There has been an increase in reports of cyber attacks resulting in the leaking of customers' personal data here in Japan, just over the last month or so.

The use of AI to both identify vulnerabilities and exploit them is presumably a period we need to go through, albeit painful. We come out the other side with more robust software.

It's a bit like if all the world were suddenly compelled to go for a health check... with the addition of bad guys who go around infecting people that are now known to have weak immune systems...

Perhaps, working for the creation of an American world-leading Super Intelligence, he can arrange a presidential pardon.
The law, after all, now seems to be a tool for those who can afford it, to wield against those who can't.

Wine has been going for a good 30 years. I have occasionally wanted to use it... although "want" gives the wrong impression. I might have had some hardware device that could be used with Linux, but the official Windows application had some particulr function that I wanted to use occasionally.

The experience was always fraught with problems, brittle, and wouldn't work again after having been left fallow for a few months. This was true whenever I tried it though the project history.

But you have to respect the project. Longevity!

Yes - I think it can be a good thing, and can give jobs to people who are unemployed. I don't think it is intrinsically a bad thing.

But - It is not as clear cut as "[...] products for American consumers here on American soil.". The idea is what is sometimes referred to as "near-shoring" - a sort of compromise between off-shoring and on-shoring. It does have the benefit of new jobs in those "near-shore" poor states, but it tends to keep the glamorous jobs firmly situated in the wealthy states, and there by reinforcing the reputation of both states.

And if you are moving from off-shoring to near-shoring, then of course you have to go and tell all those off-shore workers that they no longer have a job. If the firing manager is a keen America Firster, then he can probably console himself pretty quickly about that, but a "people are people" person might need a little longer.

Immorality and corruption are nothing to be ashamed of in Trump's mind. Being concerned about that sort of thing is for "losers". On the contrary, they can be carried out in the open and bragged about.

This is why, having been passed over for the Nobel Peace prize, Trump called the decision an "indelible stain on the country of Norway", not because he is unaware that the decision is not made by the "country of Norway", it's just that he finds it difficult to comprehend a government that won't interfere in the organisations within its borders.

It just baffles me that a country so proud of its founding concepts - separation of powers, no one is above the law, aversion to tyrants, etc. - could select this person, twice, knowing his character. It's utterly baffling.

Is this a case of on-shoring assembly, or off-shoring Mississippi...?

Hundreds of lawyers rubbing their hands thinking of ways to put an asterisk against "own".

That's an interesting point. I can see how companies might register this as a risk, and avoid it on that basis, even if the legal conclusions have not yet arrived.

To clarify, when you describe LLM output as copyrightable, are you implying the copyright holder is the LLM provider, or the owners of the original training data?

In discussions of copyright on this topic, the theme is usually a complaint about LLMs being trained on data created by humans, without the permission of those humans. They might have a case here, although (a) it would be a difficult one to unravel, and (b) since the LLMs generally do not reproduce raw training data verbatim, they arguably only violate copyright as much as humans do when they read a lot, digest that information, and then compose something "new".

But if - as you may be suggesting - the AI companies might decide that they are copyright owners of LLM output, then we are presented with a different kettle of fish. I wonder if any of the small print that comes with those models implies that... It sounds difficult to enforce - being so widespread, especially retrospectively, and difficult to prove. But I agree, a risk is a risk, and companies often avoid that sort of risk regardless of the rights and wrongs.

Caution is required, as it is with any submission to the Linux kernel, but I think it's sensible for Linus to be open to the idea (albeit with his guns-ablazing turn of phrase).

At the other extreme, we need to be careful of the knee-jerk reaction of writing off all AI generated code as "slop". Sometimes this can be no more than a sort of "signalling". If I label code as "slop" I am really just letting you know that I am a programmer at a level that can discern such things... even if I am not. (Since feeling I need to let you know betrays an insecurity).

In my limited experience, AI can generate good code, particularly for small, well defined cases. And even when the first draft is not good enough, you can refine the requirements and get it to improve the code. Just as you might with a human.

That's a good point.

A common criticism to any sort of benefit scheme it that the recipients are not deserving. But of course we often decide to expend additional resources on people who might not be deserving - If our child goes off the rails, we will do what we can to get their life back on track. We can justify this, saying the child is one of our own, while the homeless stranger living a mile away under a bridge is not. This defense may be common sense to most, but in using it, we start to sound a bit like the scribes and pharisees...

Putting up security cameras, high walls, and bars on your windows is not really making society better. It is the reaction you have when you have given up on that idea. You've decided that society has, and will always have, bad people, and you are just going to hunker down and protect your own. The task of making a better society is just too tough.

It's a bit like when there is loud music playing. You can negotiate with the person playing the loud music to have it turned down. But if you have come to feel that negotiation is not possible, you might decide to put on ear muffs. The loud music will stay loud.

I wonder if there is an inverse relationship between prevelance of EVs in a country, and the likelyhood of that country to stage public executions...

(I'm saying this in a light-hearted manner, but with the hope that it is nevertheless thought-provoking)

There certainly is a lot of discussion on how criminals should be caught.

Perhaps in the distant future we will be better at understanding how a person becomes a criminal.

The sorrowful case of Christa Pike has been in the news in recent days. To summarise, she was on death row in Tennessee, and on the day of execution, she was given the prescribed lethal injection, twice, and survived. She is currently in hospital.

She was sentenced to death when she was 18, having tortured and murdered a young woman (together with her then boyfriend accomplace). Her childhood had not been pleasant. She had been neglected and abused by her alcoholic parents. By that point in her life she had been raped twice, the first time at age 11, then at age 17.

Our system puts all responsibility onto the individual, so she - having committed a murder - is sentenced to death. But one can't help but wonder how much of this murder was due to Pike's volition, and how much was due to her environment and upbringing. To keep things simple though, we have a murder, and we have a murderer. We sentence the murderer to death. An eye for an eye.

Then if we fail in our attempt to execute them, we send them to hospital to be patched up. Perhaps we can try again later.

I suspect that this will all be see as utterly barbaric, once it becomes history.