By your logic, humans are not intelligent either. Human "intelligence" is also the product of deterministic processes - chemical/biological reactions that dictate how action potentials are transmitted along and between neurons. A computer is no different.

(Yes there is also quantum mechanics, which are nondeterministic according to certain interpretations. But the view that brain activity is tangibly influenced by quantum fluctuations appears to be a fringe one.)

$4-5 billion is completely negligible towards Israel's GDP ($564 billion), and also compared to the cost of this and previous wars between Israel and Hamas.

I think it's more that Israel doesn't like it when its citizens are massacred by invaders and when neighborhoods across the country are bombarded by missiles.

But how many people have they killed? Zero, as far as I know. In the meantime, human drivers have killed 13 people in San Francisco. I'd rather have a self-driving car that behaves erratically at low speed than human drivers who accelerate into 4-year-old girls crossing the street at crosswalks.

Who's "they"?

I have never, not once in my life, heard anyone say I should eat bugs.

"My sister immigrated from Iran to Canada and she keeps telling me she'd leave CA in a heartbeat to move to Los Angeles (which I believe is the real armpit of America)"

As someone whose sister is Iranian, I'm sure you are aware that Los Angeles has the nickname "Teherangeles" and it's the largest concentration of Iranian people outside Iran. I'm not sure why exactly, maybe the climate is familiar, maybe it was the biggest fast-growing US city in 1979 so a natural destination for exiles and since then everyone has moved to join the existing large community.

I think that was always the case? There were tons of companies in Detroit that made devices of various sorts that the big manufacturers bought and integrated into their cars.

The same happened to me. But - on one round, it gave me an imaginary title with a real author. And when I looked up that author, I found a real paper by him which was exactly what I was looking for. So yes ChatGPT is limited, but there's still plenty of room for it to make valuable contributions.

You don't think composing an AI prompt is "creative input or intervention"?

In a relationship with a real woman (or man, as the case may be), you don't just talk about activities that will be done together. You also talk about whatever happens to be on your mind. That is what emotional intimacy means - you share your personality with your partner and they treat it kindly and share their personality back. Most people, even testosterone charged men, find this meaningful and rewarding. If the chatbot brushes this off and just wants to talk about sex all the time, that's a form of rejection. And which person is going to pay to be rejected?

Reddit at least is public (except for "over 18" subreddits IIRC?). The real problem is sites like Discord that are hidden and private.

That seems logical, but it's not actually true. In fact, the public sector is capable of handling risks in a more efficient manner than the private sector, because the public sector can more easily raise money by taxes or cheap borrowing. You can write your contracts so that the private sector is responsible for risks, but all that means is that the private sector will inflate their bids to compensate for their increased risk. As a result, you lose everything you gained by outsourcing risk, plus more because the private sector is worse at handling risk to begin with.

Vertical farming is extremely inefficient compared to traditional farming. Just think about it - instead of the sun growing your plants, the sun shines on a solar panel, which generates electricity, which powers lights, which grows plants. Why insert all those lossy middlemen when you can use the sun directly? The light produced by LED bulbs doesn't even have the frequency spectrum which is optimal for plant growth.

There's a saying which has the ring of truth to it - "Your career, your spouse's career, your kids, your marriage - pick three".

One of you can have a full and active career, along with happy kids and a happy marriage, if the other partner gives up their career (for as long as the kids are small).

Occasionally one will see headlines claiming a gigantic carbon cost to having kids. Because your kids use carbon, and their kids will use carbon, and their kids, and so on forever. The problem with this is that carbon usage is not constant with time. The amount of renewable energy generated is rising exponentially, and ways of using this energy like electric cars are becoming widespread. In not too many decades the world will become carbon-neutral, just because that is more economically efficient. So your kids and their kids will not actually emit large amounts of carbon, and the carbon cost of having kids is actually relatively small.

This does not imply that climate change is not a problem - we are still capable of emitting dangerous amounts of carbon before the switch to renewables - but it does mean that having kids is not actually an overwhelming cause of carbon emissions.

(Not to mention that our kids are just as human as we are, and if we deserve to live despite our carbon emissions, so do they. The world will survive no matter what they do, climate change is a problem because it's a problem for people, but you don't solve a problem for people by getting rid of the people)

You think people take highly addictive substances due to "having made up their mind"? Maybe the first time...