Another great example of garbage behaviour being the result of employees gaming garbage metrics.

That's what I use AI for as well: a first step. The biggest difference AI and regular sources, is that the latter give you a lot of clues regarding the accuracy of the information. The source, the website, the way the information is written, context like article titles, all of these give some hint about how well the author understands the material, and if their answer is even relevant to your question. The AI however will always appear authoritative, even if they are obviously wrong, and with important context stripped out. Sometimes you get an answer that looks plausible, but is invalid, or about a different version of the gadget you are asking about.

AI has been great for generating artwork, logos, sounds and so on, for small personal projects. And I've use AI deepfake voice generation to provide voice-over for game mods (some of the voice actors have given modders explicit permission to use their voice like that). It lets me do stuff that was completely out of my reach just a few years ago, or things for which I have zero talent.

"Nuclear Power will solve the climate crisis, and it doesn't need a breakthrough or a TED talk, all it needs is a building permit" - Sabine Hossenfelder.

Humans drive into stationary emergency vehicles all the time. Self-driving cars don't need to be perfect, they just need to be a bit better than humans. In the end it'll come down to insurance companies*, and they'll just look at the numbers. There will be a point where insurers will charge you extra if you have a steering wheel and pedals fitted.

*) in sane legal systems, where a robotaxi manufacturer can't just be sued for millions just because someone died; the plaintiff would have to show gross negligence. For the rest: liability would lie with the robotaxi operator or owner, through their insurance. Just as is the case now.

Instead of the clunky ICE drivetrain with an electric motor bolted on, I'd rather have that in reverse: a fully electric drive train (with a full size battery), combined with a small petrol generator that can be enabled to extend the vehicle's range. The advantages: much simpler construction, the engine can be kept small and light, and always runs at the optimum RPM, saving gas. There are a few cars with range extenders already, and when enabled they can almost double the range of the car, but sadly most offerings only have a shitty little EV battery that doesn't have much range to begin with.

They might even have conducted their own experiments already, and set the lights accordingly. To maximize profits of course, not to encourage responsible gambling. The casino manager's reaction to: "It is possible that simply dimming the blue in casino lights could help promote safer gambling behaviors" would have been "MOAR BLUE!"

Yes, exactly. Best Buy got Napster because they bought Roxio - the CD-Burning software company. LOL. "Roxio Toastt". Roxio was the first vulture to pick the bones of the original Napster, buying branding assets when the feds shut it down.

Invented virtualization.

Doesn't ANYBODY but me remember that "Napster" was actually RealNetworks? You know, the old Real.com that was the Internet's first scale, commercial streamer? Real became Rhapsody for several years. Rhapsody had no name recognition, so they bought the Napster name from it's owners... BEST BUY.

It gets weirder. Rhapsody had been Sonos' partner streaming service - and Rhapsody is also... I HEART RADIO. Now the whole Napster lot got dumped in the lap of venture capital vultures.

Data structures and algorithms are used in interviews, not because you'll be expected to implement sorts and linked lists, but because they demonstrate that the candidate can implement and troubleshoot software from specs, using cases they should be familiar with if they have a CS / coding background. Testing for skills rather than knowledge. By the same token, it makes sense to test candidates on the use of AI assistants, if they'll be using those in their work. Though rather than let them produce textbook algorithms with prompts, I'd give them a prompt that produces known faulty output, then ask them to test the result, figure out what is wrong with it, and fix the code and/or the prompt.

Plenty of good content on YT. Enough to justify the €10 or so for a premium subscription, and ad free viewing.

I'm not hoping for more trash talk and hate speech in the comments, but the censorship in the comment section has gotten ridiculous. Perfectly reasonably and polite comments get nixed, and some people (including myself) have noticed an odd personal ban on using certain (fairly innocent) words. When those people include that word, the post is consistently removed, while other people are allowed to use it. All in all very strange.

True, but "Gandalf vs Predator" doesn't fall under Fair Use. Copyright does not just protect the work but also the ideas in it. Personally I think that's going too far. Does that mean that others can profit off your creativity? Yes... and it's been like that since the dawn of time. That's how culture has always worked.

I’ve no illusions about which side the AI companies are on. But what I’m afraid of is that the issue of AI training will be misused by “Big Content” (for lack of a better word) to further restrict fair use, and to raise the barrier to entry for new commercial content creators. That’s what they have always done.

Personally I am not a fan of copyright allowing creators to retain control over the use of their work, whether they are commercial creators, or creators releasing under a license like the GPL. Especially the point on derivative works and moral rights: I think that copyright should be limited to just that: the right to copy or forbid it. The author controls when and how his work may be copied, so that he can derive an income from selling copies if he so desires, but for no other purpose. But derivative works should be allowed if the derivative is enough of an original work in its own right, inspired by the original rather than copying large parts of it verbatim. Anyone wants to write “Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom” or film “Gandalf vs Predator”, fine by me. Where that leaves AI, I’m not sure. The results from AI prompts sometimes seem to be inspired original works, at other times with recognisable snippets from someone else’s work.

Copyright itself has been twisted so far from its original intent that I feel little urge to respect it, and little remorse at breaking it. I will respect copyright when it respects me.