ha, i remember those metal toothpaste tubes! Lead? Aluminium? But with the plastic ones, you can suck it back in :-)

Don't we already have the "mass surveillance" you describe?
Payments, phones, number plates ...

So I asked the ai, and realised what was probably obvious to US readers - the class and race divide in Missouri.
Here its everyone using buses, and scanning their registered cards to get on/off. In Missouri it is poor minorities paying cash? ... I've just been down a rabbit-hole, reading about poverty in the US, and millions of households not even having bank accounts.

Do we accept the premise that people can be banned from using the buses for some reason?
Then we must accept you can't get on a bus with your face hidden.
So what are the consequences of being flagged by the face recognition? Is it footage being sent to police?
Is it being asked for ID?

I assume most people using public transport these days are using some sort of electronic payment, so that can be your ID.
What is the scenario where things go horribly wrong?
Yes, bad things have happened where morons treat a face-ID as gospel, but nobody is under any obligation to repeat the worst case stupidity.

Thats what the cold-war era propaganda said. In reality, public-private partnerships werte essential to the post-war economic boom.
DARPA, public infrastructure, aerospace , ... Everybody subsidises.

So why don't you try saying what it actually is, instead of "no it isn't"? Why hide under AC if not actually saying anything?

There is no point saying "its not real", if you can't define what real is, especially in terms of a testable theory. they are empty, meaningless words. Ironically, an AI could show much deeper understanding than the AC - based on observable outputs. (ie empirical evidence)

A. Coward, you keep saying that, but it does not mean anything. You show no understanding, just repeating words you think fit.

So how about defining some terms then? What is understanding, if we are going to try to apply it to non-human intelligence?
For decades we have been applying these questions to animals. Mirror self-recognition, theory of mind etc.

The problem is that most people have really actually thought about it, so do not have a meaningful definition of "understanding". Yet many of them make confident pronouncements anyway. I call this "Natural Stupidity". But they can't help it, they are just a bunch of neurons firing according to simple rules of electrochemistry. There is no such thing as emergence.

I'm not sure about AI, but human stupidity is very real. And it becomes evident in the slashdot comments for any topic that raises emotions. The rich guy, the orange guy, and AI being prime examples.

Given the rather obvious reasoning of reasoning models, you have to wonder what "no ability to reason" intends to mean. i'm sure bloodhawk isn't a moron, or deliberately trying to sound like a moron, but rather expressing some sort of emotion. I guess "AI reasoning is not the same as human reasoning"? Then why not try to make an observation on the differences?

As for "they are just pattern matching algorithms" - that tells us that not only is the poster ignorant of how AI works, but he has no desire to learn. His hard-wired prejudices are adequate. And that leads to over-confident blanket assertions. Is this what people inaccurately call 'Dunning Kruger"?

That sounds plausible, but is not what the article says. You only need read 2 paragraphs.
Righty now, Musk owns 42% of SpaceX. He could quit as CEO tomorrow, but stay on the board and still have 82% voting rights.
Once the 180 day lockout ends, Musk could start slowly selling shares in accordance with SEC Rule 144 Restrictions, the same as any insider.
Same as with Tesla.

Any shares "based on hitting certain performance objectives" are in addition, and would dilute the existing shares.

Damn straight. I think if I were a trillionaire I could hook up three even; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.

Oh no you don't! He has been a naturalised American for over 40 years now, no backsies.

The "actively liquid-cooled CCS2 gun built into a specialized overhead pulley pump system" ?
It sounds hard to me. And expensive.
I feel if you can make batteries that change at half a friggin' megawatt, its a solved problem. That is amazing already.

The 46th president was indeed deeper into cognitive decline, not that this helps us in any way with the shitshow we have now.
Both the 45th and 46th had some smart people around them to to do their job. This no longer seems to be the case with #47.
OK, Wiles and Rubio are smart people, but they don't seem to be calling the shots.

This is all true and interesting. If you want to start campaigning for historical peopel who are today maligned unfairly:
- the Vandals were a Germanic people who established a remarkably successful kingdom in North Africa during the 5th century. They were highly sophisticated, integrated well with Roman culture, and maintained a major Mediterranean trade network.
- Machiavelli was a dedicated public servant of the Florentine Republic who loved liberty and hated tyrants. He wrote The Prince in 1513 while in exile (and after being tortured) as a cold, realistic analysis of how power actually worked, not how the Church said it should work.
- the Pharisees were actually a progressive, populist movement. They broke the religious monopoly of the elite temple priests by arguing that all people—not just priests—could live a holy life.

Well, that's certainly a hysterical response.
But luddites will not stop progress, be it for better or worse.
It's only a matter of time before I'm asking my phone to buy me tickets, book a restaurant, or add mustard to my weekly grocery order.
How we deal with the risks of all that, how we apply limits, is an interesting set of questions.

paywave? The whole credit-card system has long been insecure. but security is always a trade-off with convenience, as anyone who uses a computer should know. Visa want just enough security to keep the system viable, while making it as easy as possible for users to pay with card instead of cash. Users are lazy.
          The basic problem with cards is that they were never designed for authentication. The card was swiped in a machine while the customer was physically present, and could be asked for ID if needed.
        Hell, the US has only recently stopped using magnetic strip cards! Paywave was a huge improvement, but inherently limited still, by the goal of convenience. If you want better security, you could make people look at their phones, and type in the dollar amount to authorise payment. But people don't want to do that.

        Agentic AI will have payment tokens, with specific authorisation. e.g. a token may have $500 credit for spending on the clothing category.
The AI has control of a local API that holds the tokens, and can authorise payments. The core LLM does not even need to see the token, let alone a credit card number. I'm interested to know how these tokens will be created, how the human authorises them.