Something that was initially impractical because it couldn't be used at scale but that advances in technology elsewhere suddenly made it useful for ton of applications.

Technology is not a one-way Street it's a complicated mess of back roads and by roads.

We have a lot of major disasters we are ignoring. Climate change, boomers dying and taking all the money with them causing a collapse in disposable income spending, AI taking all the water and electricity, fascism, etc etc etc.

But just for fun let's add another on the pile. Specifically we are running out of basic research.

Basic research is stuff you do that is not immediately profitable but is extremely expensive. For centuries we didn't do that and we called that time to dark ages.

The merchant class combined with world wars caused us to start doing some basic research funded by the government. A shitload of money was made and for a very brief period of time private industries like Bell labs were doing some basic research. It wasn't profitable enough so they stopped.

Billionaires want to be trillionaires so the government can no longer do basic research because all that money got turned into tax cuts and subsidies for the upcoming ultra Epstein class. This all happened to me mid to late 1980s and was finished by the late 1990s.

So we have been over 20 years without a serious push into basic research. But it's a pipeline. Basic research done today won't pay off for 20 or 30 years maybe longer.

This means that we are using up a resource most people don't even understand exists because it's way too complicated a topic to discuss.

I don't know exactly when the well will run dry but based on what I've read we're not too far off from it. We're going to start seeing advances slow and we have been relying on those advances to stay ahead of the rapacious Epstein class devouring money. Basically productivity has been rising so much that no matter how hungry they are they can't gobble up everything. But without those absolutely enormous productivity gains from all that basic research paying off after 20 or 30 years or more... Well it's going to bring everything screeching to a halt at exactly the same time everything else is going to shit.

And as usual people will blame the Democrats or whatever the local equivalent non-fascist party is and then shit's going to get real fun. What the Chinese call interesting times.

I mentioned it on another thread but I wish I had died before it all started to happen. There was this very brief period of time the baby boomers enjoyed when as long as you were reasonably white or lucky enough to be born in one of the nicer parts of America you made out pretty damn good. Those times are over.

Into groups useful for large corporations owned by the Epstein class. They aren't there for you to learn and if you do that's a happy accident and the Herculean efforts of a teacher trying to go against the system.

This is partially why the cost of education per student is skyrocketing.

In the past it was really easy to sort the kids. It was basically two groups the ones who were teaching themselves and only needed a minimum amount of oversight, what we used to call academically inclined, and everybody else who was on their way to the factories and going to be taught just enough reading and math to be useful over there.

The factories are full of robots now so there's nothing for the second group of kids to do. What we've been trying to do at Great expense is actually teach those kids enough that they might be able to land a job and if we can't do that we can at least keep them out of the job market for a little while while we try to figure out what the fuck we're going to do with tens of millions of people who have no reason to be alive besides inherent limitless value of human life (I'll wait for everybody to stop laughing)

If you ever pay attention to Rich schools notice how expensive they are. That's not because of the marble in the walkways or the edible food in the cafeteria it's the small class sizes, large number of books and lots of paper for writing and lots of extra programs for things like the humanities and music where kids can learn critical thinking skills even if they don't just naturally have them.

If you look at how rich people teach their kids they don't do any of this experimental bullshit and they don't give them Chromebooks they use the same techniques we hammered out from about 1910 through about 1970. All the experimentation is done on the poor kids.

The point is you have too many people and nothing to do with them. We're running out of work and we are a society where if you don't work you don't eat.

AI breaks this entire system even faster than the factory automation did. It doesn't just expose the cracks it Rams a crowbar in between them and then uses a machine to pull them apart. Students can bypass the sorting mechanism designed to decide who is and isn't worthy of the attentions of the 1%. The teachers for their part are dumbfounded because they haven't ever quite come to terms with the fact that our education system does not serve the students it serves big business...

Sooner or later something has to give and I just kind of wish I had died before the shit hit the fan

Well on the upside the non MAGA nutjobs on the Republican side give Trump a net approval rating of zero right now, so a significant portion of them are likely not on that other side.

There's nothing else worthwhile to say on this thread. We all know this is corruption and gambling.

Tell us you don't know what a "gamer" is without telling us. I know many gamers. We sink many hours a day into gaming. One of us even has a Twitch stream and several records, and a Youtube channel with a significant number of subscribers to the point where he gets advanced copies from the developers of the games he mostly showcases.

We're engineers by the way, well except for one of us who's a finance executive, we all own our own houses, actually my "momma" is staying with us next week while visiting though she's going to be sleeping in the loft.

I'll take a guess and say zero since you clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Airtraffic controllers earn 6 figures + government benefits. The administration even gave bonuses to those who worked overtime during the government shutdown.

Of course it wouldn't surprise you, because you clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Is the federal benefit to not get paid because the Democrats won't pass a spending bill because the Republicans add riders on it that undermine the very foundations of democracy?

You don't have to complain about everything. Removing plastic from the water is a good thing.

Better or cheaper than not putting it there in the first place. When you see stuff like this it's greenwashing. Like how recycling does basically fuck all but we all get told as kids to do it because the plastic industry pays to have you told that bullshit.

That's quite a lot of confidence in his intellect.

I've seen you write better comments.

That isn't counted.

At what? The statement can't be answered generally. There's things these tools are good and bad at. It seems to be quite good at translations for example.

No. Unless you use the assistant on your phone.

There's no evidence of that. You may not touch it, but there's 3.9 billion Android devices out there. 1/4th of them using the assistant alone would meet those numbers, and that's before you count those people who use the AI mode on Google search, or run the Gemini App, or have a subscription to Gemini through work or school, or are provided Gemini features through Google Docs. Even my fucking car has Gemini respond when I push the "voice" button on the steering wheel and that probably counts me as a second user on top of my phone.

The number is actually quite believable when you consider just how many things out there Gemini is shoehorned into.

Not just on mobile devices. My *car* had an update roll out so that voice request now go via Gemini.

Upside: Gemini actually knows what "take the toll road" means.
Upside 2: Gemini can actually tell you "how much faster is it to drive home via the A40?"
Downside: Everything takes 3x as long to execute. "Change the AC to 22 degrees." Proceeds with the little waiting icon for a good 3-4 seconds longer than it used to in the past all while drinking a bottle of fresh water in the progress.

That last bit was a joke, but only partially.

Not quite. In many cases AI is just a tool replacing another tool we already use. Here's some examples that have nothing to do with brain atrophy:

If you want to translate a phrase:
Old: Type "Translate "what even is AI"" into Google Search and hit enter. Receive Google translate answer.
New: Type "Translate "what even is AI"" into Google Search and hit the AI mode button. Receive a far better translated answer.

If you want to save $1.51:
Old: Press the voice button on your steering wheel and say "avoid toll roads". And have the Google Assistant say "okay I've updated your navigation".
New: Press the voice button on your steering wheel and say "avoid toll roads". And have Gemini say "okay I've updated your navigation".
(I bring this one up for a reason because for some inexplicable reason "avoid toll roads" worked on the old Google Assistant, but "take toll roads" didn't. They both work on Gemini though).

Not all AI is replacing thinking. Some is just replacing some other tools.