Gnome has gone downhill after version 2, fortunately that has been kept alive as the Mate desktop.

If they do, they sure don't consider my use case. Gnome2 was pretty good, though, if not quite as good as KDE3. I find current Gnome unusable, and KDE4 isn't as good as KDE3 was, though it's integration with other applications is better. (FWIW, I prefer Mate, but secondary is xfce.)

IIUC, the evidence is that there are several different AI bubbles going on at the same time. They probably won't collapse at the same time, and even when the last collapsed AI will still be around. There are lots of jobs it's good enough at that it won't be replaced.

Yeah, there *are* AI bubbles. Groups of speculators are outbidding any reasonable return on several fragments of the market. But that doesn't make the actual tech go away, and there are domains were it's currently superior to any alternative.

Well...that's not really accurate. Many people WANT higher quality goods, even at a higher price, but they can't tell what they'd be getting, so they opt for the lower price. Higher prices don't guarantee better quality, they just allow it. But when the market is opaque, all that's penalized is higher costs.

You're ignoring the time lag.

Assuming your assumptions are correct, EVENTUALLY things would stabilize. But it can take multiple years to build a plant for making RAM. And it's a high risk investment, because while you're building it, other changes might happen.

Well, it can't grow in the same places, but bamboo into paper is already a thing. And it grows quite quickly in the appropriate environment.

there will then be a good chance of finding some crooks.

To be p[edantic, IMO it is erroneous to say "trained on copyrighted material" as if it being copyrighted is the problem (as opposed to if permission is gained, if permission is needed, etc) - since anything eligible created in a country where copyright is automatic is copyrighted, even if the creator gave permission, and regardless of if permission to use it is needed or not.

You need to read those stories again. The DIDN'T take over running society. There is, however, a backstory where they wiped out all non-human life in the galaxy to make it safe for people. (I don't think that was really in his mind while he was writing most of the stories, but he added it towards the end when he was trying to merge his story universes into one.)

If you read "Robots and Empire" the robots aren't really running the Empire, just trying to subtly guide it. The last book in the cycle does end up with an indication that the Robots are going to take over, but that's never really explored.

OTOH, if you were to take the English language version of the first law seriously, it would have the effect you postulate. But the English language version is supposed to be only a very rough translation of the actual mathematics behind the robot brains. (He didn't phrase that as "programming", but that's probably about what he meant.) If you try to translate a program into English, you're going to get something quite a bit different from the actual program. Especially if it's a complex program and you translate it into 3 short pithy sentences. Note that in different stories the robots are built with different limitations, but they always summarize it with the same 3 laws. Consider how in "Little Lost Robot" one of the laws is weakened.

That said, remember that these stories were fiction, designed to be an entertaining exploration of the problem space.

I think the problem you're alluding to isn't really dealt with by Asimov, but by Jack Williamson in the story "With Folded Hands". It was such a good story that Campbell had to accept it even though he hated the message so much he coerced Williamson into writing a solution ...and the only solution Williamson could come up with relied on magic ("The Humanoids").

And actually he was proposing them as a rough translation into English of the mathematical principles the positronic brains were based on. But it was clearly a VERY rough translation.

He had doubts from the beginning. Read the stories. I think I can remember 3 robots in the entire series (including Caves of Steel et seq.) that were trustworthy, though the background indicates that there must have been many more. And he appeared to even have doubts about Daneel...though he never wrote the story exploring those doubts.

Well, my source was a few years ago, but there was a real problem transporting them anywhere for processing. Still, that sounds like something that could readily be solved (it just hadn't been), and ISTR that I did read something about plans to grind them up...though not for the later steps you mention.

... without impacting the listening experience?

And how can you check for that watermark?

Moronic and damaging.
I don't really mind the moronic part. Lots of people, even fairly brilliant people, sometimes do something stupid. As long as they only injure themselves, I think that's their privilege.