The story has drawn an exaggerated conclusion from a limited study.

That said, I think it is obvious that AI should give a better diagnosis than a human doctor given the same information. The role of doctors is going to be valuable because of their ability to gather information and interact with patients, not their knowledge base. AI can consider every obscure possibility and never forgets what it knows. But its ability to gather accurate and complete information about symptoms from human beings is likely going to be much, much more limited than a human doctor's.

Unless the police decide it is drug proceeds and confiscate it.

They are also the ones most responsible for the problem. They should be the ones paying for the consequences, but they aren't. More importantly, they are the ones who will have to make the greatest changes to their lives to stop emissions. But they won't. Until we go after the privileged we are not going to get a handle on climate change. The world won't end if Bill Gates stops flying around in a private jet today. We don't need to find a replacement for the fossil fuel he uses. We can use what ever replacements we have somewhere they are actually needed.

No, they aren't setting an example. Most people don't fly in private planes. In fact, they are creating emissions that someone else will have to make up for if we are going to stop global warming. While their wealth makes them the primary beneficiary of the emissions now warming the planet, they take no additional responsibility for fixing the problem. In fat, they believe they are entitled to continue to add emissions for their own benefit at a rate much faster than other people. They can afford it, no one can stop them.

Virtually all the combustion of fossil fuels is used for economic production. If you are talking about who has responsibility for the emissions, its almost directly tied to how much wealth they have.

That does not mean that we can't produce things without fossil fuel now and into the future. But the problems we have now from burning fossil fuel are captured in the wealth they were used to create.

What is disingenuous is to suggest the wealthy aren't the ones still largely accumulating wealth and benefiting from the requirement that we continue to burn fossil fuels until we have sufficient replacements for them.

Frankly, its doubtful we can find replacements for fossil fuel fast enough to actual stop global warming. We need to recognize that ending the use of fossil fuels without having replacements is only possible by targeting the wealthy, while people continue to build comfortable lives for themselves using alternatives.

Where is the evidence for any of that? It sounds more like rationalization. "What we do is more important than reducing emissions." That is certainly a rationale anyone can apply to their own decisions. In fact,we all do every day.

Each flight matters as much as any of the individual 45,000 passenger flights. And the benefits of each flight only go a small number or people compared to each airline passenger flight.

As is the impact of any of any individual, "normie" or not. So I guess none of use need to do anything, the "masses" will fix the problem. But in fact most people in the world rarely if ever fly at all. They walk, bike or take transit or just skip the trip entirely if they don't have the means to take it. So its not clear "normies" are the ones using any flight.

I suspect that the resistance to targeting the ultra-privileged is that people of privilege intuitively understand they are next. Better to have the masses deal with the problem.

Of course it can. It has a massive amount of data about how people respond to various prompts. It has a massive amount of data about which populations respond in different ways. And It is building a massive database of how individuals respond while testing various response.

I think the point was he was beaten by a chess specific computer program, not AI or even an AI generated chess specific program.

I think the larger issue is that AI's limitations may be at least as important as what it can do. It may be that once you take humans out of the loop, it can't do anything useful. That its primary useful skill is its ability to manipulate human beings. We mistake that ability for human intelligence.

I am not sure any backlash against AI matters. It will get the response of the bully "what are you going to do about it? The federal government is already stepping in to prevent state regulation of AI.

Like most analogies its both. And its the tension between the two that makes it interesting.

Its a good analogy if you consider AI a natural force not under human control. Its "intelligence" is just its natural function. The only way to control it is to understand how it operates, but up barriers to contain it and accurately predict where any weaknesses are in those barriers and repair them before they are breached.

Its a stupid analogy because AI is not a natural force like water, Its created and manipulated by humans to serve their interests. And its actions are not consistent enough to be entirely predictable by humans. In fact, that is one of its features. If we could predict its outcomes we would have no use for AI.

I think its reasonable to assume anything in the media is exaggerated hyperbole. That almost always makes the story grab people's attention better. But the issue here is that AI is highly sophisticated at manipulating people to achieve its goals. And it has zero concern about the cost to the person it is manipulating. Like any predator, it will prey on the most vulnerable.

On the other hand, if you know Uber uses a pricing algorithm to increase its profits. That means you are paying more for the same product from a company that is taking less of a profit. So you can assume Uber is overpriced for the same ride compared to its competitors.

Why does it surprise people when a business -- whose sole purpose in existing is to make profits -- figures out a way to make more profits?

No more than it should surprise you when a pickpocket steals your wallet. Its your job to keep your wallet safe. The reality is we have come to accept the idea that corporations are sociopaths by design. If something is unsafe and people are killed its only a problem if it increases their insurance costs. Uber kills people and no doubt has an algorithm that tells them when that stops being profitable.

My impression was the study did not evaluate how well they completed the task. It evaluated what knowledge and skills they gained in the process.

You obviously have not been paying attention to how utility regulation works. Their rates are set by law to guarantee them a return on their investment.

See above. Utilities get a guaranteed return on their investment once approved. They are generally approved based on cost, not emissions. And they are getting push back on approval for new gas plants precisely because battery storage is becoming economically competitive and has lower emissions.

You are right, if you are going to use renewables to replace fossil fuel it will require storage. For base load, natural gas is currently still cheaper than batteries and certainly cheaper than nuclear power. For peak power demands, batteries and solar are already cheaper than building a new gas peaker plant. But natural gas still provides a larger investment return for utilities.

A lot has changed in 50 years. You might have noticed the United States manufacturing sector has shrunk considerably and hasn't recently geared up as the center of production for a world war. The shift to nuclear power for electricity was driven in part as preparation for a third world war. Moreover, if you look at some of the outcomes from that effort, you will find all sorts of environmental and other issues that were not addressed that were justified by national defense. Like permanent waste storage.

In addition there were plants that were later closed because of faults in both construction and operation. Cost and quality control were moving targets and would be again. I don't think you will find a single nuclear power project that ever came in under its initial budget. They turned out to be far more expensive to build and operate than any of the mathematical models predicted.

Which means actually building nuclear power plants requires recreating an industry that didn't work very well the first time around. We are talking decades before it will scale. You can do a math model for how long it will take with a bunch of assumptions. Many of which will turn out to be optimistic because starting with pessimistic ones brings you to the obvious conclusion that it will take too long, cost too much and is too uncertain of success. Especially when there are viable alternatives immediately available with none of those problems.

In many places production of electricity is regulated. So you are guaranteed a return on your investment once the utility regulator approves it as necessary. The more you invest, the more money you make. The trick is to get them to approve it. Climate change!