As a general rule, people are stupid and do not understand how things work. The only known to work mechanism is regulation, i.e. protecting the stupid against themselves. But that comes with other problems and must be carefully restricted to not devolve into even worse things.

And who would that be?

I have been to the US for about 3 months total on several different visits. I got food poisoning exactly 3 times in my life, one my own kitchen mistake and two times from restaurant food in the US. And I have been to Africa with zero problems of that nature.

Hence I really hope you were being sarcastic there.

I did expect the hardware limitations and more rational stance would slow them down more. I was mistaken. I see no special accomplishments in Altman besides being an accomplished manipulator and fraudster.

Nobody likes a smartass. You just qualified for that role. Terrestrially, the thing that matters is that they get it back, intact and with reasonable effort. Everything else is immaterial. And you are insisting on the immaterial part.

Agreed. On all of that. I mean, this is "all trophy, no actual accomplishment". I really do not understand that. I mean, a trophy is nice, but that is not what I do things for. It is the actual accomplishments that matter. It is a bit like the difference between reputation and honor: Reputation is what others think about you, honor is what you know about your own actions. This is all reputation, no honor.

Looking at the definition of narcissism, that does not even seem to be it. Or not by itself. It seems to be a combination of narcissism, and mental limitations so severe that the trophy is mistaken for the actual accomplishment having been achieved. I have no idea how disconnected you have to be to make that mistake.

Had to read that twice. You are referring not to my statement, but to the OP above, correct?

I agree, this is extremely effective, because the average person does routinely massively overestimate what they understand and hence does not due checks that were sorely needed for actual understanding. One could argue that this effect also plays a major role in the current (and past) AI hype even happening ...

Yes. It would also be interesting to know what they actually detected. If it was the usual "employee copies company secrets into prompt", I wonder whether that even qualifies. Maybe if they had special agreements in place.

And in actual reality, all that matters is "they got it back, basically intact". Accuracy without effect and meaning is not useful. In fact, it is of negative use as it obscures important aspects.

Incidentally, the Japanese just concluded a successful test flight just now (not a full mission). Seems this tech is now within reach for anybody with advanced engineering capabilities.

Probably. This is another "easy, simple" idea that will likely not work in practice. The guy behind this apparently never has done security with an adversary that can think, react and even plan ahead in the picture ...

I should at least have put in quotes, obviously.

I have never done that and I will not start. I guess you just have bad teachers.

Yes. For-profit education does not work. It lowers standards to the minimum possible and cheats all those that could lean and understand more. The incentives are entirely perverted. Would be better to just charge them the tuition and hand them that (worthless) paper, as that would at least not require years of tiresome rituals in between.

Or we could do it right. That means those with no skills or no motivation do not pass. That also means the paper at the end is not worthless. Bit that requires firing all the bean-counters as well, and they have embedded themselves deep, because they know the value (or lack thereof) of their contribution.

For anything that requires actual thinking (i.e. anything worthwhile), this is in the distant future, distant enough that nobody can give an honest timeline. May also be "never".

Not really. I have done that just last semester with good success. The trick is to have them discuss the topic with you afterwards and answer questions on things. And it must be quite clear that if they have no clue about what they did or wrote, they fail. Requires a non-lazy instructor, obviously.