Is essentially what heâ(TM)s saying. This is how scumbags usually justify their terrible choices and behaviour.

The relevant determinant here is not consciousness at all, but mattering and significance. Computers have purposes that are derivative of their programming and the representations that are framed through that programming. Humans and other animals have original purposes that are shaped by more than just their representations of things, but also, and crucially, their feelings about the things with which they are practically involved. Their feelings change the content and vice versa. Machines don't have feelings, and nothing matters to them or has any significance. People shouldn't be misled by talk of "consciousness," it's not what makes us human. What makes us human is the things that we care about. See Charles Taylor, Hubert Deyfus, Martin Heidegger, Harry S. Frankfurt, Nikolas Kompridis, and others on these issues if you want a philosophical explication of this.

This is so question-begging as to be totally meaningless.

Not if they allow you to help your children and grandchildren survive after they're born. Not to mention your extended family, with whom you share many genes. Or species. Or a related species. Or a species that you and your conspecifics depend on to survive. Or something even higher up on the taxonomic hierarchy. Or life as a whole, with whom you share DNA itself. Thinking of natural selection only exerting pressure on an individual organism or even species is way too limited. Whole blood lines, phyla and species disappear under new conditions, and others that survived those conditions reproduce. We share an enormous and probably unquantifiable percentage of our genetic structure with plants. Mutations can take eons to play out. We're currently facing a future in which the conditions of our own existence, even the conditions of life, are threatened. The universe is about to make a selection for us if we can't adapt, and that adaptation might not be hard coded into our genes at all. The capacity for changing how we live in relation to nature could be, though. To live less destructively, for example. If not, wish us luck.

correlates positively with intelligence, for reasons entirely internal to the issue at hand, which is simulating intelligence.

HD was good enough, actually. The only thing 4K adds at reasonable viewing distance is sharper text and other overlaid graphic elements. 8K is beyond overkill.

3D doesn't work in theatres, it's too dim.

None of these are the reasons that 3D failed. It failed because it's a step backwards aesthetically and technologically vs 2D. The great innovation of photography and cinema was the presentation of 3D space on a flat plane. This allows the eye to roam freely over the depth of the image without having to do the work that it would do in real life. 3D can be fun, but it takes more effort on the part of the viewer, and that effort isn't rewarded with any deeper aesthetic experience. The rare exceptions, like Wim Wenders' Pina, prove the rule. Pina was a dance film, it was a re-presentation of something that had already been finished for the stage. Ask yourself why a film like Citizen Kane is so highly regarded for its use of depth of field. It's because you can see everything at once on the 2D plane.

This is wrong. They shouldnâ(TM)t be doing this. Not everything people can do technologically should be done. This is one of those things they shouldnâ(TM)t do.

That must be why they drop hammers on people instead of bombs.

People in tech should be in 100% solidarity with this, as their jobs are as threatened by AI as anyone else's. I'd go even further than that, though. Given climate change, it's time to abandon a linear (or exponential) notion of technological progress. The planet can't support it, and neither can human beings. Ask what our real technological needs are. They certainly don't include whatever this is.

Iâ(TM)m saying no

None of those things needs to be done.

To answer your question as succinctly as I can—pressure from who?—the government wanted to avoid having Assange on US soil for a trial that would centre on US war crimes, especially at a time when Democrats are at risk of losing votes because of their support for similar crimes and an unfolding genocide in Gaza. They also never seriously thought they would be able to convict him, but wanted to torture him and see him broken both to neutralize him and to set an example to others. They got what they wanted, because he has now pled guilty to something that everyone with a basic understanding of the case—including the Obama DOJ—knows should have been protected speech. And I think you should care about that, because just like the escalating prosecution of whistleblowers in recent years (including under Obama), it sets a terrible precedent both for real journalists, and for all the cosplaying journalists who remained silent during his imprisonment and appeals. Outlets like the NY Times and Washington Post did not do anything materially different from what Assange did when they broke the stories from, and hand-in-hand with, WikiLeaks. I don't blame him for pleading guilty, because he deserves to be free. But this is a travesty and a disgrace. Assange is now free, but the state is also free to act with even greater impunity than it had before.

Yes, cheap mass produced goods are apparently one of the highest ends we can achieve in this era when anything is supposed to be possible. And people imagine imagine implanting these things in their bodies or brains, expecting them to work better than organic nature. Against all the evidence in front of them that these cheaply produced goods donâ(TM)t last. Iâ(TM)m not arguing for going back to writing everything on clay tablets or stone, but something in between would be nice. Something that lasts longer than a generation.