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Comment But if you build outside the US... (Score 1) 108

Well this whole strategy is confusing... If I build outside of the U.S., then I don't need to import semiconductors, I just import completed circuit boards or assembled products. If I am importing semiconductors, then by default, doesn't that imply that I am assembling in the States? So who does this impact? The chip importer that sell direct to consumer? Not a real big market for that.

Comment Re:Eating the seed corn (Score 1, Informative) 273

That is not what is being discussed in the article. The total funding is still the same. Congress sets the funding, not the executive branch. They simply are not allowing the funded to be wasted by handing it out based on skin color and they are not going to fund things that they disagree with - which every administration does. All-in, according to the article, we are talking about the re-assignment of roughly $1.5B in science funding. Not exactly the end of the world for science.

The changes on the NIH grants were far more consequential when they imposed a max indirect rate of 15%, which, for those that understand the field, means it is almost impossible to no lose money by accepting those grants. If you want to be up in arms over something, look at the NIH funding.

Comment Re:repo mirrors (Score 2) 18

You give them too much credit.
The purpose of this is for the government and their giant bureaucracy to not feel irrelevant. They want to sponsor this innovation so that they can claim that they played an important role in it, but AI innovations are going to happen without their involvement.
About a month ago, they created an AI working group that was going to lead the way for getting updating our education system for AI. To make sure that young students were getting exposed to AI at an earlier age. So they gathered a bunch of geriatric heads of government agencies to form a working group. My thought was - shouldn't the kids be teaching these old politicians about AI? After all, the kids already are learning how to use it.

Comment Re:I learned software engineering in the 70s (Score 1) 207

99% of writing that people are payed to create is not intended to convey feelings. Most writing serves a business purpose. It is how most communication in business takes place and it is and has been an important skill for thousands of years. Most writing has very little to do with formulating ideas or feelings to write about, but I think you seriously underestimate how good some of the thinking models are at formulating ideas when prompted correctly. I am using them quite effectively for this on a weekly basis. If anything, they currently struggle with understanding context and therefore purpose of their writing. They are limited by the context that we as humans provide to them in the prompting. You say that the tech is "nowhere near" being able to replace thoughts and feelings. I think some perspective is required on what is considered "near" when we are talking about skills and knowledge that have played a role in the building of society over thousands of years. Even if it takes 20 years to replace 90% of writing, I would still consider that to be "near"
Moreover, It was not my intention to take a tangent on discussing writing. That is just an example. The underlying concern is replacing knowledge, thinking, and intelligence. Our unique capacity for these things amongst all animal species is what has allowed us to be the most dominant species on this planet. We certainly did not achieve this through speed and agility. We don't yet understand the medium term consequences of making machines that in many ways will outperform us in most areas (maybe not all) of thinking and knowledge.
The original poster made the comment that the best of the best will still adapt and thrive. Sorry, but I think this is an extremely naive point of view when considering the magnitude of the change and disruption that we are observing. Even the best of the best of the passenger pigeons still ended up going extinct.

Comment Re:I learned software engineering in the 70s (Score 1) 207

I think you are unaware of how significant the threat to labor is.
I do a signficant amount of technical writing- reports, proposals, etc...
Relative to most engineers, I am pretty good at it and it has helped my career signficantly, but it didn't just happen overnight. It was the results of 12 years of K-12 language arts education, plus college, technical writing in college, and then writing as a graduate student.
Recently, I have accepted the fact that this is now a useless skill because AI tools are far better at writing than I could ever hope to be and it is not even close. A 7th grader that is below proficient in language arts could crank out superior writing on a topic to me in a tiny fraction of the time, with these AI tools.
The knowledge and experience behind writing has created jobs for over 2000 years. This is no small change and being "the best of the best" means jack shit because knowledge and intelligence - the things that separate us from the other animals, is no longer in short supply. It's value is going to zero.

Comment Re:So don't (Score 1) 87

It's not a false hope. It is very much real. You will not find a person from the elite universities just struggling to get by. For the rest of their lives, they will have that elite name on their resume and they will always get a leg up because of it. Is it fair? no, it is an unfair bias, but it is a thing. If you can get your children into one of these schools, then you should do it. It is life altering.

Comment Re:Not Western - Mongol (Score 1) 83

You know how Russia can disable all that supposed propaganda? Leave Ukraine. Nobody was give that any consideration about that until 2014/2022, so much so that Obama famously made fun of Romney for saying Russia was our biggest adversary in a debate in 2012.

Interesting. So, if I read what you are saying correctly, you think it is a good thing for Western governments and institutions to target their own people with anti-Russian propoganda if the result is to vulcanize support for Ukraine? and I assume also in supporting Ukraine militarily and financially?

Comment Re:Not Western - Mongol (Score 0) 83

The post kind of leaves this open to interpretation, but I took things exactly the opposite of you. I felt that the implication was that, if anything, the propaganda, fear, and manipulation was being put out by the west. How do you explain a country being continuously being accused of these things, incompetent enough to never actually succeed in assassinations or sabotage, yet at the same time, so competent that they are never caught red-handed?
In cases where someone is eventually convicted in the linked articles, it turns out that the responsible individuals end up not being russian or affiliated with Russia. So the implication, in my opinion, is that there is a massive campaign to falsely accuse Russia and Belarus of every wrong imaginable in order to create fear and anger and trick people into supporting conflict with Russia.
You didn't get that?

Comment Nature.... whatever (Score 0) 217

Funny that this was in Nature, a journal which in years past never would have published a study like this based on its applicability to nature and the political content. But the new Nature publishes bullshit stories about Pangolins spreading COVID after being pressured from powerful individuals. So not like we can trust them anymore.

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