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Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 1) 122

If he worked with a steady supply of actual instrumentalists, people that spend years developing their skills and produce music regularly, he'd understand why so many musicians dislike AI.

He has. For a long time. The problem is, apparently he doesn't like to pay them, and they're not aware of that before the fact.

Comment Just like Russia (Score 4, Interesting) 12

When Ukraine dissects the remains of Russian drones or missiles, they inevitably find western components. In one case, reported on here, they found an Nvidia chip inside a missile.

Is someone, or someones, inside the supply chain redirecting chips? Is this the same as the servers getting to China? Or is this merely a case of someone buying this stuff under a shell company and then passing it along?

Comment Re:I've noticed that too (Score 1) 59

I had to add minimum paragraph and sentence counts to the prompts it uses to keep it from trying to write a few terse sentences each time.

I noticed this in Claude (from DDG). It invariably tries to shorten sentences or make them more compact and concise. Sometimes that can be good, but most times long-winded sentences are what are needed.

Comment Re:Options missing (Score 1) 22

and there is no way I can find to make it stop popping up giant intrusive ads for their other services every single time I open it.

Just like Firefox. There is no easy way to turn off being harassed by an intrusive pop-up telling me about a new update.

There used to be. It was a simple checkbox. But somewhere along the way someone had to justify their existence and removed that simple checkbox in favor of harassment.

Comment Re:Completely different (Score 5, Insightful) 97

Would like to add one tidbit because I've had this same conversation at work. The professor stated they used AI to help edit only after hundred of hours of writing. In other words, they did the heavy lifting and only used AI at the end to help refine what they had already done.

Is this any different than a human editor? If I write a book, do what I can to edit it down, then go to an editor who makes suggests, removes or reorders parts, and so on, is that any different than having AI do the same thing? In both cases you wrote the words. In both cases you went somewhere else to help edit.

If people claim that using AI to edit a work is "cheating" because it's no longer your work, then the same should apply to a human editor.

Comment Re:Wait (Score 2) 97

Regardless, most students at Berkeley don't need Calculus 1. And if students do need it, but aren't ready, then send them to the next class down until they are ready.

Calculus 1 pretty much is the lowest-level math class at Berkeley. There's a math fundamentals refresher class, which is for people who are pretty much at pre-calculus level. But if they're saying students really don't understand fractions, it's a mystery how they even got into Berkeley. California has an amazing community college system that will teach you all the way down to basic algebra if you need it, and once you spend a couple of years there, there are easy avenues to transfer to the many high-quality California four-year schools. I sense the op-ed author has an axe of some kind to grind, because even without the SAT, it's not like admissions to Berkeley aren't competitive.

Comment Re:Why in the world would we trust psychopaths? (Score 1) 90

While I can see how you arrived at that, I don't think they're all the amoral actors you describe.

Zuck has shown some changes in the last couple years, though I agree he's largely amoral.

Musk has a very peculiar set of morals which might be described as pragmatism or amorality, but he's always been very focal in both action and word about both ethics and responsibility.

You could probably accurately describe them all as transhumanists with varying degree of consistency.

Comment He is the Crisis (Score 1) 90

If there's a crisis of trust - which there is - it's almost certainly largely provoked by Amodei. The guy has been a regular prophet of doom regarding AI: it's going to take all the jobs, it's dangerous and going to cause all sorts of disasterous side effects socially, economically, and politically. No wonder people are untrusty.

Pair that with the obscene levels of what appears to be state-level anti-AI and anti-datacenter propaganda, and you've got the current situation. The amount of absurd claims I've seen about datacenters and AI, from people who should know better - everything from completely false narratives about water use, land grabs, power use, and so on. The truth is, an AI DC doesn't uses less water than a Cosco and about as much electricity as a comparable industrial facility, or a similarly sized restaurant.

Comment Or just pollute all the time like Musk does (Score 3, Informative) 72

Musk's data center near Memphis, KY has been illegally using pollution-producing methane-gas generators since day one even though he said they would be temporary. He does not have a permit for these generators and conveniently, the site is located near a poorer section of Memphis.

Needless to say, the EPA has not done anything about this even with its own decision of illegality.

No need to switch to generators when you can use them from day one and not have to worry about doing anything under the current regime.

Comment To all the whiners (Score 1) 144

Instead of rare books, let us rare video games or computers. Let's say someone bought a rare version of a Ninentendo system (an early edition) and said, "You know what, I'm going to see what happens if I apply a larger and larger force to it. Let's see how long it stays intact."

Mind you, they did a 3-D scan of the system so you can digitally see it, but the physical copy no longer exists.

How many of you would raise a stink at destroying it?

If not Nintendo, pick something you like and go back to its earlier days where something is rare and someone wants to destroy it, just because.

One of the things people complain about the digital age is loss of information. Sure, these books "exist" in a digital form today, but what about in 50 years?

This is why physical books are still superior to digital. We can still read books/scrolls/clay tablets from centuries ago. It is doubtful the same will be said for digital books.

Comment Lost technology (Score 2) 165

For anyone who thinks it's ridiculous that the US can't reproduce the Apollo missions, consider this: we can't (due to environmental factors) produce wrought iron anymore (because there are no longer any facilities setup to do so), as a species, and therefore, could not build the Bay Bridge in San Francisco (and I'm sure, any number of others, like the Brooklyn bridge).

The same limitations apply here. They have to redesign the vehicle on first principles because the foundational engineering (not scientific understanding) being used no longer exists. Most people simply do not realize how precariously our technological world hangs in the balance. It's why highly advanced ancient cultures collapsed, in large degree: they couldn't just start at the lower level again before working their way back to 'advanced civilization', they had to start all the way at zero again.

Here's a fun one I like playing with my kids, kind of the nerdy science version of the polysci "go back in time to kill Baby Hitler: which one scientific understanding would you bring back in time to Ancient Rome/the American Revolution/the 1950s/etc. and why? Dollars to donuts they'll say something like "the lightbulb" and not consider that it's at least 3 distinct discoveries and inventions, nevermind the engineering.

Comment Re:Proprietary software is obsolete (Score 2) 47

MMmmm, I understand the sentiment. But I think you'll find that's not true. The Oracle database, alone, has a long history of engineering behind it that has not truly been replicated by other products. Of course, this is really only relevant for corner cases, but these exist, and they're usually folks who have big budgets (like governments, or large enterprises). And at that level, what they're paying for is not the technology as-shipped, but the support ... which means you have a "throat to choke" in terms of lawsuits, but could also mean building something that's proprietary for your business.

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