Well for starters, OpenAI has not claimed to have achieved AGI. Their claims stop short of stating that. And the reason is clear: they are just using marketing-speak to drum up interest, as they always have.

Secondly, I have worked a lot with GPT models and also Claude and Gemini, and OpenAI has been trailing behind Google and Anthropic by miles. GPT outright choked up and died under complex workloads that Gemini completed without breaking a sweat. I don't believe for a second that the industry's special-needs child has suddenly jumped ahead of its two greatest heavyweights.

Thirdly, Astra has been built using the same training methods as all the others in the current family. It might be bigger, but it is still just another LLM. The jump to AGI is going to require something much more revolutionary than a bigger training set, or stringing multiple LLMs together like tinker toys.

And, lastly, I am not an idiot. I can recognize marketing BS when I read it.

On the one hand, yes, AGI is theoretically possible and we may achieve it some day.

On the other hand, no, OpenAI has most certainly not achieved it (not, at least, without re-defining it to mean something that is not remotely close to what the term "AGI" has meant for most of its existence).

We do, in fact, have a "rules for thee" state. It is, in fact, legal for congresspeople to perform insider trading and yet illegal for others to do so.

I never revealed who I voted for.

But I will point out that voting is just a popularity contest. The politicians that make the best promises are the ones that win, not the politicians who are most qualified or make the most realistic promises. So, lying is a necessary strategy for winning.

So, yes, they are all liars. They might tell the truth once in a while if it just so happens that the truth benefits them in some way. Or if they have reason to expect that their lies won't be believed. But other than that, lying is basically a reflex for them.

It's more a case of the fox being in charge of the chicken coop; or bank robbers gaining control of the bank.

The job of the press in a democracy is to hold officials up to scrutiny.

How can you tell when politicians lie?

Their lips move.

Having talent in the industry that knows how to write secure software isn't enough. The managers need to prioritize the work and allocate sufficient time for it. There is *always* deadline pressure, with real money and consequences behind it, and so engineers need to present a compelling case that their more expensive secure way to do it is actually necessary.

Businesses love to ignore security holes if something else in the code prevents them from being exploitable. They often don't accept "well future code changes may expose this vulnerability." And they won't accept "this more expensive way of doing it is the industry best practice" if they think the cheaper way of doing it is secure enough.

Getting the bean-counters on board is the real victory. Once they actually care about security, they will be interested in hiring people who can do it well, which in turn will motivate technicians to study up on it.

I don't think so. I poked around and couldn't find any support for what you were saying. What I found was that our feelings come from the limbic system, and the perception of color is produced through a multi-step process involving several different parts of the brain.

I didn't find anything about it functioning like an antenna.

So, if you have serious scientific research to present on this topic, please present some links.

When you say "they," are you referring to your religious leaders?

In the USA, your diary can become evidence in court if the court deems it is relevant. There is no automatic shield for that.

I am not a lawyer though, so if someone has a credible source that says otherwise, please feel free to speak up.

Saying that conversations with a chatbot should receive the same legal protections as conversations with a lawyer is beyond ridiculous. None of the important reasons why conversations with a lawyer get such protections apply.

Yes, it's true that some people really open up to chat bots. That still doesn't justify such protections. People just should know better than to have dangerous conversations with computer programs hosted on some one else's machine! People who really need people to talk to should still abstain from confessing their crimes to chatbots.

Everything else we do must be done cautiously. Alcohol use doesn't come with special legal protections; it's on us to drink responsibly. Gun use doesn't come with special legal protections it's on us to manage them responsibly. Conversations with our employers, family members, friends, lovers, etc., don't come with special legal protections; it's on us to keep our mouths shut about certain topics. Why in the world would chatbot use be any different? Seriously, this is nonsense.

People with money can buy a beefy machine and host a chatbot model on it locally. Everyone else can just develop some AI street smarts. Or go to jail after they confess crimes to a chatbot.

Straight from the article:

The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.

The article says exactly what you just said:

It is important to note that this was an observational study, meaning it can only show an association between higher xylitol levels and cardiovascular events, rather than proving that xylitol directly caused them, and further research is needed.

It IS an important thing to remember, as "post hoc ergo propter hoc" is one of the most popular logical fallacies. But on the other hand, it is equally important to pay attention to serious studies like this, because each one serves as a rigorously-obtained data point in a greater narrative that IS used to draw scientific conclusions (and to justify further research).

Fresh fruit is not problematic for healthy people. The levels of sugar are much lower than what is present in candy, and it comes properly mixed with natural fiber which ensures your body can metabolize it in a healthy way (unlike with candy).

Dried fruit is slightly more problematic because you wind eating too much of it (since it takes up less space in your stomach).

Fruit juice is just as problematic as pure soda, since all the fiber is gone and the sugar concentration is much higher.

But fresh fruit is very beneficial to health (so long as you don't overdo it, as with anything, and be sure to wash it first too since food poisoning is a risk with anything eaten raw).

The logic is economic autarky -- the belief that we're always better off having complete political sovereignty over every part of our supply chains than having to depend on imports for anything.

This is likely also behind Trump's trade war with Canada. His demands with Canada aren't about discirimatory tariffs -- those were negotiated away with NAFTA then re-negotiated in his first term. His demands are now infringe on Canadian sovereignty, to give US control of Canada's external trade policy, and even on its internal markets (e.g., the use of French in Canadian internal commerce). Symbolically, that's why he wants to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America". HIs establishment of US control over the Venezuelan oil industry is his greatest foreign policy achievement -- although it's not clear he understands the legal limits on what he can do with their money.

There's a foreign and military policy angle to this too: Taiwan is absolutely critical to the US economy, so we are absolutely committed to defend them if China invades. Semiconductor autarky would mean it's not our problem.

The problem with autarky is that even if it's a good idea (which economists don't believe), you can't conjure it into existence overnight. It will take many years, possibly decades for the US to replace the Taiwan's semiconductor industry. In effect, the administration is proposing to inflict the very damage on the US economy that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would inflict.

And, once the US has voluntarily self-inflicted that damage, China would be free to invade Taiwan.