Firing the entire board of vaccine science immunologists, and replacing them with pre-science miasma theory antivax stooges, for example.

Given the way so many people vastly over-estimate ChatGPT as an actual intelligence, I thing it's quite fair to put it up against an old and tiny chess engine on easy level. This is basically "Are you Smarter than a5th Grader" for AIs. And it is NOT.

Well, they might let me remember people's names. There are probably other uses, but that's the one that occurs to me.

I accept that it is breaking the law. That doesn't mean any official is going to enforce that law. There are lots of laws that are frequently broken in obvious ways, and are enforced only when it is a convenient excuse.

How far in the future?
I can imagine useful AI based "smart glasses", but that description doesn't fit what I've heard so far, and my prescription means I couldn't try them if I wanted to do so.

Only sort of. Current artificial models are missing several layers of reasoning over the top. They do a decent ob of modeling speech and writing production, but lack any form of executive function or higher reasoning. They often model a person suffering fluent aphasia. They also lack the inhibition that curbs hallucination and allows for prioritization. Further, they lack the effects of the lower functions that seem to provide energy to the system to bump it out of local minima to the better broader solution. There's a long way to go.

Current work is mostly on the lower hanging fruit of making the part that's been figured out work better.

If it's doing auto-transcription it's probably training an AI with your information, This could be a major security problem.

It's annoying, but good, because "there's a sucker born every minute" means there are always new victims who haven't been warned.

Good point. I'd never thought of it that way.

The problem you miss is that some of us would rather not even pay for the addled video. Prime didn't change its fee when they added video, so give me a video-free alternative at a lower price. I resent paying for something I don't use.

I wonder if anyone has ever done studies of ad effectiveness vs frequency. If they had half the ads which were twice as effective, they could charge twice as much and have the same revenue and happier customers. There must be some sort of Laffer curve. No ads == no revenue but more watchers. 100% ads == no watchers and no revenue. Where is the sweet spot? Some old TV shows were 55 minutes long with 5 minutes of ads, then they switched to 50 minutes and 10 minutes, so they have to chop out 5 minutes to syndicate them.

I bet the broadcasters have done the studies, and 10 minutes must produce more revenue, but I'd really like to see those studies.

When they first bundled video with Prime, I figured it wouldn't be too long before it went south. It did. Series would include the first season only, they dropped a few I was in the middle of watching, they shifted some shows to Britbox and others which had been included.

Then they announced the ads, and I stopped watching. You're going to charge me for something I didn't ask for and can't get a reduction for not using, AND you're going to interrupt it with ads? No thanks. Stopped watching. Well, I was probably watching only one or two shows a week.

But it still annoys me that I'm paying for something I don't want which is supported by ads. I've been watching how much free shipping I get and comparing to Walmart and others. It's close enough that one more screwup and I might dump Prime.

There have been lots of instances where companies with a "good reputation" changed their spots.

If we don't preprogram them in advance, then how will kids learn "Math class is tough!"?

Selecting office software is not a political statement

That's right, it's not a statement. It's just a position. You either hold the position that it's ok to be dependent on a third party and it's ok to fail if that third party turns against you, or you hold the position that it's not ok and you would prefer to stay up no matter what adversaries want.

It only becomes a statement once you tell someone that security and reliability are among your values. ;-)