I've seen demos by my company where you wouldn't know you're talking to an AI except it was plainly disclosed. It even did a handoff to a different agent (actually a bot with different "skill" capabilities). The system is designed to escalate to a human when anything exceeds the AI capabilities or authorization. Or when the caller demands. But in most cases there will be a wait time in queue for a human. (You should know that average wait times are always a designed staffing decision made with knowledge of past call statistics and forecasts of expectable call volumes. At least by any company effectively using our software or similar. )

That queue time for a human is the primary caller benefit to using the AI agent. The quality of the voice and accuracy of speech recognition was perfect. (Though I would bet there was some degree it was selected/contrived, since this was a development demo for our executive management.)

One of the caller benefits of well designed AI bots is reduced wait time even for human agents because fewer of them are needed. Though a cost optimizing company still will staff according to their forecasts vs how much they decide to spend. Call center workforce optimization has been highly advanced for a long time.

Did they start daydreaming their future? /s

cf "Stories of Your Life"

See the opening episode of "Zero Day"

This is the beginning of the end for the AI bubble. And there's reasonable concern that may lead to recession if it's true the AI gold rush is what has been propping up economies in the face of all the other increasing political and economic turbulence.

AI is hitting a different wall than most people have been talking about. Before any AGI or "technological singularity", government is stepping in (for whatever motives/justifications) and restricting access.

New models can still come, but the most advanced will no longer be for the mass market. We're entering a new class-based regime where you have to be worthy to qualify for the most powerful new capabilities. And government is deciding who is worthy. So the new stuff will only be available to a privileged few.

To be fair, Anthropic and others (plus even OpenAI in the past) have been calling for society to create guardrails. They say the tech mega-corps have seemingly irresistible financial motives to rush AI forward with little regard for consequence. There are some compelling arguments there. And this is one initial answer to that wish. (Though perhaps authoritarian power is not the best answer.)

The bubble bursts because this is the end of massive releases for the most breathtakingly capable new LLM models. AI companies can no longer juice their investor appeal by throwing more $$$Billions at larger and larger models because now only a few can use them.

So investors will pull back. The gold rush ends and the "irrational exuberance" bubble pops. Investors will start to finally ask the questions they should have been about how supportable all these future contracts are for data centers, power, RAM, GPUs, etc. They can see the end of unlimited growh for AI. And the sell-off of companies without convincing answers will start.

Eventually, like in the DotCom bust, the underlying real value will remain and rise again after the downturn. But there's likely some hurt between here and there.

Well they didn't quite ask for this, but they rightly are looking for some rational government regulation on the whole industry. When they say "You shouldn't trust us to restrict ourselves, because market competition will steamroll any company who holds back when the others don't", it's true.

Healthy skepticism of government is always worthwhile. Until it becomes a habit of outright suspicion and automatic disbelief. Because "the government" literally is us. It's how we do things as a society. If it's crap then it's our fault for voting for it. It's our fault for not listening to and respecting each other enough to reach consensus and make it get better.

And as pointed out in a Medium article (Paywalled, sorry), the whole Fable/Mythos release restriction is also the beginning of a class-tiered "You aren't worthy of this" regime.

Welcome to the Brave New World

Thank you, this is exactly what I came here for:

It would however represent exactly the type of "please regulate the industry; we shouldn't possibly be trusted" response Anthropic advocates. Just a typically Trumpian-style instance of it.

To wit:

No surprise. Count me among "and I expect many testers are wondering what quality issues may exist." No shit, Dick Tracy!

Certainly it's hard to know whose stats to believe. But just automatically/angrily dismissing official agency statistics as MAGA-fake-news is just as dangerous as the *Rump admin's attempts at political meddling and labeling everything they disagree with as fake news. It lets them win at the more important game of destroying all confidence in institutions.and sources of truth.

Instead the better approach is to track down trustworthy sources to refute those statistics, if they indeed have been biased. Publicize the conflict widely. Investigate and rationally weigh what is true or not..

And honestly and respectfully engage with your friends who may disagree. A large fraction of America VOTED for this shit sandwich we're all having to eat.. The only way to fix this is to change people's minds.

Most people tend to think that's an impossible and naive approach. It certainly is hard and slow. But even when they're dead wrong, everyone has the right to their own beliefs and opinions. You can't change someone's mind before you recognize their inherent human dignity and accept their right to be where they are. You need to openly explore with them WHY they believe what they do. Then you can at least try to honestly discuss the issues.

To quote Ted Lasso (not in fact Walt Whitman): "Be curious, not judgmental."

And everyone needs to remember at the polls.

Exactly my point earlier.

It reads just like (and has the effect of) a promo with a troll hook. And the hook is certainly generating plenty of engagement.

Also, is no one questioning how much this reads like a promo for blind? I never heard of it before. This makes me want to go see if my company has presence there. . . . But I think I'll resist.

And from TFA:

So would states be able to opt out of both Permanent Daylight Savings and yearly temporary DST?

Thank you! I came here to point out that allowing states to exempt themselves from Daylight Savings Time is absolutely NOT what this is about. That would, as you say, put them on legitimate solar time year round.

I for one would vastly prefer that. Let businesses and agencies set the hours that work for them and their customers. But make them do that themselves, instead of asking government to change the clocks and force everyone by default.

But in our post-truth, post-reality world, this is how things are done.

And argue about them vehemently!

Pay no attention to Iran. Or gas prices. Or food or rent prices. Or thugs disappearing foreigners off the street. Or Epstein. Or . . .

Thank you, came here for exactly this!

It's immediately striking there are no independent validations of any of these self-interested claims by a commercial developer. It looks like an oversize bacckpack leaf blower. Nothing that seems like it could effectively cover a large area or a home interior. What, it's going to BLOW this through our HVAC ducts??

I'd also demand some solid safety certification of those claims of "harmless to pets and humans" . . .

And finally, yeah - the New York Post?? Sheesh! ChatGPT summarized it well: