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Guys, yesterday I spent some time convincing an LLM model from a leading provider that 2 cards plus 2 cards is 4 cards which is one short of a flush. I think we are not too close to a singularity, as it stands.
This is delightfully unhinged, spending an amazing amount of time describing their model and citing their methodologies before getting to the meat of the meal many of us have been braying about for years: whether the singularity actually happens or not is irrelevant so much as whether enough people believe it will happen and act accordingly. And, yep! A lot of people absolutely believe it will and are acting accordin…
The goal is to eliminate humans as the primary actors on the planet entirely At least that’s my personal goal If we get to the point where I can go through my life and never interact with another human again, and work with a bunch of machines and robots to do science and experiments and build things to explore our world and make my life easier and safer and healthier and more sustainable, I would be absolutely thrill…
Not interacting with any other human means you're the last human in your genetic line. A widespread adherence to this idea means humanity dwindling and dying out voluntarily. (This has been reproduced in mice: [1])
Not having humans as primary actors likely means that their interests become more and more neglected by the system of machines that replaces them, and they, weaker by the day, are powerless to counter that. Hence the idea of increased comfort and well-being, and the ability to do science, is going to become more and more doubtful as humans would lose agency.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experimen...
Great article, super fun. > In 2025, 1.1 million layoffs were announced. Only the sixth time that threshold has been breached since 1993. Over 55,000 explicitly cited AI. But HBR found that companies are cutting based on AI's potential, not its performance. The displacement is anticipatory. You have to wonder if this was coming regardless of what technological or economic event triggered it. It is baffling to me that…
Or it's just a logical continuation of "next quarter problem" thinking. You can lay off a lot of people, juice the number and everything will be fine....for a while. You may even be able to layoff half your people if you're okay with KTLO'ing your business. This works great for companies that are already a monopoly power where you can stagnate and keep your customers and prevent competitors.
As long as you're
1) In a position where you can make the decisions on whether or not the company should move forward
and
2) Hold the stock units that will be exchanged for money if another company buys out your company
then there's really no way things won't be fine, short of criminal investigations/the rare successful shareholder lawsuit. You will likely walk away from your decision to weaken the company with more money than you had when you made the decision in the first place.
That's why many in the managerial class often hold up Jack Welch as a hero: he unlocked a new definition of competence where you could fail in business, but make money doing it. In his case, it was "spinning off" or "streamlining" businesses until there was nothing left and you could sell the scraps off to competitors. Slash-and-burn of paid workers via AI "replacement" is just another way of doing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a historical example of "Little bit of taxes now and accelerate easier"? I can't think of any.
If you replace "taxes" with more general "investment", it's everywhere. A good example is Amazon that has reworked itself from an online bookstore into a global supplier of everything by ruthlessly reinvesting the profits. Taxes don't usually work as efficiently because the state is usually a much more sloppy investor. But it's far from hopeless, see DARPA. If you're looking for periods of high taxes and growing pros…
The US is also shaping up to be the principal winner in Artificial Intelligence.
If, like everyone is postulating, this has the same transformative impact to Robotics as it does to software, we're probably looking at prosperity that will make the 1950s look like table stakes.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ... Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. -- Frank Herbert, Dune You won't read, except the output of your LLM. You won't write, except prompts for your LLM. Why write code or prose when the machine can write it for you? You won't think or…
I think you’re missing the point of Dune. They had their Butlerian Jihad and won - the machines were banned. And what did it get them? Feudalism, cartels, stagnation. Does anyone seriously want to live in the Dune universe? The problem isn’t in the thinking machines, it’s in who owns them and gets our rent. We need open source models running on dirt cheap hardware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
COVID has cured me (hah!) of the notion that humanity will be able to pull together when faced with a common enemy. That means global warming or the next pandemic are going to happen and we will not be able to stop it from happening because a solid percentage can't wait to jump off the ledge, and they'll push you off too.
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This is delightfully unhinged, spending an amazing amount of time describing their model and citing their methodologies before getting to the meat of the meal many of us have been braying about for years: whether the singularity actually happens or not is irrelevant so much as whether enough people believe it will happen and act accordingly. And, yep! A lot of people absolutely believe it will and are acting accordin…
> * enough people believe it will happen and act accordingly* Here comes my favorite notion of "epistemic takeover". A crude form: make everybody believe that you have already won. A refined form: make everybody believe that everybody else believes that you have already won. That is, even if one has doubts about your having won, they believe that everyone else submit to you as a winner, and must act accordingly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
COVID has cured me (hah!) of the notion that humanity will be able to pull together when faced with a common enemy. That means global warming or the next pandemic are going to happen and we will not be able to stop it from happening because a solid percentage can't wait to jump off the ledge, and they'll push you off too.
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