Yeah, on reflection, that statement I made is not a maybe/sort of, it's a no/not at all, as you say. I guess I was lazy and didn't think that through: what "Ethics" "is" ultimately gets defined by the people already in power who benefit most by defining their unethical behavior as actually ethical, and their opponents behavior, whether ethical or not, as unethical. In other words: "My bad behavior isn't bad, it's good, because I support the system as-it-is, which is good by definition, and hey, you're just complaining about 'a few bad apples', but your bad (and good) behavior is very bad because you're a dangerous and subversive [insert pejorative] and (more to the point): Hey! You don't even have standing here, go away." That is, I guess, more or less, the established order. "History is written by the victors" may be an oversimplification, but is nonetheless part of a larger, very real phenomenon.

Wasn't familiar with Brickman, thanks for sharing him.

Yeah, that's a definitely a thing, though for the most part, that's willful ignorance, since the foundation of ethics (an innate sense of fairness) is rooted in biology [citations widely available]. And "do onto others" isn't quantum physics.

Though you're right there is a fourth group that legitimately "doesn't understand what ethics even is", though I think that group is vanishingly small, and most people with an IQ above 50 that couldn't tell you what "ethics" is know what the "golden rule" is.

"Fake Kevin Bacon" definitely knows what ethics is and understands it perfectly well, he just chooses to engage in the opposite. He's a perfect example of someone in group #2.

"I think that lawyers who understand how to effectively and ethically use generative AI replace lawyers who don't,"

There are three kinds of people in the world:

1. Those who strive to behave ethically.
2. Those who don't give a damn about ethics at all and make no bones about it.
3. Those who pretend to behave ethically.

People who want to "do the right thing" aren't a problem. They sometimes make mistakes, but try to correct them. I think this is most people, like more than 80%.

People who don't give a damn aren't really a problem either, since in a world populated by mostly good people, they'll ultimately be shamed and marginalized or end up in jail.

People who can successfully project the illusion of behaving ethically when they have no intention in doing so are a HUGE problem. While there aren't a lot of them, they're highly concentrated in positions of power and hold most of the world's wealth.

Maybe in the field of law, you can sort of cancel out the pretenders over time, since everything is (ostensibly) reviewed, so maybe "AI" will help the unabashedly unethical lawyers to self-destruct, but everywhere else, the problem remains, and "AI" is mostly going to make them worse.

This. We have SSO, and yet when I open Teams, it is Gettings things ready" for fscking ages. Only to eventually tell me I need to log in. Which I click and - surprise - I am already logged in.

But the worst thing is Tem's trying to do everything. You can message there, store files there, etc, etc. I don't want yet another "Eierlegende Wollmilchsau" - sorry there's no English equivalent really, that's a very negative "Jack of all trades".

"so, just because it's a person of color, or a woman, we have to list their degrees and qualifications when they get a job?

Unfortunately, yes. That is the direct consequence of DEI. If you hire some people due to their gender, or race, or whatever? Guess what, you call the qualifications of *all* such people into question.

Trying to hide their involvement, while pumping $billions into lobbying. No surprise that OpenAI is doing much the same. Bet: So are Google, Microsoft, Apple and other tech giants - they just haven't been caught yet.

The question is why? Why do the tech giants want to force ID checks in order to use basic service, or even to log into your own computer?

Ah, another fan of "Young Frankenstein". What knockers!

There were articles about the amount of microplastics in human blood and tissue. Then they discovered that some of the lab equipment had plastic parts that contaminated the samples.

tl;dr: When you're measuring tiny particles in tiny amounts, contamination is very, very difficult to avoid.

Totally not a gimmick. Totally not incredibly easy to bypass. Totally not a bunch more e-Waste in the making. /s

But someone expects to earn good money with it, so...

This. An occasional app crashes, but the OS? Never.

NASA has sent up several nuclear powered craft. The Voyagers, for example, and they were certainly interplanetary.

And stop calling ii "Generative" -- it doesn't generate anything -- at best, it's "reflective" in that it reflects back whatever was put into it. It's still GIGO.

You ask: "And how does *also* allowing non fossil-fuel energy, like wind and solar, hurt any of that?"

Answer: intermittency. Adding wind and solar to the generating system just adds cost for no benefit.

If you want detailed case histories of this look at the UK, the usual canary. You will find that the useless intermittent supply from wind and solar comes in, on the bids, far higher than conventional. Regulation is needed to force utilities to buy it. And that is for an intermittent supply. There is no way to deliver dispatchable power from wind and solar at a cost which is competitive with conventional, ie gas or coal.

You doubt it? Go through the UK wind bids and add up the total cost of the UK electricity Net Zero push. Adding wind and solar to a conventional generation system just pushes up costs. Among the costs it adds are constraint payments. There are wind farms in the UK which are making a majority of their income from being paid not to generate, because the wind is supplying when there is no demand.

By the time you factor in the increase in gas consumption consequent on having to rely on open cycle rapid start gas to cover calms and nights its doubtful you even save any emissions either.

Its a great mystery why people who are persuaded of a climate crisis from CO2 emissions have this blind faith in wind and solar generation. Whether or not there is a climate crisis, wind and solar are not a viable generating technology and are not any kind of solution to it.

Paul Homewood has covered the UK wind constracting process in detail if you want that. Most advocates of wind do not. But here he is, as a for example, on constraint payments:
              https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

and here he is on the recent AR7 auction
              https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

Lots more on costs, subsidies and constraint if you explore the site. The political consensus in the UK seems to be turning against the so called energy transition. The situation in the Gulf is clarifying minds. The absurdity of the idea that moving to intermittent wind and solar is either possible or is going to increase energy security or reduce energy prices is becoming obvious.

Raise your hand if you have programming in machine language - entering binary directly into memory. Raise your hand if you have programmed in assembly. Raise your hand if you have programming low-level stuff in C.

The first question will have the fewest takers, because there is almost no reason to do that anymore. Assembly will have a few more takers, low-level C a few more. Technology has progressed, our compilers, optimizers and linkers have gotten better.

Historically, there have been numerous attempts to replace source code with some kind of language of specifications. They have all failed...until now. AI may finally achieve that.

Technology advances. Jobs shift. It is absolutely not comfortable for those affected. I knew a guy who started out as a typesetter (putting little metal letters into rows), then he made a huge effort to re-school and learn software for printing. Then printers mostly died out and he became...a gardener.

Regardless of what happens, we will still need some human programmers, just as there are still a few assembly language wizards.

There have been several "fireballs" over various parts of the world, just in the past couple of weeks. Some wandering asteroid came apart?