...because they merely expect AI to replace existing tasks. Whether it actually does is more nuanced. For example, many employees pressured to use AI say it makes their tasks harder by creating AI slop that needs cleaning up. They have to deal with mistakes that wouldn't be in a human draft or in existing time-tested templates. If and how fast employees will get better models or learn to prompt better is unknown.

It's essentially management's gamble. Those in the C-suite often don't spot or are slow to understand front-line patterns, as nobody likes delivering lackluster news to higher-ups. They'll typically hear, "There are a few learning curve hiccups, as expected, but we're making progress" even if the productivity ship is taking on a little water.

Eh? This is incorrect. Perhaps most fictional murders are premeditated, because that makes for a more interesting mystery to solve, but in real life, the vast majority murders are impulsive, spontaneous acts that happen during arguments, fights, or emotional outbursts (often with the help of alcohol and/or readily available weapons).

I never activated Sirius, but twice a year they have a free week or so of music as a promotion. I don't do anything with or about that, but "weather alerts" start popping up. It's naturally windy in my neck of the woods so I get bajillion alerts that require pushing Dismiss while driving, but often cannot turn the alerts completely off because the Weather Alert "Off" feature is only available some of the time, but I cannot tell when without going into the menus, which present music options first. If it's not stealth spamming it's crappy UI coding. Either way, it sucks. I contacted Surius once and they said it cannot be fully deactivated. I may have a mechanic cut the antenna wire to Sirius but am afraid it would break GPS also.

but I can't track it down. Memory usage and disk/SSD look fine. I suspect either GPU or some weird OS stack gets full or confused. Windows 10 has a secret bladder that needs a diaper.

Yes, I know XiWare is likely snoopish, but so is GoogleWare. At least make the jerks compete.

Executives can't resist shoving a new spam channel into your face. Even if they can't use it immediately due to regulations etc., the possibilities make their greedy marketing glands swell with giddiness.

SiriusXM is already spamming my older model vehicle using tricks to get me to poke around in their music menu by pretending to malfunction. Long story, but here is similar behavior.

No evidence was given that math skills are atrophying because of AI, nor was that even claimed in the op-ed, which criticizes slipping testing standards.

It's race between cheaper and stingier. Like the Bungle of Hormuz, too early pick a winner

A related phenomenon is, Holocaust survivors live(d) longer. There is no good explanation and repeating the experiment is, thankfully, quite impossible...

If the crash takes your job with it, you're still hosed.

Simply the Forbes link was enough to confirm this point

Nope. One link is not enough — from the very beginning I asked, that each citation consist of two links: one to the prediction being made, the other — to confirmation/discussion of it coming true. Another rule was, the two links must be at least 5 years apart.

The purpose is easy to understand. A person can privately record 20 predictions of, say, an average temperature somewhere changing from -10 to +9 degrees. Five years later one of them will have made a precise match, and Forbes will write about him. If you didn't know about his 19 other predictions, you'll be impressed... This is why I insist on the prediction to have been published — prominently — ahead of time.

you purposely ignore the arguments

Because I was not asking for arguments — I was asking for citations...

You're right, they'll run the numbers and take whichever path maximizes their net profit -- but shuttering (or even heavily modifying) a facility that they've just invested $$$$ into is unlikely to be found to be their most profitable option. More likely they'll try to sell memory chips at a profit of +$.25 per chip in large volumes, because when you've got is a giant hammer, hammering lots of nails is what you can do best.

I wonder if anyone will start selling home systems capable of using cast-off data center RAM? It might be worthwhile if there's lots of that sort of RAM floating around for cheap.

The problem with this argument, from the shop's point of view, is that the UK is in the middle of a shoplifting epidemic. The policing resources simply aren't there to deal with small scale (or even flagrant and much larger scale) shoplifting. It now seems to be rare for police officers to attend reports of shoplifting at all. And so effectively shoplifting becomes legalised, which is obviously hurting the big chain stores financially and potentially devastating for smaller shops.

Shops are trying to find some way to respond to this to protect themselves. They typically tell staff, even security staff, not to get physical with shoplifters as they walk out, not least because the risk of something worse happening and the business becoming liable for it is significant. But then the shoplifters know this and some of them will just walk in and openly empty a shelf into a bag and walk out again without paying because they know no-one will try to stop them.

Shops also know that our court system is completely overwhelmed at the moment and there is little chance of bringing any successful civil action to recover damages from shoplifters who aren't even being arrested by the police and put through the criminal justice system.

So what do they have left? Basically, they're trying to spot the "usual suspects" and refuse them entry in the first place, which is a less risky proposition in terms of potential for physical violence and quite effective because a lot of shoplifting is done by the same people, or they're trying to make it more physically difficult to steal goods, for example by using locking systems or keeping high value items behind counters where customers can't just pick them up. But these systems aren't perfect, far from it, and what we're discussing here today is one of the significant problems.

Obviously this kind of technology can have very bad consequences, as we see here. I don't think it should be used if it's not highly reliable, given the potential harm done in cases where it gets something wrong. But I do have some sympathy with the shops who are looking for something -- anything -- to reduce the threat they're facing because the rule of law has failed in retail settings.

that's where all the products & names are gradually converging, like a giant stench-filled black hole.