An AI that accurately categorized my incoming emails into "important", "worth reading", and "not worth reading" would be a welcome development. Gmail is currently one of my least-favorite tower-defense games.
Thats a good point -- whenever I need a new flat screen TV I just wait a week for one to appear on the sidewalk, et voila.
Isn't the digital display of artwork, it's keeping advertisements out of the display.
... when Windows tried to prevent ransomware from running on your computer, rather than installing the ransomware as part of the default OS.
I'm in the Caribbean right now (stuck in paradise, our flight out today was cancelled) and the Venezuelans are certainly partying.
I hope it works out for them, but I suspect they are shortly going to encounter the phrase "meet the new boss, same as the old boss". All of Maduro's people are still in place, and Trump has little incentive to try and remove them.
But removing Maduro doesn't remove his government. Marudo was just the top of the pyramid. All the other layers are still in place. So I don't know how Trump is supposed to run Venezuela, unless he proceeds with some sort of invasion.
I'm pretty sure Trump's plan is to let Maduro's government (less Maduro and his wife, of course) continue doing everything exactly as they had been, as long as they give US oil companies access to the oil fields. Trump couldn't care less about drug trafficking or democracy or human rights; he just wants that sweet, sweet oil.
I suspect there is a market for them as a design/visualization tool for professionals. They aren't cheap or easy enough for casual entertainment, but for people with corporate budgets and a need to see what something will look like in 3D space before committing the money to actually create it, they are good deal.
Those of us who feel it are right to be ashamed of this act of biocide. It may not be permanent for the earth, but it is as good as permanent for humanity.
You're not wrong, but I think the last few decades have demonstrated what peoples' de facto priorities are. Maybe after we've lost the great majority of biodiversity, we'll regret not having done more to prevent that loss, but for now the common mindset is "I want my goods and services today, and if there's any tradeoff at all between my day-to-day comfort and the natural world's long-term existence, then I'll take the former now and hope that the latter works itself out somehow".
The companies clamoring to use this shit in their products are acting absolutely stupid. People don't want it. They know it's 21st century snake oil.
The people don't want it, but the companies do. As for why the companies want it, I'll just quote a bit of dialog from a Douglas Adams novel:
"It's funny how many of the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You see there have already been several programs written that help you to arrive at decisions by properly ordering and analyzing all the relevant facts so that they then point naturally toward the right decision. The drawback with these is that the decision which all the properly ordered and analyzed facts point to is not necessarily the one you want."
"Yeeeess
"Well, Gordon's great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program's task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion."
"And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. [...] The entire project was bought up, lock, stock and barrel, by the Pentagon."
It's not "overwhelming the biosphere" that's the primary cause for concern, though. The primary concerns are human-centric: cities flooding or catching fire, crops not growing, hurricanes and tornadoes destroying infrastructure, people dying of heat exhaustion, etc. All of these things are problems already and will get worse the higher the CO2 concentration is allowed to get. Knowing that the total amount of carbon on Earth is finite doesn't help with that.
Is it an AI trying to mimic human artistry, or a human artist trying to mimic AI's mimicry of human artistry?
In the end, does it matter which?
Waymo goes into a failsafe mode and becomes a roadblock,
Not if Waymo is clever (which they are). A Waymo's car can and should go into a failsafe mode where it maneuvers its way out of traffic and parks, and also moves out of the way of emergency vehicles when possible/necessary. Basically the same things a responsible human being would do in the same situation. It's not rocket science.
Human drivers can let a firetruck through until the road is hopeless. The robots just block them.
Robots can also let a firetruck through until the road is hopeless -- they just need to be programmed to do so. Assuming Waymo isn't completely insensate, that will be the case going forward.
What power generation system other than "none" doesn't require maintenance and what industrial manufacturing process doesn't generate hazardous waste that needs to be properly disposed of?
Let's ask that the other way -- what other power generation systems have depopulated entire cities as a result of not being adequately maintained? I think hydroelectric dams might be one answer.
They of course pick Abu Dhabi. Just in case they run over someone, it will likely be a dirt poor peasant that won't be missed...
That's likely a factor. Not a whole lot of liability lawsuits to worry about there, I imagine.
Other factors include:
1. A government that is happy to throw money at anything that helps them look modern and cool
2. Wide, empty, logically-laid-out streets that are easy to drive on (if self-driving were a video game, Abu Dhabi would be the tutorial level)
3. Minimal weather/visibility concerns
The world is no nursery. - Sigmund Freud
