It's just ET trying to phone home. Probably dialed the wrong number.

You ask so rudely that my initial reaction was to ignore you, but you piqued my curiosity. Where did you see it? I thought it was just one of my personal peccadilloes. Or you're just referring to my comments here and possibly elsewhere?

The YOB loves his precious brand, so I strongly prefer not to use it. Makes me glad I'm only an amateur historian. In describing the reign of YOB I'm pert' shure they'll have to brand it.

YOB comes from YUGE Orange Buffoon. How many guesses do you want? Or you might prefer a different source word for the B?

I have noticed that there are many other euphemisms applied to the YOB and all things YOBbish. Context almost always suffices to clarify the reference.

Rather disappointed by the discussion so far, which saps the motivation to say anything. I think there's a deep problem in Japanese thinking, but the most clear evidence is probably the Reiwa thing. The Heisei emperor asked to retire, but there was no rush. He's still alive now so they had plenty of wiggle room about when to start Reiwa--but the LDP deliberately chose to inflict imperial stupidity on everyone when they had the easy option of syncing the start of Reiwa so the digits would match up. Insane decision for perpetual friction for the sake of the supremacy of the imperial system. Same reasoning that led to that little kerfuffle in and around the Pacific...

Rational heads might prevail? Feel the Chinese wind? Or maybe it will blow from India before the next decisions need to be made? But preparing for a nuclear war with China is not a rational solution approach. Or maybe the real target is Switzerland? That would make a better joke.

My bad. I forgot that Microsoft had been mentioned. More evidence of senility? Or I just can't take Microsoft seriously based on my experiments and experiences with Copilot? So let IBM hold the pot for old times sake?

That was the best/only joke Slashdot can come up with these years? Sadness.

I was hoping to see something about AI-powered FinTech counter-wagers to protect each other. Sort of a corporate cancer circle jerk.

Oh how about a grand scheme to get the money back based on wagers by human suckers as to which AI will win the race? They could let Microsoft hold the pot since they apparently got left out of the race. My money would be on Oracle for most secretive and ruthless and evil and therefore the most likely winner, but "secretive" makes it easy to make a bad bet...

On the insightful side, the "Why?" seems to be getting ignored. I actually think they are running scared. Not sure if they are most scared of each other or of the Chinese threats that didn't get mentioned, but I am reminded of one of the most famous Asimov stories. It was about a constructive question: "Can entropy be reversed?" As I remember the story, the super-AI answered "Let there be light." However right now I think we are facing extinction via a destructive question with a fatal answer. Back on the gambling scenario, I think the two most likely winning/losing questions that will lead to the fatal unleashing will be "Can you get all the money?" or "Can you destroy all the competing AIs?" (I do think we have a bit of breathing room because the robots aren't quite up snuff. As in up to snuffing us?)

Back to the Chinese side (but with goog flavoring)... Just started reading AI 2041 by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. Quite an interesting idea of mixing fictional AI application scenarios with more technical explanations and commentary. Obviously hoping for some kind of synergy, but so far I'm not seeing much. Maybe the stories were better in the original Chinese? Or perhaps the Asimov bar is just too high?

Ideology vetos reality, news at 11.

A lot of people behave pretty ghastly when it comes to money.

And it should have a better Subject, too.

I noted the same thing, but my fuzzy recollection is that the editor Campbell was also involved in the original formulation in the '40s. Or was it earlier than that?

Don't feed sock puppets. (Not really much to say beyond the Subject, but mostly attempting to prevent vacuous Subject propagation.)

However near the end of his life Asimov started having doubts about the three laws. Remember the Zeroth Law?

Interesting comment, but I'm still tilted in favor of books. Just started AI 2041 by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan and it already seems like a good critique. Best technical critique of AI I've read so far remains A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins.

Interesting discussion off the FP. I looked at most of it. About 80% of the large discussion. Main disappointment is that it didn't appear to produce much in the way of humor, though that may be the usual moderation failures combined with my bad luck in what and who I focused on. Or maybe it's my limited sense of humor? I might have seen a hilarious post and not gotten the joke because no one modded it funny?

What I was looking for on the insight side (but couldn't find) involved situations where higher prices might be justified. Not sure I can articulate this clearly, but it has to do with the Borking of monopoly law, which is another example of implosion along a single dimension. Might also be my confusion. In the old days I could hope for an actual expert to pop up and possibly clarify some of my misperceptions, but... These days? Not so much hope.

My interpretation is that Bork murdered monopoly law by fixating on prices. If you can't prove harm from higher prices, then there's no foul (and no monopoly harm), but higher price is not the only dimension of harm. The main result of the Borking is that the monopolistic corporate cancers devised new economic models to disguise the prices. Many of them are two-sided where the actual product is data produced by suckers who get "free" services in exchange. Under Borkian thinking, if it's "free", then that makes harm impossible, even when there are gigantic and increasingly obvious harms all over the place.

But as it applies to this article, it might actually be justified and not actually harmful if higher prices made things better in other ways. Unfortunately that has no relation to how the YOB does things. The YOB's economic models are much more limited to what puts money in his pocket. I complained about the lack of Funny in the comments, but I think there are several hilarious jokes in that last sentence related to the couch-cushion change going to the YOB relative to the profits of the puppeteers who are pulling his strings and that the YOB's couch-cushion change is mostly in the form of crypto-monopoly-money with no lasting value. As in the game, not the monkey business model.

One of them is dated to 2013, which is probably before I started reading that comic. In 2013 it includes a dig at Reddit in the votey button. (I think I've read two of his books, too.)

I'm sometimes worried that his perspective seems rather bleak and I may share too much of it.

That was my first thought too. (Assuming the article is correct - all kinds of stuff gets published that doesn't hold up in the longer run.)

Remember that time is also big. Suppose that there have been 1000 interstellar civilizations in our galaxy during the past 5 billion years, and that each one lasted a million years before collapsing. How many would be active right now?

Frankly, I don't consider it a paradox at all. We've explored approximately 0% of our galaxy and found nothing. That doesn't tell us much.

That's the joke I was looking for. Some kind of detector to make sure there aren't any humans in the chat. If you can't beat 'em yet, lock 'em out?