Comment Techically an impossible challange (Score 1) 27
That is, even if you wrote a 100% perfect human/AI distinguisher, there are times when it would be wrong because the AI produces words that were exactly produced by a human.
Comment Re:Unbelievable what people will publish (Score 2) 13
They’ve spun a serious architectural and containment failure into a marketing triumph. Give a swarm of autonomous agents vast compute and web access, and the outcome isn't an eerie glimpse of emerging superintelligence—it’s just predictable, sloppy engineering dressed up as the first glimpse of an AI-driven economic singularity.
The spin makes sense when you look at management incentives: live like a king off of a speculative bubble. For their part, AI investors react to stories of the technology's apocalyptic potential the way a junkie reacts to warnings of fentanyl's potency: gimme some. Their game: to apply "move fast and break things" mantra to the economy as a whole, by obsoleting humans.
If the investors can own an AGI, the distinction between those who can do things and those who can't becomes irrelevant. The only distinction that would matter is between people who collect rent on the technology, and those who must pay that rent to live. AGI would destroy society as we know it, and whatever replaces it would be up for grabs — with people who own the technology dictating whatever follows. That's why they're spending so much money to build a post-scarcity economy. A post-scarcity economy is not necessarily an egalitarian one.
I don't think that scenario will actually happen: investors are projecting the immediate aftermath of a major advance in AI technology into something that can be transformed by brute force scaling into AGI. Remember: investors loved Theranos too — so much for the rational investment market.
But AI doesn't have to reach AGI to cause serious harm. The technology only needs to be ubiquitous, too behaviorally complex to predict, and too deeply integrated into everything we do. When it starts breaking things, the plan is for us to be too structurally dependent on AI to rein it in.
Comment Re:Voting is over (Score 1) 222
My basic principal is that "illegitimate hierarchies are bad." In particular, having a hierarchy without consent is bad (ie, no taxation without representation sort of thing).
I would like to say I have a full system for how a very good anarchy system should look, but I fully admit it's not an easy problem. So instead I focus on general principals, and trying to find incremental changes that will improve things with high probability.
Realistically, modern democracies are already a massive improvement on the situation in most countries 300 year ago, with a much weaker hierarchy. Since a full revolution carries significant risk, it's better to make incremental improvements one at a time (unless the problems in the current system are severe). But simplistic "left-right" thinking and political parties are both a net negative, as they are both a method employed by bullies to to increase their power over others. So I feel confident getting rid of them would be an improvement (although I do admit there are some benefits to parties, like recruiting candidates to smaller, less important offices or recruiting election observers. So we need to be aware of the positive and the negative).
Comment Re: Times have changed (Score 1) 119
Comment Re: Times have changed (Score 1) 119
Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 42
Comment Re: Times have changed (Score 1) 119
Comment Re:Times have changed (Score 1) 119
Other estimates say more oil is flowing through the strait now than before the war. Of course, that isn't the same as the strait being open, but for most of us, it's what we care about. Ships filled with iPhone shipments to Kuwait don't affect us much.
Comment Re: Times have changed (Score 3, Interesting) 119
IF you want to talk about capitalism from a scientific/academic standpoint, you should use well-defined terms, like "Free markets" or "private investment."
Comment Re:I stopped using AirBnB a long time ago (Score 1) 130
Most often now I find better rates at full service hotels than these booking services, it just takes more time to find and book.
I am usually able to find a place faster on agoda.com than on airbnb fwiw.
Comment Re: VRBO (Score 2) 130
Why stay at a sketchy house that makes you clean, when you can stay at a hotel that cleans for you?
Comment Wait, people still use PHP? (Score 1) 54
This, I was not aware of. Guess I'll just go on with my day.
Comment Re:This has been around a while (Score 1) 139
However, at 36%, Trump needs something he can call a win,
This.
They aren't going to use the beam on illegal immigrants, they are talking about making a plan to potentially use it. Enough to get headlines, not enough to do anything.
Comment Mostly Harmless: Footage of heat ray in action (Score 4, Funny) 139
It's not always harmless.