January 6th attack on the capital involved a lot of proud boys. Several of whom were convicted for their actions that day.

That they exist is not the issue. It is the credulity with which people talk about AI agents. AI, no matter the guidelines, cannot be forced to stick to writing things that are real. It is a simulacrum of intelligence, of self directed agency, of humanness. They are sophisticated simulation algorithms. Not true self-aware intelligences.

part of the problem is one of vocabulary. We need new vocabulary to separate what LOOKs like a person with agency, from some that that actually IS a person with agency. By reviling our existing language, we are conferring greater significance with what these programs are doing than is appropriate, based on HOW they work.

it is easy to believe these agents are being truthful and honest, because they parrot real humans, but every AI output I have ever attempted to validate has turned out to be completely disconnected from reality.

There is no reason to believe ANYTHING the bots told him about their users is real, or accurate. Fabrication is the norm. Stop hugging AI vendor propaganda.

Yeah, and one thing we know about situations like this (referred to as a âoereverse centaurâ, where the person is the liability sink for the computer) is that AI can make mistakes faster and more subtly than busy humans can catch them. So, No, this is not a good use of AI

AI needs to win or lose on the merits of what it can do. NOT on the basis of how good they are at shoving it down our throats.

office first put copilot into the ribbon, which is logical. That is where all new features appear eventually. Then, after people ignored it, because the did not want to use it, they put it into a button that hovers over the document, and cannot be hidden (unlike objects in the ribbon). I rolled back my office install to a version with copilot in the ribbon, so that I could hide it again, and disabled auto update. Hopefully this means they will put it back into the ribbon, and I can re-enable updates and go back to ignoring their AI until such time as I find a use for it.

The things he is advocating for are a means of generating leverage disproportionate to the size of their population. Which is his point.

Being an author, and being an FOSS advocate are not mutually exclusive. That you seem to think they are shows - again - how little you understand. His books, a couple of which I have read, describe his time lobbying against big tech, which makes him an advocate. His books themselves take his lobbying positions to the general public, which makes him an advocate.

you can disagree. Just as all the big tech CEOs and their co-oped politicians. Just do so honestly. He might fail (again), but success isnâ(TM)t what makes one an advocate. The act of pushing is.

I think I spotted the pro-billionare shill.

Doctorow is an open source advocate. Something that, famously, DOESNT pay well. If he is a grifter, what is the grift? Spend your career championing FOSS and losing out to big tech for peanuts?

it is right to be skeptical that Canada can wean itself off of the big tech lobbying teat, but calling him a grifter is just a laughably bad take. It shows you donâ(TM)t know what the word Grifter means.

he is using agriculture as an example because it is convent, not because it is apt.

Agriculture automation was about creating plenty, true, but those who moved off of the farm still had to work to purchase their share of the food. And all the way to today, that is still true.

AI is not automation in the same sense that a tractor is automation. In the AI future tech CEOs are envisioning, there is no job suitable for a person. The AI will do everything, including the work that needs to be done in the real world through robots. Including building and serving those robots via other robots. So, in this scenario, how does one purchase their share of the largess? They cannot, beucase there is no task to which they are more economically suited than the robots. His BS about humans wanting human interaction is true, but immaterial. Just look at the success of AI slop, which is only going to get more compelling over time. No human content creator will be able to compete with the type of AI they are envisioning. Particularly if they succeed in delivering on their AGI claims (which I don't think they can. Not the way they are going about it, but that is a different discussion).

For the AI revolution they are describing to truly work for those who do not own the robots or the AI server farms, we would need a revolution in just about every facet of human society. and UBI is not even a bandaid. It is a set of keys being jangled in front of our eyes to distract us from the captive bolt gun they are positioning at our collective temples.

I loved his site when it was mostly about analyzing tech business models through the lens of Apple and his Aggregation theory. However, as his profile has risen, and his access to the tech elite increased (along with, possibly, his access to the ketamine they all seem to take), the quality of his analysis has declined greatly. Basically, he can reliably be expected to have the worst possible take on AI policy. We can speculate as to why (being an idiot, being smitten with tech CEOS, having large investments in tech stocks, or a brain tumor), but in the end it does not matter. Ben Thompson simply has nothing useful to say anymore about the tech market, unless you are looking to hear what the CEOs want you to think, but put more eloquently. Ironically, this is exactly the kind of the job that AI is tailor made to destroy.

As for his latest article, that robots can make everything does not mean that the owners of the robots will share the output of their robots. Not for free, or even at a price the poor jobless masses on UBI can afford. After all, becoming a member of the future 'robot owner class' is likely to be a byproduct of being a self-centered, win-at-all-cost asshole who values money and not people (Zuck, Besos, etc.) or at the very least someone willing to throw them under the buss to keep the money pump still churning (Cook if you are being generous). They will be either a Solipsist (who does not really believe other people are "real" in any sense that matters, and so is ok with their exploitation like Musk) or a narcissist (who admits they are real, but simply does not give a fuck - Zuck) willing to accumulate the necessary wealth to join that class by pressing as many people as possible to extract the value from their labor and make it your own.

The kind of altruism necessary to make his statement about ownership of the robots being a moot point true is antithetical to the accumulation of the power necessary to be a robot owner in all cases except one very narrow case... Government. If the government owned all of the robots (and was sane, had the support and interests of the people at heart, and was not co-opted by the very folks most likely to be the robot owners) it might be that ownership could be considered secondary to the output of the robots. But as long as those who own the robots are humans, who value money, social status, assets, or anything else that they might be able to extract from non-robot-owning humans, the question of 'who owns the robots" is a critical question.

Fact is, the AI revolution envisioned by Tech CEOs (and Ben) is going to destroy the ability of most people to make a living with their labor. And UBI does not solve that, it simply locks in the advantages for the owner class, and the disadvantages for everyone else. Think more "The Expanse" and less "Star Trek". The majority of humans living on below subsistence handouts from the ruling elites, except that the ruling class will not be answerable to those masses. They will only be answerable to themselves. Serfdom 2.0, except even worse for the serfs, because competence at a skill will be worth precisely nothing .No ability to pull yourself up or socially advance, because the table stakes will be to have inherited a double digit share of the global wealth.

Great! Now do the same of Office.

After they added copilot to the ribbon in all office apps I figured it how to hide it. Then, yesterday, office auto updated to add it back as a free floating button that cannot be hidden. I had to roll back to a previous version, and then disable auto update.

i get that some folks like using AI to do their work, but I donâ(TM)t. I should not lose useful screen space just so that MS can artificially inflate their copilot usage stats through dark patterns (basically putting it in a place where it is likely to be clicked on by accident, and cannot be hidden).

seriously considering libre office

it is not a separation of powers issue, in the same way that a congressional staffers refusing to tell the POTUS what their bosses say in closed door meetings is not a separation of powers issue. By your line of reasoning, there is no person in government who does not work at the pleasure of the POTUS except for the elected officials and the justices. Everyone else. Every staffer, every janitor, scientist, soldier, sailor, health inspector is beholden to a single man. And there is nothing anyone else in government can do about it if he decides to fire them. That is not democracy. That is not a balance of powers. That is dictatorship. you are advocating for dictatorship.

Congress has the ability to delegate its authority to regulatory agencies they create, in the same way that the POTUS can delegate his authority to Cabinet members. When the POTUS tries to undermine the independence of the FTC (or any other independent agency), he is not taking back to him powers that were his. He is violating the very separation of powers you claim to care about, by seizing control over congressional authority simply because the job of the agency requires some level of 'execution'. Regulations are derived from, and therefore an extension of the law, which is the responsibility of Congress. The president was originally envisioned, not as the leader of the government, but as the executor of the will of congress with oversight from the court.

Take a look at the list of (~40) independent agencies in the US government. There are A LOT!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Now think about all the things that those agencies do day to day. Think about the technical expertise necessary to perform these important government functions. And then think about the skillset of the average congress critter.

Congress is full of politicians, which means folks whose primary job qualification is the ability to convince rich people to part with their money for the purposes of running a campaign. And their secondary qualification is being able to read the political winds in their district, and portray themself as the "Right kind of person" for their constituents. Nothing about financial acumen, or experience with Trade, logistics, economics, etc.

Fact is congress DOES write the laws, which are a form of high level mission statement. And then they delegate implementation to subject matter experts. And then they empower those experts to do their jobs with a degree of freedom from the whims of politics. It is by no means perfect, but it is far better than the patronage system of old, or the crony capitalism of the current trump administration.

An analogy is home building. If you want to build a new home, you sit down with an architect to design your home. They decide, with your input, where the kitchen should go; how big to make the family room; how many bed rooms, floors, etc. Then, they have to hand those plans off to an engineer to figure out how to actually build that house safely and within code. Architects can draw anything they want on paper, but only an engineer can tell you how to actually build it, or if it even can be built. Congress serves as the architect for our laws. Federal agencies serve as the engineers. Figuring out HOW to implement the design in a practical way. They also serve as the home inspectors, to make sure that the builder actually followed the blueprints the engineer approved. Since we can't trust our politicians not to be in the pock of the home builder.

Unless you are a lawyer I would suggest you not presume to judge the constitutionality of delegated powers and independent agencies

the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of both independent agencies and delegated powers in the past. This court may not, but that has more to do with their focus on giving the Trump administration as much leeway as possible, and nothing to do with what the constitution actually allows. After all, they have upheld his appropriation of similarly explicit congressional powers related to spending.

If you cannot see the difference between "we will set the best policy we can, even if it is something the president does not like" (how independent agencies operate), and "we will let the president set policy, and simply implement his will, regardless of how good or bad it will be for the country" (which is how agencies that are not independent operate) then you are not a serious person.

Independent does not mean unbiased. So your whole straw man about "does an unbiased person exist" is irrelevant.

In this context, an "Independent" agency, is one that is not specifically under the direct control of the executive branch, despite serving an executive function within its area of responsibility. It means that while the executive branch has some administrative responsibilities for the agency, it does not call the shots. Those appointed to lead the agency, by congress and the president, are not shackled to the whims of political theatre. It is a way to help an agency focus on good policy, and not on good political optics (at least to a degree).