I'm a busy man. I'm also a lazy man. Could someone tell me if this is cheaper or more expensive than a desktop gaming PC with the same stats?

Additionally, the way it's phrased, as a "bet," is implicitly skeptical.

There is no question that states are betting on AI.

FDNY life is rough but it is still vastly better than Chinese factor worker life. That 18-hour shift is not constant answering calls, a lot of it is downtime. Also, they get a lot of time off in between. And retire with good benefits years and years before the Chinese worker.

"and where blue collar workers get to retire on a full pension before white collar workers."

Yes, if only I could enjoy the life of a blue collar factor worker in China. Why can't I work 12 hour shifts 6 days a week?!

The elites hate labor shortages. They love labor surpluses.

You'll end up with the worst employee you've ever had. A narcissist who sounds completely compelling but is completely wrong, or just wrong enough that it sounds right, but the load calculation is off by a small factor, no one else catches it and the bridge fails under a certain condition, someone dies.

There's no intelligence when it's just mindlessly trying to slot the right word in the next position. I realize specialized AIs are starting to have some particular skills, but it still seems so untrustworthy that you still need intensive design reviews by senior engineers, assuming the AI engineer is an idiot and needs double checking at every turn.

You said "Open Source development." Which in the grand scheme of things is pretty small.

That's not really the point.

The point is the upcoming revolution in autonomous labor, which will turn our current financial system upside down.

For reference, you might want to check out Manna, by Marshall Brain (his actual name). It's an easy read, it's short, and it outlines the impact that robot labor will have on our current model of capitalism.

It's no secret that ChatGPT is useful, and a force multiplier for productive output. If that type of breakthrough can be achieved with physical processing, then much of the labor force can be replaced by robots.

The current economic structure assumes infinite consumption, that there will always be more people (rising population), and that they will always want more things. We've found out that the first part isn't true, and it seems that the second part isn't true either: once you have "enough" stuff to have a comfortable life, many people stop consuming and turn their efforts to other things. People aged 45 to 55 spend the most money (per household), but once they have accrued a level of comfort they stop and enjoy life.

If robots can do manual labor, then that will put most people out of a job. A robot factory 20 miles on a side out in the southwest US (a thought problem for discussion) could supply the material wealth of the entire nation, but only require 100,000 human workers for management, direction, and maintenance. That figure, 100,000, is negligible compared to our current population.

How do we support the remaining 300 million population?

One way is to create an AI soverign wealth fund. Some portion of the factory output is given to the population in the form of factory currency. Each month every person would get, say, $1000 of factory currency to spend, with online ordering, and the items would be delivered.

To the article's point, we know with certainty that our current economic system will transition into the factory robot model. The problem facing economists is how to transition us into that model without going through a catastrophic financial failure.

An AI soverign wealth fund could be the first step towards making that transition.

I think the possible adverse impacts to society would not be outweighed by something that small.

It's worth noting that nuclear reactors don't really explode in the way people think of. What they can do is turn into radioactive lava, melt through the floor, and release the highly carcinogenic dust from their system into the environment. They're generally big water heaters without pressure release valves (because the water has the carcinogenic dust in it), so they can burst like any water heater, and they contain zirconium, which reacts with steam at high temperatures to release hydrogen gas, which can make fireballs, but the accident risk is much less about a shock wave destroying the site than airborne radioactive particles getting out. And, even if the reactor design is incapable of producing enough heat to damage itself without first shutting down, you still have to worry about whether the site is safe enough from external damage. The traditional thick concrete walls are as much about keeping runaway trucks out as keeping steam explosions in.

Older EVs don't "die" like the cells in your flashlight, they lose charge capacity over time.

Specifically, once the battery goes down to below 80% of initial capacity, it's better for the company to swap them out for newer batteries.

However, 80% capacity is still a lot of energy storage, it's just that the energy density per weight (or volume) isn't as good for EVs. If your energy storage doesn't care so much about weight or size (concrete floor in an industrial building), then these things still store a *lot* of energy.

Also note: capacity degrades with "cycles", and grid storage does not cycle the batteries very much or very low. Taking the Australian Hornsdale grid storage installation for reference, they found that the grid battery would step in and smooth over what we would consider very short and very slight voltage drops, which meant that their peaker plants didn't have to spin up and down as frequently, which ultimately saved them $150 million (*) over the first two years, against an installation cost of $66 million (USD).

Since then there have been a number of other installations, so we have good data on what the expected outcome will be.

The term "schmucks" in your post is perhaps unwarranted...

* Can't tell whether this is CAD or USD from their website.

It's also the duty of every country to warn their citizens against the spying activities of adversaries. You should both be spying AND protecting against the spying of others.

It's nice that they are making an official statement to drive the point home though.

LinkedIn is basically a platform for asset recruitment by foreign state intelligence services, job fraud scammers, and companies keeping job listings open that they're not actually hiring for to make them look better to investors.

Ehh, I liked Universe a lot, and I never could get into the main Stargate series.