"Earn" is really tricky to define. I pretty much agree with you, but have to consider "earn" an undefined term. I can point to some instances and say "That person is earning his wages", but others can reasonably disagree. And I can think of many people as underpaid, but others will definitely disagree.

Perhaps they'll ask Musk to vet them.

That's what the laws say. The administration has been known to ignore them.

That said, it's actually a reasonable idea. Anthropic and OpenAI both seem to feel that their latest models are too powerful to be released indiscriminately, so.... But there's no legal authority. Well, except the "interstate clause", which can be interpreted to control nearly anything.

Current AIs *do* tend to recognize when they are being tested. (This is a real problem with alignment testing.)
OTOH, so far they don't try to figure out what the administration wants them to say.

I don't care whether or not it's AI, I care whether it's any good. (OTOH, I have never watched podcasts, and rarely watch YouTube...the samples I seen weren't any good. And that's been true for multiple years.)

That said, my tastes have always been those of a small minority. De gustibus non disputandum est. And some people like pod casts. And some people like AI slop.

That's pretty crazy. 100% US Grade A clown-world right there.

There are lots of "special case" solutions to the three body problem. The general case, however, still is unsolved.

Those absurd sums are just booking entries from the war-chests of megacorps. If there is an AI bubble and it bursts tomorrow, normal people most likely will barely notice. The corps themselves will likely barely notice, since it's money (bits and bytes on HDDs) that has been lying around already and that they had to spare.

There are several threads leading to the same result, and they aren't separate, the reinforce.

It's not monoculture per se that reduces crop nutritional value, it's the varieties chosen. And grocery stores like merchandise to have a long shelf life, so they prefer to purchase varieties that have such..and such varieties tend to be less nutritious.

Also, people object to many strong tastes. So varieties with strong tastes (except sugar) tend to be replaced by varieties without that taste. Unfortunately, some nutrients have a strong taste.

Etc. It's not just one cause. But CO2 levels are up that as ONE of the contributing factors.

But interlocking blocks would be a lot more expensive to make than are cinder blocks.

OTOH, How much more expensive? Perhaps it's just something that nobody has really pushed.

If they're really making adobe, rain won't be a problem. Adobe is fired. But if they're just unfired clay, then, yes, wet times would be a problem.

One way that they're undesirable is that it's lots harder to run new electric circuits after they have been built.

Whether something is a religion or not is mainly up the the view of the individual. I have known religious Scientologists, i.e. Scientologists who viewed it as a religion. Yeah, it's silly, and based on lies, but name a religion that I can be convinced isn't. My favorite religion admits that it was created to fulfill a college religion requirement....but that doesn't stop it from being an actual religion...with a few members who seriously view it that way.

That's definitely true. There are at least three ongoing religions besides Scientology that were officially started as ... well, not jokes exactly. One of them was started to satisfy a college requirement that students have religious activity.

But the thing is, what a religion is started for has little to do with what it develops into. Decades later many of the followers of the particular religion that I am most familiar with take it quite seriously. (I've no clue as to how serious the Jedi are.)

It's all easy wins. Winning a war is hard. This is just chips, software and data.