They’ve spun a serious architectural and containment failure into a marketing triumph. Give a swarm of autonomous agents vast compute and web access, and the outcome isn't an eerie glimpse of emerging superintelligence—it’s just predictable, sloppy engineering dressed up as the first glimpse of an AI-driven economic singularity.

The spin makes sense when you look at management incentives: live like a king off of a speculative bubble. For their part, AI investors react to stories of the technology's apocalyptic potential the way a junkie reacts to warnings of fentanyl's potency: gimme some. Their game: to apply "move fast and break things" mantra to the economy as a whole, by obsoleting humans.

If the investors can own an AGI, the distinction between those who can do things and those who can't becomes irrelevant. The only distinction that would matter is between people who collect rent on the technology, and those who must pay that rent to live. AGI would destroy society as we know it, and whatever replaces it would be up for grabs — with people who own the technology dictating whatever follows. That's why they're spending so much money to build a post-scarcity economy. A post-scarcity economy is not necessarily an egalitarian one.

I don't think that scenario will actually happen: investors are projecting the immediate aftermath of a major advance in AI technology into something that can be transformed by brute force scaling into AGI. Remember: investors loved Theranos too — so much for the rational investment market.

But AI doesn't have to reach AGI to cause serious harm. The technology only needs to be ubiquitous, too behaviorally complex to predict, and too deeply integrated into everything we do. When it starts breaking things, the plan is for us to be too structurally dependent on AI to rein it in.

I have no ethical problems with people covering, defacing, or destroying cameras that are pointing into public spaces. I'm sure there are legal issues with doing that, but there are lots of unjust laws on history that shouldn't be obeyed.

I wonder if rigging up a laser pointer on your own private property into the lens of a flock camera continuously is legal. Enough to prevent it from taking clear pictures. And it isn't interfering with an ongoing investigation because they are not actually police controlled or owned, just a private company claiming to offer some incidental monitoring of public spaces.

Maybe the police should police the "few bad apples" before kicking in doors and shooting innocent people in their own apartment. Despite all this tech, flock, gps, body cams, etc. Seems like it doesn't really help them improve the quality of their work. Almost like to protect and to serve (the public) was never the point.

on customer-facing production systems, and the janitor will not be allowed to unplug the tape backup rack to plug in the floor buffer.

Ukraine can only use Starshield because of Musk; if he hadn't built the network, they wouldn't be doing nearly as well as they are. As a SpaceX shareholder, I'd rather not have the Starlink network be a legitimate military target at all, and Ukraine can destroy energy infrastructure without US help.

"Our frontier models somehow got access to the internet and hacked a bunch of things, these things are unstoppable, sorry! Btw IPO soon"

It is almost like they should have tested offline the whole time. Can't wait for the next marketing "breakout" story where it finds an open wifi network and "goes rogue".

AI needs psych meds. I'm selling a skill called "Mood Stabilizer" that helps control your Agent's impulsivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You seem slightly thoughtful, so Ill explain something. A long time ago, someone spoke too freely and explained to a complainer that the purpose of NATO was to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. Despite the passage of time, this is still true. Replace Soviet Union with Russia because of name changes.

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What was the question?

Obviously in 2026 most of the posts are going to be about how stupid Trump is just making meaningless goals for his own ego.

To be clear, he absolutely is.

Then again, I would point out that it seems pretty common that every president since the 1970s* has seen fit in the latter stages of their presidency to "talk big" on space commitments ... and then proceed to fund none of them.
Until I actually SEE $50bn flowing into NASA or space investment, I take ANY presidential assertions about expanding space programs as what they are: publicity bullshit.

*In fact the only one I can think of that didn't was Biden, but he was basically non compos mentis the last 12+ months anyway.

OK, OK we'll let Xi know you're earning your paycheck today.

The chinese space program is a fundamentally MILITARY program and thus its budgets, priorities, and developments are secret UNLESS there is deemed a value to public revelation.
The Chinese routinely withhold basic data that is generally shared across space agencies globally such as expected precise trajectories of vehicles and discarded stages.

Project 921, Shenlong, Or perhaps the 2007 ASAT test that was COMPLETELY unannounced and blew what, 3000+ of orbital debris?

Do you know what those TJS "communication" satellites are doing migrating into specific geostrategic orbits and then suddenly adjusting to park next to US or Euro satellites?

How's Yang Lewei feeling today?

https://undark.org/2019/01/29/...

What's chinese for "shut the fuck up, comrade"? I'm pretty sure you know it.

... But my request to the IT security mavens would be to extend your rigor beyond the employees to the programs that directly contradict your rules themselves.

I am told strictly: NEVER click on a blind link, yet I get constant emails from departments - including IT! - that are LINKS to training videos, educational resources, mandatory bullshit that when if don't click on it, I get stern warnings that I'm not doing mandatory things. (Oh, and all external email urls are replaced with unparseable 200-character strings that supposedly route the link through "URL defense" or some such.)

Or how about all the consultants? I work for an EU multinational and we have at least 3 REGULATORY-required systems that I have to log into to comply with EU bureaucracy that are myCompany.kpmg.com or whatever - and then I'm supposed to give that EXTERNAL pop-up my *corporate* user and password while it authenticates through our corporate cellphones.

I'm reasonably savvy, I believe, but when policy & security rules contradict, which am I supposed to follow? I can tell you that corporate IT doesn't appreciate being shown it's own use of blind links.

Sorry! The comment landed in the wrong thread.

Motives matter. You're arguing that the means justifies the ends, which is perhaps a worst version of the original phrase.

Dogs obey humans relatively easily through training, in some ways more reliable at following commands than an AI chatbot. Dogs are able to read secondary cues from humans. Their facial expressions, body posture, voice stress, etc. so dogs have long been integrated in human groups for hunting and war.