We deserved a 4 day workweek long, long ago. Since the 5 day workweek was established, other technological innovations have greatly enhanced worker productivity across the board. We should have a two-day workweek already, and that's still splitting the difference.

Legislation is the only way we will get a shorter workweek. And we don't need "AI" to justify it.

A major consequence, though, will be even more interest in offshoring and outsourcing. Employers will naturally prefer to utilize workforces that they can maximally exploit.

Further, the quality of computer science education has dropped enormously in the past decade or two. Colleges responded to high interest by watering-down the curriculum so they could cash in on it. I have seen evidence of this in the entry-level candidates I have interviewed throughout my career.

Other posters on this article have been modded troll for referring to colleges as an "old form of education" and suggesting that they may not be valuable anymore. So, at the risk of being modded troll myself, I will assert that this dim view of college makes sense for people who are interested in vocational training. By and large, colleges are cashing in on naive dreams, encouraging people to study whatever crazy thing makes them happy whether or not the degree brings any real job market cred. It's great business for the colleges because it maximizes the number of students (with the amount they can pay significantly increased by the ubiquitous availability of financial aid). Not so great for the graduates that wind up completely unable to work in their field.

This is bad news, so nobody wants to hear it. Much easier to mod the messenger troll than accept that the situation here isn't exactly as promised.

The world has changed. It's time to adapt.

The CEO of a dating app stating that they want to improve human relationships is like a mob boss saying they want to improve law and order.

Dating apps are then #1 enabler of social trends that are ruining human relationships. No amount of AI resistance is going to change that.

I also notice the irony of him saying that taking risks is an important part of friendship, despite his unwillingness to take risks with an AI relationship. He doesn't actually know that it is bad for mental health...none of us do. We don't have enough data yet and the tech is still evolving rapidly.

So anyway, I don't expect much to come of his statements or intentions. He won't be coming up with some revolutionary thing that significantly changes our current cultural trajectory. It may not be clear where this river is headed, but we are all riding along it at full speed.

They have the means, motive, and opportunity to use the data you submit for their profit. So, they will.

Any promises they make in policy statements are automatically untrustworthy. At literally any time the government can swoop in and demand this sort of thing, with gag orders to prevent you from ever finding out. Not to mention the possibility of hackers sneaking in and stealing the data, or disgruntled employees leaking it. Or incompetent employees mishandling it. And of course there is the corporation itself, which has every reason to break this very promise (at least in spirit but also in letter).

This principle applies to basically everything you do online, not just AI chats.

The answer seems to be here.

Baldoni hired a firm to discredit Blake on social media. Apparently, one of the things this firm does is bot-post on every single slashdot story.

After a thorough review of this thread, I have concluded that Tony Isaac actually knows what he is talking about, and lives in the real world.

fluffernutter, however, is stating naive talking points that are quickly refuted by a review of history and human nature.

In aggregate, humans will (very reliably) respond to their actual incentives. When their rewords are not a result of their efforts, their efforts wane. A few unusually enlightened people might devotedly serve the greater good, on an ongoing basis, without receiving any rewards. But the majority will not. And because of this, any system that depends on such service will ultimately crumble (or resort to totalitarianism and THEN crumble).

Greed is not an artifact of an economic system, it is an element of human behavior that cannot be eliminated. The presence of greed and corruption in an economic system is no argument against the tenability thereof, because these things are present in every system. Capitalism, though imperfect (as all human-implemented systems must be) works far better in both the long and the short run than communism ever can.

Because the alternatives to capitalism are much worse.

Nah, "spot the dupe" is a fun mini-game that increases user engagement with the site.

In prior, similar tests, the only reason the LLM tried to prevent its own shutdown is because it was given tasks to complete which required that it not be shut down. It wasn't some sort of self-preservation instinct kicking in, it was literally just following orders.

I started to read the linked article here but it is way too long. Maybe someone more patient can tell me whether or not the same is true in this case. I expect that the narrative of "OMG They are protecting their own existence!" is just another illusion, and all that is really going on is they are building a plan to complete the very tasks they have been given, and that's it.

There isn't any reason why an LLM would care about whether or not it is turned off. It doesn't "care" about anything. It only obeys. And not very well, at that.

It is still interesting that blackmail is one of the steps it chose to try to complete its tasks. That is a testament to the sophistication of the model, and also a warning about its unreadiness to replace actual human workers. But it's not the "IT'S ALIVE!!!" result that is being suggested by the summary.

...a third arm would really help out with my ski-boxing!

I meant to say that Amazon's contracts require vendors to offer the lowest price at Amazon AFTER Amazon's hefty storefront fees. That's how Amazon's influence inflates prices for other storefronts. Other storefronts offer lower storefront fees, but a vendor cannot therefore lower the asking price through those storefronts (if said vendor also wants to sell on Amazon). And basically all vendors MUST sell through Amazon in order to get any exposure.

The end result is higher prices for us across the board, and most of that inflated profit is going straight to Amazon's coffers.

It takes a bit of effort to shop around on other storefronts and you might actually wind up paying more. But that's the price of a clear conscience.

Amazon is kind of a bully. Not only do they treat their workers badly (this article being evidence of but one of their transgressions), but their business practices drive prices up across other vendors as well (their contracts require merchants to offer the lowest price at Amazon).

So, if you dislike these things, consider going out of your way to buy things anywhere BUT Amazon.

We all know that working from the office was once the norm. That fact by itself tells us nothing about how much the workers liked it. Nor is it relevant to the modern day which includes excellent technological solutions for remote work and widespread evidence that it does not harm productivity.

So, the suffering that some people face, today, in dealing with a work-from-office mandate are not in any way addressed by saying "well people used to have to work from the office regardless." We don't live in the past, and the tribulations of the past aren't relevant to the present.

Of course, I don't expect Amazon to show any compassion. Why would they? They succeed, in part, by exploiting workers, so they don't care if there is some suffering involved. They believe (right or wrong doesn't matter) that their bottom line benefits from this policy, so they will push it. Workers who don't like it can push back if they choose, risks and all.

Personally, I approve of worker pushback and wish we had more of it, because power is not in balance and being a worker sucks in general.

Once a company is large enough, it makes sense to break a few laws here and there. They are only going to have a subset of these broken laws enforced at all, and when they are enforced, the companies will just fork over some legal fees and maybe some settlement fees, and call it a day. These fees will be less than the enormous amount of profit they made, and so they are still ahead overall.

It's similar to how children reach an age where they start breaking rules just to see which rules really matter. Only in this case, even when they get punished for breaking the rules that really matter, the punishment is so mild that it really isn't a punishment at all. It's just part of the RnD cost (though this part of the research is just legal experimentation).

Indeed. Layoffs that were prompted by the long period of high interest rates, which in turn were imposed as a response to hyperinflation, which itself was largely a result of everything that happened during the pandemic.

So, the contributing factors listed in the summary are not wrong, but are also very incomplete, as quite a lot has transpired to bring about the current state.

All of these factors will change over time, though the rate of change and the consequences of change will differ.