There's no doubt that AI is developing into a useful tool -- for people who understand its limitations and how long it is going to take to work the bugs out. But people have a long track record of getting burned by not understanding the gap between promise and delivery and, in retrospect, missing the point.

I think we should take a lesson from the history of the dot com boom and following bust. A lot of people got burned by their foolish enthusiasm, but in the end the promise was delivered, and then some. People just got the timescale for delivering profits wrong, and in any case their plans for getting there were remarkably unimaginative, e.g., take a bricks and mortar business like pet supplies and do exactly that on the Internet. They by in large completely missed all the *new* ways of making money ubiquitous global network access created.

I think in the case of AI, everybody knows a crash is coming. In fact they're planning on it. Nobody expects there to be hundreds or even dozens of major competitors in twenty years. They expect there to be one winner, an Amazon-level giant, with maybe a handful of also-rans subsisting off the big winner's scraps; tolerated because they at least in theory provide a legal shield to anti-trust actions.

And in this winner-take-all scenario, they're hoping to be Jeff Bezos -- only far, far more so. Bezos owns about 40% of online retail transactions. If AI delivers on its commercial promise, being the Jeff Bezos of *that* will be like owning 40% of the labor market. Assuming, as seems likely, that the winning enterprise is largely unencumbered by regulation and anti-trust restrictions, the person behind it will become the richest, and therefore the most powerful person in history. That's what these tech bros are playing for -- the rest of us are just along for the ride.

But you are leaving out the difference in fertility. The fertility rate of the UK, which as you noted is a population dominated by native britons who trace their ancestry on the island back a millennium or more, is 1.4 live births per woman. The replacement rate is 2.1. In a hundred years the UK will have a smaller population than Haiti.

Because under a true system of sovereignty, people wouldn't be allowed to vote for a Muslim mayor.

Is if they confirmed your age by a behavioral maturity test. AI could monitor posts, and if it figures out that someone with an emotional age of 15 or older wouldn't have posted such a thing, you're cut off.

Art and cultural activity is a major sector of the US economy. It adds a staggering 1.17 *trillion* dollars to the US GDP. However that's hard to see because for the most part it's not artists who receive this money.

The actual creative talent this massive edifice is built upon earns about 1.4% of the revenue generated. The rest goes to companies whose role in the system is managing capital and distributing. Of that 1.4% that goes to actual creators, the lion's share goes to a handful of superstars -- movie stars and music stars and the like. This is not as unfair as it sounds, as it reflects the superstar's ability to earn money for the companies they distribute through, but the long tail of struggling individual artists play a crucial role in artistic innovation and creativity. Behind every Elvis there's a Big Mama Thornton, and armies of gospel singers who may have made a record or two but never made a living.

We can't run this giant economic juggernaut off a handful of superstars with AI slop filling in the gaps in demand. But maybe we'll give that a try.

Correct.

If you are not a tech person, right now from all the hype and news and bullshit, you would rightly assume that AI is an amazing revolution and you would barely have heard about its shortcomings.

Though that might've just been him thinking "stupid Europeans know only Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. I'll just say Moscow, close enough."

This. I've had to descend a mountain as the sun was going down once (got stuck at the top due to weather for some time, and when it let up enough for a safe descent, it was late). It's absolutely not fun, even when there's still some light. Had it been dark, I think I would've taken my chances staying at the top rather than going down.

That said, anyone not a complete idiot checks things like "time of last cable car" a) in person, b) at the day, c) at the location. Because even there is an official website that is well-maintained (and that's already two big if's) things might change at the location due to weather, workers being ill, no tourists that day or whatever.

Also, checking in person means at least one other person knows that you're up there.

Actually in China significantly more students choose to pursue degrees in technology, engineering,or business than in the US â" degrees which qualify them for specific jobs after graduation. So the process of college education becoming more vocationally oriented and less about training intellectual skills has advanced even more advanced in China than it is here.

China grants very few liberal arts degrees and its vocational degree programs have minimal or no liberal arts content. In the US an engineering or business degree program requires substantial liberal arts content to be degree accredited. So an engineering student graduating from a US program has had many semesters of training in critical reading and thinking, challenging claims with original sources, and crafting persuasive arguments in areas where opinions differ.

These are skills the Chinese government is not eager to put in the hands of its citizens, so we really ought to question just how âoeuselessâ those non-vocational intellectual skills really are. There are clearly people here whose priorities for education are more aligned with Chinaâ(TM)s â" inculcating respect for authority, obedience to tradition as described by authority, and job skills useful to authorities. In other words for them education isnâ(TM)t about empowering the students, itâ(TM)s about forming a class of compliant worker bees.

Providing 1.3 million round trip airfares between Houston and Washington DC for Texans who want to see the shuttle.

Or ... issue the citation to the passenger who called the ride, and let him negotiation reimbursement for the fine and insurance costs with Waymo. I guarantee Waymo would fix the bug or perhaps even *ask* to be regulated rather than rely on this loophole.

Why burden the taxpayer with finding a solution to the consequences of early adopting a new technology? If you *choose* to summon a robotaxi, then you're responsble for the consequences of that choice. If you don't like it, then demand the company sort those out before you use them.

This is so unnecessary, I wonder whether this is some kind of social engineering operation being sold as a "service" to landlords.

AI is a tool. And like any tool its introduction creates proponents and enemies.

Some might say I'm a semi-professional writer. As in: I make money with things I write. From that perspective, I see both the AI slop and the benefits. I love that AI gives me an on-demand proof-reader. I don't expect it to be anywhere near a professional in that field. But if I want to quickly check a text I wrote for specific things, AI is great, because unlike me it hasn't been over that sentence 20 times already and still parses it completely.

As for AI writing - for the moment it's still pretty obvious, and it's mostly low-quality (unless some human has added their own editing).

The same way that the car, the computer, e-mail and thousands of other innovations have made some jobs obsolete, some jobs easier, and some jobs completely new, I don't see AI as a threat. And definitely not to my writing. Though good luck Amazon with the flood of AI-written garbage now clogging up your print-on-demand service.

Right.

Yes, I guess it will. By hopefully making people switch away from YT music en mass.

Supercars this fast have tires that last less than fifteen minutes, perhaps eighty miles traveled on the track of you're lucky. And since the wear isn't linear, if you go just a little bit faster, you might only get a minute or two at the speeds this car goes before you have to change all the tires, which will set you back $40,000.

The point of such a thing is the same as one of those suborbital tourist space flights. The point is to *have had* the experience, which is too brief to be practically useful.