As I wrote in 2001, with a plea digital public works -- like self-driving AI software funded by government dollars which I had seen in action at CMU around 1985 -- always stay open and free if funded by government or charitable dollars:
https://pdfernhout.net/on-fund...
        "As a software developer and content creator, I find it continually frustrating to visit web sites of projects funded directly or indirectly by government agencies or foundations, only to discover I can't easily improve on those projects because of licensing restrictions both on redistribution and on making derived works of their content and software. ...
        The non-profit collaborative communications ecosystem is polluted with endless anti-collaborative restrictive terms of use for charitably funded materials (both content and software) produced by a wide range of public organizations. These restrictions are in effect acting like "no trespassing -- toxic waste -- keep out -- this means you" signs by prohibiting making new derived works directly from pre-existing digital public works. The justification is usually that tight control of copyright and restricting communications of those materials will produce income for the non-profit, and while this is sometimes true, the cost to society in the internet age in terms of limiting cooperation is high, and in fact, I would argue, too high. ..."

Sad that is still an issue a quarter century later -- especially in the case of AI.

AI could bring so much abundance for all -- or it could be used to enforce artificial scarcity or all (or worse). Making any sort of AI in a for-profit competitive fashion is much more likely to produce the latter than the former, as implied in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Building AI in an open and socially-responsible as-safe-as-feasible way was essentially the whole original core thesis of the founding of OpenAI (as reflected in the name).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "OpenAI stated that "it's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society", and that it is equally difficult to comprehend "how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly" ... In its founding charter, OpenAI defined its mission as ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) "benefits all of humanity", and stated an intention to collaborate openly with other institutions by making certain patents and research publicly available, but later restricted access to its most capable models, citing competitive and safety concerns. ... OpenAI's potential and mission drew these researchers to the firm; a Google employee said he was willing to leave Google for OpenAI "partly because of the very strong group of people and, to a very large extent, because of its mission." ..."

It's so cute that you think that control of the money can be taken back. The last vestiges of your democracy - the will of the people by mandate as declared by vote - has fallen. Some of you haven't noticed yet, is all.

Too little, too late.

I moved on to better OS when you started messing with stuff and REFUSED to even give me an option to put it back how it was.

Modern Windows UI/UX literally and actually hinders my workflow because of enforced nonsense that I don't want.

You start out doing it to others; but the empire always comes home in the end.

I assume that this would have been too banal, or he's about a generation too old to remember it immediately; but it really sounds like he could have 'solved' the same problem to the same degree with milkdrop or one of the other popular music visualization options from the glory days of winamp; but thought 'AI' would make a more interesting 'making of' story.

Yes, I saw that. And when combined with the quote towards the end, explains why his position is so fucking insulting.

This basically means that if your part of the movie making process can be performed by this tech, now or in the future, then your job doesn't really matter. Which is a wild take considering that he felt like he could not release the video without the parts AI provided, and which would have been handed to a person to do before AI exists, or if he'd had the budget for it.

Fact is the job DOES matter. He just does not want to have to address the difficult question of what is lost by using AI to do creative work that would previously have gone to a human profession, or what it means that he is willing to make that substitution without any apparent concern for the folks that decision harms. He is yet-another rich-fuck who does not care about the human consequences of technology, so long as they do not impact him personally. Fuck him, and fuck anyone who agrees with him.

There are many different cultures among the wealthy, just as there are many cultures among the poor. So culture is not the distinguishing factor, as you originally claimed. Wealth, however, is.

The idea that 'philosophical' means 'vaguely trippy visuals' seems weirdly common. In fairness to the people doing the visuals sometimes it's because what is being passed of as 'philosophical' is stupid; rather than because they are; but the latter case is also pretty likely. No idea what Lennon said in this case so can't comment on the likely cause.

Heâ(TM)s saying that Visual effects designers are not important. Because heâ(TM)s replacing somebodies work with AI output.

if I were someone who worked in that field, making the kind of content he used AI to create, and then dismissed my work as unimportant, Iâ(TM)d be salty as fuck.

their work is important enough that the film could not be considered complete without it, but not important enough to have a person do it. There is a clear double standard being promulgated here, that amounts to victim bling. Essentially that if AI can do your job, then by definition, your job is not important. Easy for the guy deciding where and when to us AI to decide in a way that does not put his own contributions to the process at risk of being replaced by AI. Fuck this guy and anyone who accepts this BS justification.

He seems weirdly untroubled by the fact that he, voluntarily, turned his project into a tech demo for facebook in exchange for some imagery deemed abstract enough to accompany 'philosophical' parts of an interview.

There's definitely potential for it to have been installed because it was stupid cheap and promised possible benefits with no downsides; but I'm less clear that you attempt to override a city council decision by invoking a 'public safety emergency' without any apparent basis in either fact or law to keep them up just because they are stupid cheap and have no apparent downsides.

This whole sordid story is the one shaking down after someone became concerned enough to get the city council concerned enough to get them taken down; not during the initial justification process where they were just cheap and quick and seemed all upsides. The level of initial enthusiasm requires no special explanation; but at this point dude is actively sticking his neck out to save them; which seems like it does require correspondingly more explanation.

Reliable spelling is pretty irrelevant, especially in the age of spellcheck. Phonics is about READING. Understanding Latin, Greek, French, and German will certainly help with advanced etymology, but you don't really have to know the history of the bi- prefix to understand it means "2." Learning multiple languages is always a great advantage. . .but you want to teach reading in all those languages with phonics.

Whatever criticisms you have of phonics, I challenge you to cite an alternative method of teaching reading that is equivalent, let alone better. Empirically, no other method has been able to effectively teach reading.

You keep using the word "culture" when you should be using "wealth." There are plenty of highly successful schools and students in dense urban areas. They are the ones with money.

You're being obtuse. Reading advertisements also involves reading. That doesn't meant that a person who reads a lot of advertisements will develop the reading skills necessary to understand a complicated technical manual or a dense work of literature.

If I do addition and subtraction every day it doesn't mean I understand calculus.

Even if you actually like "AI" Schmidt is sort of a dismal option. This is the "my plan would be to use AI to clone tiktok" guy with a career that's genuinely impressively uninteresting for someone of his educational qualifications. Who gets a PhD from a real school just to turn in 40+ years of pure suit?