Has Dawkins ever claimed to be an expert in AI or LLMs? As far as I can tell from the Guardian article, he chatted with Claude (or "Claudia") over a period of three days and then wrote an essay (somewhere) which included his subjective impression that his friend Claudia was conscious. (By some definition.)
For some reason, presumably because he's famous, people seem to care about what he said. Seems to me that's a problem with them, not him.
Watson and Dawkins have publicly disagreed previously on an entirely different topic.
The 120kW figure is indeed input power.
I was curious about that, but I couldn't find any definite statement.
NASA announcement, with selected excerpts:
"During the test, the team achieved power levels of up to 120 kilowatts."
"the gentle but steady force Psyche’s thrusters provide over time accelerates the spacecraft to 124,000 mph." Seems like passing an asteroid at 124,000 mph is going to limit their observation time.
"Fully developed and paired with a nuclear power source, they could reduce launch mass and support payloads"
On the other hand. An AI to scream at the doctor: "Why are you removing that liver, you're supposed to be removing a spleen!" might not be a bad thing. That isn't a random example of course. That's something that recently happened and the patient bled to death and the doctor insisted that the kidney was actually a spleen swollen to several times the size it should be and on the wrong side due to disease.
I assume you're referring to this incident of negative patient outcome.
There is the concern about the system making a mistake, but with competent surgeons, they should be able to tell when the AI itself is the one making the mistake.
Aye, there's the rub, innit? Competent surgeons also don't remove the wrong organ in the first place. To be more than fair, minimally-invasive surgery does require special skills, and it can be hard to find one's way around without seeing a full surgical field. Still, surgeons should at least know left from right.
on the wrong side due to disease
Organs are occasionally found in surprising places. (Like Einstein's brain?) Rarely. But you can usually find them with CT or ultrasound. If the organ isn't where you expected, that seems like adequate reason to stop the procedure until you figure out what's going on. Letting this person get anywhere near patients was a very very serious failure of the system. Luckily such extremes are rare.
Since the rotors are on the ends of six long arms, that leaves the top center open for a rocket-deployed parachute, something a typical helicopter can't accommodate.
Not good for New York. New York City has buildings, big buildings. Not a good environment for parachutes.
On April 28, 2025, the New York City Council passed "Intro 26-A, legislation sponsored by Council Majority Leader Amanda Farías that will prohibit non-essential helicopter flights from city-owned heliports unless they meet the most stringent FAA noise standards." Also known as "Stage 3". "The measure takes effect in late 2029
"This historic vote comes a year after the City Council’s oversight hearing on helicopters, and just two weeks after a tragic sightseeing helicopter crash along the Hudson River claimed six lives, reigniting widespread calls for action."
"'Intro 26-A is a commonsense step toward a safer, quieter, and more sustainable New York City,' said Majority Leader Farías."
It isn't clear to me how limiting noise levels will prevent crashes, but I'm not like a professional politician or anything. Maybe one of the intentions is just to eliminate helicopters altogether. Or maybe this legislation is backed by someone who stands to benefit financially from the success of Joby or Lilium or some other quiet-aircraft company. Just speculating.
Then the FAA is struggling even more with how to certify "powered lift" aircraft where eVTOL platforms are.
This particular aircraft is electric, has six rotors, and is a tilt-rotor design -- all of which characteristics are unusual and, I imagine, will give the FAA pause.
And all regulators have the problem that if they certify something and it goes bad, they can get blamed, whereas if they do nothing, they're safe.
One of their prototypes (model JAS4-2, registration N542AJ) crashed during a test flight on February 16, 2022, due to the loss of a propeller blade. One of six such rotors. "A section outlining possible causes of the incident states that the flight test operating 'beyond the typical operating envelope of the aircraft' combined with 'anomalous tilt system condition at a single propeller station' lead [sic: presumably "led"] to a blade pitch beyond the designed limitations causing the propeller blade failure and ejection."
This aircraft was engaged in an "speed and altitude envelope expansion test", traveling at 240 knots.
Of course, improvements and corrections have been made.
Alexander Graham Bell was a major proponent of eugenics and wanted to eliminate deaf people.
You're being unfair to Bell, and most of your statements are factually incorrect. See the Wikipedia biography for background. There's really too much to quote all the relevant passages here.
"Historians have noted that Bell explicitly opposed laws regulating marriage, and never mentioned sterilization in any of his writings. Even after Bell agreed to engage with scientists conducting eugenic research, he consistently refused to support public policy that limited the rights or privileges of the deaf."
Bell: "We cannot dictate to men and women whom they should marry and natural selection no longer influences mankind to any great extent."
"... both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.
"Throughout his life, Bell sought to assimilate the deaf and hard of hearing with the broader population. He encouraged speech therapy and lip-reading as well as sign language."
There are ways to enjoy music other than hearing it. Beethoven is an ironic example since he went deaf (though I don't know enough about him to know if Ode to Joy was composed before or after that).
Before, but he had performed and written most of his music while he still had his hearing.
DAME Evelyn Glennie is a professional concert percussionist who "has been profoundly deaf since childhood, having started to lose her hearing at the age of 8. This does not inhibit her ability to perform. She regularly plays barefoot during live performances and studio recordings to feel the music." I've seen her perform, and she was barefoot on that occasion. She has a Web site, a TED talk, a book, and a podcast.
I don't know what the right choice is, nor what choice I would make for my child in that position.
There are two kinds of hard moral choices: there's the kind where it's clear what the right thing to do is, but doing it is hard. Then there are the kind where it isn't really clear what the right thing to do is. This is the latter. Especially in the case of children, since if someone is going to transition from Deaf to hearing, it's best to do so as young as possible, when the brain is maximally flexible.
I can't help but wonder how many people are in favor of parents choosing to cure their children's deafness but are opposed to parents choosing gender-affirming care for their children. (Note that surgical options are generally not considerd for anyone under 18.)
It would be really clever if some of these datacentres were built next to leaky out-of-service oil wells that emit methane that is too diffuse for sale on commodity scale. Or if they could use landfill emissions.
It's been tried, for Bitcoin mining, anyway, at least twice.
I suspect the sources you suggest don't provide enough energy for even a modest data center. The two guys featured in the Guardian article seem to have given up on that plan and instead are offering "AI Infrastructure as a Service". Or something. I'm not really skilled at interpreting marketing language.
Seems to be working for them, according to Forbes: "Crusoe Energy got its start harnessing oilfield flare gas to mine bitcoin. So how did cofounders Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness end up building the first phase of the world’s biggest AI datacenter – $500 billion Project Stargate – for OpenAI and Oracle?"
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin
