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Submission + - A chilling AI warning (axios.com)

Mr_Blank writes: Jake Sullivan — with three days left as White House national security adviser, with wide access to the world's secrets — delivered a chilling, "catastrophic" warning for America and the incoming administration: The next few years will determine whether artificial intelligence leads to catastrophe — and whether China or America prevails in the AI arms race.

America must quickly perfect a technology that many believe will be smarter and more capable than humans. We need to do this without decimating U.S. jobs, and inadvertently unleashing something with capabilities we didn't anticipate or prepare for. We need to both beat China on the technology and in shaping and setting global usage and monitoring of it, so bad actors don't use it catastrophically. Oh, and it can only be done with unprecedented government-private sector collaboration — and probably difficult, but vital, cooperation with China.

This is beyond uncharted waters. It's an unexplored galaxy — "a new frontier," in his words. And one, he warns, where progress routinely exceeds projections in advancement. Progress is now pulsing in months, not years.

There won't be one winner in this AI race. Both China and the U.S. are going to have very advanced AI. There'll be tons of open-source AI that many other nations will build on, too. Once one country has made a huge advance, others will match it soon after. What they can't get from their own research or work, they'll get from hacking and spying. (It didn't take long for Russia to match the A-bomb and then the H-bomb.)

Steve Bannon and other MAGA originals believe AI is evil at scale — a job-killer for the very people who elected Trump. But for now, Bannon is a fairly lonely voice shouting against AI velocity. Trump and the AI gods hold the stage.

Comment UBI Plus (Score 1) 1

why not do away with all monetary requirements to obtain, . . . all needed things? IT IS foreseeable - percent-of-population-wise - that most people in populated areas will not have 'wages' to use to obtain their daily requirements. Food, shelter, clothing, health care - Yes, societies are changing, but if we do not "find another way", the government will not have the resources to take care of the masses, the money-grabbing big corporations will not help, so we MUST find another way. Otherwise, the worst-case scenarios will be constant reality (homeless cities, people starving and killing and dying in the streets, even cannibalism) So, If major seachange is needed to a) save democracy b) enrich all citizens c) help the world to avoid conflict, who in our world could start this now? #question.ofTheDay, #Seachange, #ParadigmShift

Submission + - Sam Altman's "Universal Basic Income" Study Sparks Debate on Ai, Work Economics (techspot.com) 1

jjslash writes: Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often proposed as a potential solution to job losses caused by AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman supported a three-year study to evaluate its feasibility. According to the lead researcher, UBI offers some advantages but is not a definitive solution. The study cost $60 million, with Altman personally contributing $14 million and OpenAI providing $10 million.

The impact generative AI is having on the jobs market is well documented. Altman, boss of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, said that in 2016, he started realizing the effects that advanced AI could have on society, especially jobs, and conducted an experiment aimed at showing that UBI could negate some of these issues. That program gave 1,000 people $1,000 per month, while a 2,000-person control group was given $50 per month.


Comment the knowledge of further destruction of Earth (Score 1) 1

Planet Earth has already reached the point where the costs to house and feed our growing population are greater than our Planet can afford. We know this to be fact. Do your research. We are increasing the areas required to grow food to feed what is needed to feed humans, by depleting those areas which naturally sustain us by cleansing the air that we breathe. By depleting the forests, and continuing the ever-increasing 'growth approach' to all that we do, instead of a sustainability approach, we are creating the situations which are causing the warming of the earth [and all that that brings with it]. We are creating worse health for humans, and those "once in a hundred years" pandemics are coming sooner. Some 'modern' societies claim to be reducing their carbon footprints, but is that really happening? Have you researched the creation and operation of the alternatives that 'they' are telling us MAY be enough to make a difference? And aren't there still undeveloped countries which will be sold all the same products sold to us in the past? Which, of course, will continue to contribute to the situation we are in? The 'point' of a business company is to make money, so those opening markets ARE the next places to market to. How can we continue to move forward and hope to make a difference if we can't remove the profit motive? The time is now.

Submission + - William Shatner: My Trip To Space Filled Me With 'Overwhelming Sadness' (variety.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared. I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely all of that has thrilled me for years but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her. Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna... things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.” It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.

Comment When was the last time the census was accurate? (Score 1) 90

Since the 1970's I have known citizens who were not interested in submitting their information for the census, and they did\do not. The total number of such individuals I know\have known has increased exponentioally over the years. The percentage of each race to the total of U.S. citizens, as reported by the census, in my experience, has NEVER been correct since the 1980s. my .02

Submission + - DOS Freeware (freewarehof.org)

reybo writes: Younger FreeDOS users may not know of the Freeware Hall of Fame, a source of old DOS freeware some of which is on-line 24/7 at www.freewarehof.org .

This file base of free programs was begun in 1984 to help small businesses enter the world of computers. It became an international file base distributed to BBSs around the world via floppy disc until Bobbie Sumrada in Memphis gave it a home on CHEERS, her premier BBS. The entire history is on the FreeHOF web site.

Also there are downloadable copies of PCBoard, one of the great BBS platforms of all time. Anyone can create a dial-up BBS with this to see what they were like, so long as they have a DOS partition for it. I think MS DOS is also there to download, version 5.n or 6.n.

Something you won't find at this site is games. FHOF never distributed games.

Submission + - A DC-10 Passenger Plane Is Perfect at Fighting Wildfires (vice.com)

Daniel_Stuckey writes: Friday night in Southern California's Silverado Valley, relief flew in on an old airliner. In this summer of drought and fire the DC-10, an airplane phased out of passenger service in February, has been spotted from Idaho to Arizona delivering up to 12,000 gallons of fire retardant in a single acrobatic swoop.

The three-engine DC-10 entered service in 1970 as a passenger jet, and the last airplane working in that capacity, operated by Biman Bangladesh Airlines, made its final flight on February 24. But some designs defy obsolescence. The DC-10 had already been converted to function as a mid-air refueling airplane for the Air Force, and in 2006, the first fire-fighting DC-10 was unleashed on the Sawtooth fire in San Bernardino County, California.

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