I don't think the eukaryotic cell was that difficult a transition. Consider mixotricha paradoxa, which is, essentially, the reinvention of the eukaryotic cell at a higher level. That only one germline of "eukaryitic-like" cells survived to the present isn't really a very good argument that in the deep past there weren't several. Most gene-lines eventually go extinct.

Sorry, but you misunderstand the limitations Anthropic was insisting on. They weren't saying "Don't use this to plan or execute a war.". They were saying "make sure a human has the deciding vote" and "don't illegally do mass surveillance of the US population".

Actually, "Department of War" *is* more accurate. But, yeah, "Department of Defense" is the legal name.

I don't think we have any reason to suppose that we're the only technological civilization within 300 light years. OTOH, within 4 light year the odds are quite good that there aren't any.

That said, I wouldn't want to guess how far it is to the closest other technological civilization...not without a better estimate of the lifetime of such civilizations. (My guess is that they're typically pretty short, but that it's possible to build enduring ones...but that this requires moving parts of the civilization into space in a self-sustaining manner.)

They might do it for other reasons, however. Say to communicate with a generation ship en-route to a distant star. But it *does* make it a lot more unlikely.

In working societies, it has always been more than just the parents responsibility to watch over the children. This is true even among baboons, must less early hominids. The idea that this was not true is farcial.

What "next generation"? The thing can't be implemented without identifying the current generation.

I'm more suspicious of number evenly divisible by 100.

I may have to switch to Falkon.

Welll... they'll protect you privacy, but not your identity. They didn't divulge what the messages said, just who paid the bills.

You may not even have had the data for longer than it takes to reformat the drive. But if you have it, you can return it. This, of course, doesn't prove you didn't keep a copy.

If he was one of the founders, perhaps he had the job of doing the checks.

Maybe, but they'd refuse to forward your messages.

Actually, were the AI sufficiently good, I can see a large use case for voice controlled phones. But it would need to continue to work when the signal failed. And it would need to be able to recognize the voice of the owner when the owner had a bad cold. And to refuse commands coming from someone else.

That said, I think we're a bit distant from that level of capability. (Admittedly, I haven't checked recently.)

Actually, even 5G hasn't made it out to where I live, and probably to many other areas. So 6G is likely to take awhile. Mind you, they started charging for it a few years ago, and changed the frequencies used by the phone, so I had to get a new one...but they didn't get around to actually building the thing.