak for the US electoral roll breakdown, but it appears you may be in the 10% that can't add up. :)

I'm still using a 40" 1080p monitor I bought for $50 in 2011. It's the only TV in the house and we just use it for things mostly made before 2005.

The new stuff isn't worth the time.

Pork barrel? Nah it'll be the green chile barrel, and I'd be OK with that.

Maybe the could fund replacement emergency spare tires for all. After all you're not really meant to put 100k miles on one.

and countries are still maneuvering to gain the best position, and that includes the US.

Are they? The US isn't, it's bending to the whims of an angry, stupid, corrupt and senile old man bent on getting as rich as possible. Needlessly burning allies doesn't put the US in a good position.

meaning Russia and China's nuclear arsenal is effectively useless

Russia's nuclear arsenal is already very close to being effectively useless. Not a chance they've been doing good stockpile stewardship while the entire rest of the armed forces (and its tyres) rots into the ground.

And why would Trump/America care?

When America lost 3000 people on 9/11 and called for aid, Europe stood up.

The question was not why should America care, but why would America care.

There's a good chance they simply won't. America has not had a great record of being a reliable ally over the years.

And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world, in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. [emphasis mine]

-- Arthur Jensen, Network (destroying his golden goose)

Further viewing.

That's over simplifying things a bit, but yeah, we have fundamental infrastructure issues in the UK with any proposed mass rollout of AI DCs. While we do have surplus generating capacity, to the point that we occasionally need to pay people to use it, and more generating/storage capacity (especially local domestic, which frees up baseload capacity for industrial uses) is being added all the time, there are some other more fundamental UK issues. Firstly, the national power distribution grid is in need of some serious upgrades to support some of this. The South West in particular is on a very thin high tension thread that currently has insufficient capacity for the the planned relocation of the UK's nuclear deterrent subs to Devonport and associated growth, for instance. Secondly, and this seldom gets mentioned in the context of all these new AI DCs that are being planned or the "shouty kids/let's save water" adverts currently being run, is that we have some severe water supply pressures as a result of climate change combined with a decades long lack of investment in new reservoirs and upgrading leaky Victorian era distribution networks. Care which part of the country is currently experiencing the brunt of a "once in several decades (but is now expected to happen every few years)" severe drought event? Yup, it's the home counties, where most of the planned DCs are supposedly going to get built!

Those all have technical/construction solutions though, the third does not, and that is that the home counties in particular are notorious for the NIMBYism, although they are far from alone in that - just a few days ago a massive planned solar/storage facility in Scotland got pushed back, and possibly nixed, because of it. Sure, there are totally valid arguments against concreting over large expanses of what is currently greenbelt to some extent, even before you get to water/power shortages, pollution (including noise), additional traffic, and all the other impacts, but there have to be some limits. One solution I like for this (albeit not without some quite complex zoning issues due to suitable areas for building supply not being equal to where the supply is needed) is to make supply, or cost of supply, proportionate to acceptance of local capacity build outs. If you want your power to be generated in someone else's backyard, then you'll pay more for the privilege while they get a rebate. If you object to that proposed new local reservoir, then you don't get to complain if you need to start buying potable water in bulk during the next drought. If, as in the case of DCs, you are putting in disproportionately high demands for supply, then you either pay - up front - for a suitable proportion of the required upgrades, or commit to some other form of reimbursement with suitable early termination clauses if you want a longer timescale.

Then again, this *could* just be Microsoft wriggling off the hook because they're starting to think the AI bubble might be somewhat overinflated and therefore they might not be needing all that capacity they've been saying they are going to build afterall, but don't want to start the stampede for the exits until they're already through the door.

Also profiting off of crime and fraud is morally questionable.

Unless all profits go to real charity, people that watch this support fraud.

That's like saying people that watch true crime shows about murder support murder.

It was probably the other O'Neil, with one L. He has no sense of humour at all.

I could understand bots and mailing lists. The thing I never understood with LinkedIn was how many real people (usually recruitment agents) had apparently spent the time to read my profile and send me a personalised message, yet still thought I'd be interested in a job paying half the market rate for someone with my skills and experience.

The problem is UK energy policy. It is to build large amounts of intermittent power generation in places where there is no demand.

Not really, or rather only in as much as this is because we have other problems. The problem is a massive lack of investment in infrastructure (i.e. the grid), and absolutely zero long term planning. Sure there might be plans, but they'll change every 5 minutes anyway, just to ensure that no companies invest properly either.

The result is that the UK has to build a hugely expensive new transmission network from the wind farms off the north coast of Scotland to the Midlands and South.

It's called "investment". The reason the UK is such a shitshow in so many ways is we have the least investment of the G7. We are not going to get better by continuing to not invest in important infrastructure because it's too expensive.

the only solution is of course gas fired generation, but that is politically incorrect.

"politically correct" lol.

No, the problem is with like everything else we underinvest. We have a crappy, ageing grid which can't move electricity around the way we need. We keep trolling industries by making grand plans and cancelling them so no one can productively invest. The solution sure as shit isn't just using gas: that's why we've in the hole we're in now. Because gas is critical electricity prices are tied to the price of gas.

Having more gas isn't going to make the electricity prices less tied to gas.

The program also involves large amounts of solar. However, the UK is the second worst country in the world for solar power generation (the worst is Ireland).

Well apart from that not being 100% correct... so? Solar in a lot of places is just stupidly good. It's only a bad idea if it doesn't have sufficient ROI compared to other options.

doing what we've done for the last 30 years (that is, not investing in, well, anything and tying the price of electricity to gas) is not going to change where we are relative to the last 30 years.

What does that have to do with raspi,

Everything? This is, in case you didn't notice, an article about the raspberry pi.

where every other version they fuck up something basic like USB or power and then clearly don't do any testing before releasing it on the user base?

I mean... I've been using raspberry pis commercially for years now. Once it's been out for 10 minutes basically all the flaws and workarounds are documented and you can then just keep using the same thing until they stop making them which is usually ages. And then after, you can pick a long life stable model and keep using that for ages and it'll most likely just work.

Might have some warts, but they are a stable, known quantity.

Refurb? What are you talking about? You can buy a used dual-core NUC with 4GB/16GB for $50 any day of the week,

You're comparing a brand new device to a not even refurbished device? This is really moronic and you're being intentionally disingenuous at this point. You can buy used raspberry pis for £10. Like, yeah no shit that second hand stuff, especially random non refurbed second hand stuff that might be a lemon costs less than brand new things.

It's beyond inane to somehow make out that this is an option for a random NUC but somehow not a Pi, else why would you be comparing price wise to new pis?

You don't have to play any stupid games with bootloaders, you don't have to run special snowflake arm versions of anything, you just install and go.

I've literally never played any games with bootloaders, I have no idea what you are talking about. Dump the image to an SD card. Insert the SD card. Power on. That's it.

What's daft is your marriage to this straw man bullshit about refurbishing.

My bad I was assuming you weren't being a complete fucking tool. I am sorry and will not make that mistake next time.

You're not comparing a definitely working second hand thing to a new thing. You're comparing a random second hand thing that might not work to a new thing.

If you think a raspberry pi RAM upgrade is a basic computer upgrade, you have a better equipped home lab than I do.

Or if you don't want to fuck around with random refurbished shit and want a consistent, stable platform. Or if you want to use any of the huge number of hats available easily.

Not everyone needs the absolute maximum everything at all times and is prepared to sacrifice unlimited time to get it. In fact lot of people don't. And it doesn't even work: you an still buy pi 1's[*] for 20 quid. And the Zero 2W for 15. You won't get a refurbed PC for that, you'll get an ebay special you'll need to refurb yourself.

It's also kind of daft to compare a refurbished NUC to a new Pi. You can buy used Pi's cheaper too.

[*] But the pi 1 is sooo slooooww. See the first sentence of the paragraph.