It's indeed a "Duh" moment for sure. We remember this happened to the printed news and the musical industry who refused to embrace the new digital format.

It's always like that with anything old, it will cling onto it's old ways and old times, because it's their business model, when a business model no longer is viable and they failed to find a new way to create a new model, this is inevitable.

The same happens to broadcast media, here in our country they finally moved to "forced pay via taxes" because their model no longer works, they had for decades used so called TV-License vans, meaning they would actively seek out who had a television and did not pay for the TV License with so called TV Detection Vans, they would be equipped with RF radio gear to look for the local oscillator found in a Television to detect who secretly watched TV and ring their doorbell to get them to report themselves or face fines.

This happened in Denmark over 15+ years ago when the state enforced TV License was moved to the mandatory "Taxes" instead of an separate bill in the mail.
Happened in Sweden about 7+ years ago, they finally caved and did the same - moved the Mandatory TV License as an "internet media bill" instead which is added as tax into the national taxing system so everyone is forced to pay for "Public Service".

It's he old Elite of people who decides who gets to be employed and approved as artists, who gets to distribute the "official news" etc. Gov don't like to lose control of that, when people moved to other medias, most people got fiber and got rid of their Antennas country wide, the Gov saw it and thought, dammit - we can't have this, we must get payment somehow, so let's introduce it into the Tax system instead - to be permanently mandatory.

And the industry went, wait - we don't want that!

Buys up all the hardware in the world, and rents it back to you.

Dr. Lisa Su has entered the building...

And even vibe building...

You may not know what Vibe Building is, but it is the same as vibe coding, and vibe anything really, whether you decide to make some music, graphics or test some electronics theory on the fly, it's vibe, and it's fun.

I do that with coding all the time. I remember I had an argument with some decent old coder from the old school, probably someone who has done coding all his life, he said that it takes more time to correct AI slop than to write correct code from scratch.

I tend to agree with him, but only because I tend to listen to those more experienced than me in a field, however, it does not stop me from having fun "vibe" coding.

Yes, you're probably right about that.

It will come to this, you're either competent with a tool or not, nothing will change this.

It can be a terrific assistant, but your mileage may vary. I can only use myself as an example, for example I can't remember the last time I got to be this productive, I coded 10+ games (one of them is actually good, which is better than my previous track record) with LLM assisting me. I set up a Linux gaming server with 4 windows specific games, which I had zero chance of doing myself in a little time (I work as an IT Admin, but... I'm kind of an imposter, not very good, but I get the job done), it has solved several legal issues for me.

Maybe one could draw a parallel to that of using Google as an search engine, it is a terrific tool if you know what you are looking for, if you don't then it's terrible.
Same for an LLM:

If you ask an LLM to "code me a game", your game or app will suck. If you scaffold it with lots of details, have a reasonable good idea what you want it to do, describe it well, scaffold it by project managing it (like making it modular so you don't have to get the entire code rewritten every single time, noob mistake, been there), then you can absolutely get terrific results. I've tested them extensively since ChatGPT 3.5 that could hardly get definitions right, with 5.0 and Claude that are so good at it that if you DO proper project management, then you can get really good results.

So mark my words buddy, it will happen.

It's going to come.

But there will be a transition period of around 10-ish years (I predicted 20 years in slashdot about 15-20 years ago, I correct myself due to the fast development and the current world situation) where chaos will reign.

AI tools are fantastic, I use them extensively too, but right now it's so early that it needs a lot of hand-holding, agent management, scaffolding and more so it's going to rule out a TON of people who think they can just replace professionals just like that, ain't gonna happen yet, but it will, and faster than I thought.

So this transition period that will come, will probably include:

- Extreme separation and poverty. For a few years.
- Mandatory work activation and employment programs from the government.
- Gov. will try to regulate the hell out of it in order to keep the old illusion of an industrial capitalist regime in place.
- Civil rioting and civil disobedience will increase surveillance, constant monitoring of social media and forums in order to arrest those who oppose.
- Corporations desperately clinging to a capital system where no one can afford even the basics anymore.
- Political unrest as the population feels abandoned and no longer trust the government.
- A few wars could happen as a result of political planning to keep the old system in place, and arms industry...an industry.
- Then slowly new governments arise, challenge the old powers and introduce UBI in selected areas.
- Mandatory activation programs like civil duty, street patrolling, elderly neighborhood care, clean streets etc. will be introduced for them.
- Slow adaptation of UBI rolls out on the 10th year, wordwide.

So yes. it's going to happen, but not as you may have expected it to happen.
   

It's very simple.
Big oil don't want you to get an EV, for really obvious reasons that should not elude anyone by now.

Their entire infrastructure and business model is built on the gas-station.
Mom & Pop gas stations don't want to invest in EV chargers either, basically because it's slower, will take up more space.

There is another phenomena on the rise, EV-charging malls. Innovative businesses have found out that if they make a parking lot with EV chargers, then they have an incentive to make customers their destination rather than the ones without a charging facility.

The prolonged charging time - has another advantage, you stay, you eat, and the longer you stay, the more you are enticed to make more purchases.

This isn't strictly an American thing, it's everywhere.

Big Petrol don't want you to get an 10K$ EV, to them this is their No#1 enemy, they want to sell you petrol, their entire infrastructure is built around it, and they will fight to the very death over it, just like Old-media fought a losing battle to get people to stick to printed media. The always refused, time took it's course and they never recovered from it.

Same with EV's.

Yes, there's entire car lots (huge fields) of unsold EV's in China, there were a documentary about it (think it was Vice?) that showed drone photos some years ago about those unsold EVs, they were just standing there in huge fields with even plants growing into them. The reason for this was the Gov's aggressive "must meet EV production" goals, this isn't new to them.

We could have bought those, easily, they would practically GIVE them to us, but it's not the Chinese gov. stopping them from selling to America and Europe, it's the big Petrol lobbyist that still have a huge stronghold on what's imported, taxes etc. they will lobby to the end of life to avoid this from happening, and they still have a huge stronghold on it, not something they'll fork over easily.

You may think of A.I. as slop.
You may even think of A.I. as cheating.

But most of the people in this world know nothing of the layers behind the training.
Not to mention all those people who discovers this new technology and just enters silly words and gets silly results, and think they are incredible artists with zero effort.

Nope, that's not how it works, at all.

I'm an artist, I've been doing art since the 80s, I'm an animator too, and an electronics enthusiast on top of it all, create my music, models, animations - everything from scratch, it has taken me years to master, and yet I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.

The thing is, A.i. here, is a stochastic sampler, it collects connections rather than images or creative stories, it can do noone of those things, it would take a database the size of a small planet to do so, so no - it won't create art or creativity for you, but it can do some basic stuff like make up connections to the words you use.

It's also terribly time consuming, you will have to experiment endlessly with ComfyUI models, words, sentences, LoRA's, concepts, compositions and whatnot in order to get anything closely consistent, you can - but it takes a TON of time to do so - and no, it does not copy your art directly, doesn't even use snippets of it, what it does is like if you knew shapes and colors, and you had 100 colored pens in your hands, and you dotted randomly onto a latent space, call it a piece of paper if you wish, and your memories consist of mere concepts and shapes, until the shape takes place out of your clouded stochastic images to match the words in your head.

That's the simplest way I can explain how it works so a regular person understand the technology behind it, so no - it does not copy your or my art in any way or shape.

However, you can, if you're absolutely AWESOME at creativity and prompting, if you excel at story writing, layout and composition and can describe it incredibly well, you can create art - and it's yours, not A.i.

The "Slop" you see, is a result of bad art, and total lack of creativity, it's the "wow" phase of people playing with the technology.

This is basically why everyone is panicking about AI "stealing" everything.

Well yes, it steals, like your words, not "word for word", like in "not image for image", as in "not code snippet for code snippet", it just don't work that way.
The way I have understood it is that it's more stochastic in nature, meaning it will pick a meaning out of an image, a curve, a circle, a ball, same with code as in language translation and interpretation.

You could in fact compare it to an analytical translator that is capable of taking a set of words, code (like the meaning of commands and how they are used) and put it together in a way that is predictable.

So no, AI don't "steal" in the traditional way of just cutting and pasting code, words or images. It can however interpret meanings according to a rule set and thus predict the desirable outcome.

The short story is: It's kind of how we learned through history too, we learn to speak, we learn to talk, we learn to sing, we learn to code, we learn to create. We don't steal it like we mean it, but we come up with inspired works based on what exist and what we have learned. You see a couple on the beach and you paint it, but someone else can paint it too, but it will be based on what they interpret, not the fact you both painted the same "idea", the idea of a house on the beach is not copyrighted - the design however is. The idea of making a piece of software that drives you to the store isn't copyrighted, the exact algorithm how it does that - is however copyrighted.

Ai doesn't steal these, but it can learn what you wish for, and stitch something together into a new framework that resemble what you wish, not what exist.

Some service garages are as lazy with your freezer fluid for the radiator, and they put in water instead of radiator liquid.

The same thing is especially important for BEV's !
You need to send a friendly reminder to your average auto shop, because most aren't used to BEV's, and don't understand that the cooling system which also function as the battery heater will need a special fluid replacement that is similar to radiator liquid, that it needs to have a lower than freezing point to it so the liquid doesn't freeze in the winter.

This is super important during winters, if you only have water or thinned out coolant in your pipes/cooling/heating system, it will FREEZE!
That means the heating system for the batteries will not receive the warmed liquid and the batteries will take damage!

Bring on more spaghetti eating Wills.

He said he uses it for reflections, and that's not a bad thing.

If you're otherwise a sane person who don't actually believe "A.i." is alive and superior or "god like" then you'll be just fine.
I kinda smiled when he admitted he also used chatgpt (like most of the entire population, the no#1 app in Sweden is BankID, the second one is Swish, both used for monetary transactions, the 3rd one is ChatGPT), why would he deviate from the norm?

I mean, it's kinda sweet that he is so open about his life that he would openly admit that with zero shame, it's like he really didn't have that much to hide. We make mistakes, that's more human than being a president that constantly think he's right above the entire planet.

Companies does indeed hire people on an equal level to graduates, but you have to prove you have some skills, and those counts way more than your papers or degrees ever will, I know - because that's how I got hired (not at Palantir but similar).

There's a caveat to that however, people with degrees often get a much higher salary than the ones without a degree.
The degree protects you to a certain extent, but the companies have found out the degrees aren't really that important, it's only a paper proving that you can take orders and follow direction, it doesn't demonstrate talent. (I know a bunch of people will get really upset when I say this, they always do, but it is what it is - an opinion).

This is as old as time itself, for example in the 80's I was hired as a Service technician, with ZERO degrees or education. When I asked my boss why me? He answered, I'd rather have you because you know how to solder, and you also know how to fault find with intuition and skill with comes with real interest and passion for what you do. You should have seen the tiresome 170 applicants I went through, I took a few in for an interview, it was exhausting, sure, their paperwork looked brilliant, but when I put them to the test, they wouldn't know a C-mos from a TTL, and you can do this blindfolded I didn't even have to ask.
That's why.

Later in life I also realized that's not the entire story. As an lifelong student of Computers and Electronics, without a degree you have zero protection, you often get a lower title which in turn gives you less rights when it comes to salary and bonuses. And it's almost impossible to grow without it, it's just the way it is.

The company I now work for, had the same reasons, my manager told me "well, just one look at the lab behind you (my lab) was enough to skip all the questions, I already see you have more than enough to learn anything we throw at you, can you start monday?).

But there was a catch, I didn't get any titles like the ones I replaced, and the salary was relatively low for what I do, I see this in my fellow coworkers around the world as well (I work internationally), all the ones with a Degree, has about twice the salary we do, and they don't even do the same amount of work we do).

We have to work crazy hours, put all of our passion into it, and we don't get rewarded for it - we're a gold-mine for corporations, and they don't want you to know that, in a way - we're a part of undermining your position, and it's a double edged sword, because on one hand - we have a job, and you with an expensive education wonder why no one is hiring you.

Not a great development.