I'm glad Skjellifetti's post has been modded up as Interesting.

I suppose it is understandable that the earlier forays into nuclear energy had less of the guardrails that are demanded these days. And yes, those safety regulations are generally prompted by the environmental movement which itself comes into existence because of the problems that come out of those early forays.

I knew someone who worked at Windscale (now called Sellafield) in the UK. There was a fire at this nuclear plant in 1957, and the horror stories that workers told (e.g. people handling nuclear fuel with bare hands), illustrated a similar situation, with a country inexperienced in the operation of nuclear reactors doing their best with what they knew at the time - Windscale was constructed shortly after WWII, to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The fire resulted in it being shut down, and decommissioning started in the 1980s, and is expected to continue beyond 2040.

Some countries require that phones make a sound when the camera is used (like a camera shutter sound). This makes it even more difficult to be surreptitious with a cell phone. I wonder how those laws affect smartglasses. If there was a case to be made that smartglasses fall under this law, Meta could be required to produce some sort of "clicking" version of the glasses. I imagine that would put a dent in their revenue in those countries.

The only way to stop a bad guy with smartglasses is with a good guy with smartglasses

That may be true, but I preferred the America when people didn't need to fear this sort of thing.

I beg to differ.

My city recently gave some "points" to residents which they could spend to boost the local economy. I asked AI whether there was any way I could use these points to pay my credit card bill. I was provided with a method and instructions that worked.

To be fair... I imagine the probability of success of a store business run by humans in SF is less than 100%.

Opposite, but not equal.

Listening to a podcast recently, there was an ad for "Plaud", which is apparently a small device that records audio, and using AI, can be used to list the action points from a meeting, etc. The ad noted that you can asking it about meetings in the past.

There was a recent post on Slashdot about Flock cameras, and the backlash from people who dislike them.

With the spread of all these devices that record audio and video, it is going to become quite difficult to "opt out" of being recorded for privacy reasons. It will also be difficult to keep personal infromation private, even with the best of intentions.

In 20 years time, particularly in cities, or workplaces, we might find that nothing we do or say is private.

Having said that, I suspect there will be enough people who feel some discomfort about this to push back. Is there a legal or practical method of doing this?

I take your point, but it is important not to lose sight of how great the advances in AI have been in the last few years.

In the 1980s AI was all the rage, and while academics were excited about what it could now do, and what the future might hold, and how things had moved on since the 1960s, I don't think anyone thought that passing the Turing Test was likely to happen anytime soon. There was some tentative research into Neural Networks, but the hardware resources were so primitive that the possibilities in this area were largely in the realm of the imagination.

A system like ChatGPT or Gemini, if taken back in a time machine to a university Computer Science department of the 1980s would be seen with absolute amazement. Arguably, this field has advanced more than any other in Computer Science.

So yes, there is (still) a gap between the frightening autonomous swarms of AGI that are described, and the AI we experience in the Chat GPT models provided to the general public, but the fact that the recent advances have been so astonishing should at least give us pause.

Hmm... I see what you mean.
Although to be precise, the choice is probably A followed by B, or B.

I'm hanging out for the "iPhone Scroll".

What do you find yourself generally using the larger screen for? Is it watching videos, editing documents, or simply being able to see two apps open at the same time?

I like the idea of having something as portable as a phone, but which can be opened so that I could watch a film on a larger screen, but the premium for this advantage is a bit too high for me.

... A bit like being called the fullbacks of chess.

Remember how Carl Sagan used to place the cold war, with all its spending on nuclear weapons, and the danger they posed to humanity, in the context of the vast cosmos, making it seem petty.

He was able to make that case without giving up, without losing his temper or becoming exasperated. Simply by describing the bigger picture he was able to insert wisdom into the discussion. And the weight of his rhetoric made it difficult for anyone to return with a counterargument defending realpolitik.

America - Do you have any more where he came from?

"We shouldn't slow down or they might win".

Whether it be AI, or reducing heat-trapping emissions, the argument loses validity if the result is catastrophe for all.
Picture a car racing towards a cliff. The car has two accelerator pedals. The occupants are playing "chicken". Neither wants to take their foot off the pedal and lose the game of chicken.