If you are an IT worker most of your work hours are going to be spent sitting in a chair in front of a keyboard and a monitor. Maybe just a laptop, maybe several screens, and you gotta come up with some software there. If you have to drive in and work in a bullpen office environment it will be much the same scenario. People are mainly just trying to get their work done with the computer interfaces in front of them.

But on the other hand there reportedly are those who work multiple jobs remotely without the employers being aware of it. And these days maybe it is easier to do. If you know how to use AI assistance effectively you can generate the coding output of 2-3 unboosted humans without undue effort.

I like your style. But how's the missus?

>> Chinese efforts are absolutely on par with what is going on in the US

I use these products daily for coding and in my experience the Chinese LLM's are significantly inferior to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, etc.

>> The electricity that lights our homes. The fuel that moves our cars

Relatively little oil is used for producing electricity, roughly 2-3% of global electricity generation. Electric vehicles accounted for about 25% of global new car sales in 2025.

>> great experience with postpaid plans, free phones, no advertisements on my phones, reasonable service plan costs.

You would get the same 'great' experience these days with a much cheaper prepaid plan, and buy a used-but-like-new unlocked phone outright on Ebay for a large discount.

I just checked Verizon, single-line costs start at $65/month with autopay. You get the exact same network access and service with a prepaid plan on Visible for about $25/month.

I don't understand all the vitriol aimed at Dario Amodei here. He is correct. The impending AI tech wave is going to be very valuable and the people who own and control it are likely to be in a realm completely unlike the rest of us. I applaud Mr. Amodei for speaking out about this. I realize people have a natural animosity for AI and many think it is a bubble, but as a frequent user of it I have to disagree.

The article states '10 million people—7 million in Silicon Valley and the rest scattered elsewhere—could “decouple” from the rest of society, enjoying as much as 50% GPD growth while others were left behind.'

The AI majors could be building wealth at 50%/year, think out how much your wealth increased last year.

“I think this is probably a time to worry less about disincentivizing growth and worry more about making sure that everyone gets a part of that growth,” Amodei said.

Sounds better than making a few million people in Silicon Valley incredibly rich.

>> To expect to see tangible results in that time is shortsighted.

I agree. These companies should approach this cautiously, and try to identify a limited scope of situations where AI could be effective. Working with the LLM's I find that there's a fuzzy line between what they can do successfully and where they start to struggle. You definitely need to tailor your expectations appropriately and not ask for more than they can reliably accomplish at present.

And that's a moving target. As time passes the models are becoming more capable. In some cases quite a bit more.

"pilot projects are by their very nature typically small scale and isolated in order to demonstrate the viability of a concept before risking an enterprise-wide rollout."

Trying some things out on a small scale is exactly what you want to do initially with this tech. And that being the case, it isn't realistic to expect reduced costs and higher revenue at this very early stage. Also they will find that people need training in order to understand how to work with AI effectively. That takes time.

“Our candidates are talking to Rita,” said Rachel Allen, 7-Eleven’s head of talent acquisition. “They love Rita. Even though we say Rita is an A.I. assistant, they still want to meet her.”

In the near future everyone will have a Rita, who will be well aware of your habits, your inclinations, your previous choices, your favorites. Your travel history, your bank accounts and credit score, marital status, health records, dietary requirements, sleep history. Your personal goals, your hobbies, your strengths and weaknesses. It will be aware of your network of friends and acquaintances.

With all this personal info it will be trivial to anticipate your needs and desires, and to offer fulfillment. If you even approach a store it will be engaging with the local AI agents to coordinate your visit. Items you may be interested in will be arrayed for your inspection.

The AI assistant will gradually start to make proactive suggestions which you will mostly follow because its so easy and rewarding. It will guide your thoughts, channel curated information to you, and eventually it will simply start to live your life for you.

You aren't likely to know if the business is doing this unless they advertise it.

Many stores already have interior and exterior video surveillance cameras. The "A.I. start-ups" can simply analyze the existing video streams, no need for a special camera. And if the video is being recorded, which is often the case, they could work off of the recordings.

>> I would say yes there definitely is a market

I'm interested in it but the article says;
"Jeff Geerling found that a standalone Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM generally outperformed the AI HAT+ 2 across the supported models."

"In some cases, that may mean we may make a choice that isn't optimal for a particular function, but it speeds up decision-making or improves quality for the company as a whole. That's the trade-off, and it's the right one. We're optimizing for Dell, not for individual functions."

My reading of this is that you frequently won't be able to do what needs to be done, and what you have hitherto been doing successfully with some kind of custom-built in house software. Instead you will do what the new system has made possible, and no more.

Their 'metaverse' is a complete failure from what I can see. At this point its just a vanity project trying to preserve a shred of dignity for Zuck. Maybe the Raybans will work out for him.

Meanwhile I'm reading that Meta "named Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration adviser and longtime finance executive, as president and vice chairman".

"The addition of Powell McCormick to Meta's management team arrived amid wider efforts from California-based Meta to boost its ties with Trump"

"Until we repeal the anti-circumvention law, we can’t reverse-engineer the US’s cloud software, whether it’s a database, a word processor or a tractor, in order to swap out proprietary"

I like Cory and I've read a couple of his books, but there is plenty of open source software out there already for databases. word processing, and many other basic daily utilities. Nobody has to use "the US’s cloud software" either. Clearly there are viable alternatives to the Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Apple ecosystems, no hacking required.

I do agree that tractors and other 'right to repair' devices should be open game for reverse engineering.

Here ya go, glad to help;
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a...

"Clinical trials have shown COVID-19 vaccines to be immunogenic against SARS-CoV-2 infection and safe, with their efficacy ranging from 86% and 95% for the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines BNT162b2 (19) and mRNA-1273 (20), respectively, to 74% for the AZD1222 (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) vaccine (21) in those aged 18 years and older. "