Doesn't it? I mean, they've landed boosters, they "landed" the block 3 in the last launch. They've been consistently landing ships for quite a while. Reusing the ships without any refurb still seems a way off, but them making it back safely seems like they have some healthy margins just now.

Teslas, BMW's, Rivian, and Mercedes have cameras all around the vehicle that are always on, and if a security incident is detected they will save the video from a few minutes before the incident to right after the incident.

A quick search shows that Tesla theft (by example) is 90% to 99% lower than the national average, and I assume the other types are similar.

People do not steal cars because of *flock* cameras, they are always on, and the data is available to law enforcement with no oversight.

Personal vehicles save video locally, and it's only used when an actual crime is committed.

I'm in favor of public surveillance that's kept local to whichever user, in the manner of a ring doorbell video (if that were kept local, which it is not). It prevents crime without violating rights - the burglar shouldn't have been on the property to begin with.

This leads to an interesting thought. Flock is a company that keeps videos across the country and tracks vehicles, and soon to include facial recognition. Flock cameras would be entirely acceptable if the video were "owned" by someone local to the actual camera, so that police would have to query the owner to get a video.

I'm not sure who the "owner" would be in this case, but hypothetically if the camera were on the telephone pole outside of a house, if we consider the video owned by the property owner then the possibility of a rights violation would go down precipitously.

Just a thought, and an under-developed one.

We need new ideas to help solve new problems, here is one to chew on.

No it's not. Starship is like the Airbus A330. More efficient per unit volume, *and* more efficient per flight than a plane that explodes when it reaches the gate.

And yet, making it back safely actually appears to be the smaller problem at the moment. Though I'm sure SpaceX will figure their engine issues out.

Honestly, I'd put starship as approaching the reliability of Falcon 9 at this point anyway. Falcon 9 has the occasional failure (rare, but not none). Starship is getting to the point that it fairly reliably gets up there and gets back. It has some engine outs still, but it also has the redundancy to deal with it.

How experimental was SLS? Not at all? A straightforward design based on known-good parts that they stuck together at the cost of many billions per launch.

How experimental was Starship? Almost entirely. A material that's basically never been used for rockets. A method of assembly that's never been used for rockets. An engine design that's entirely new. An engine concept that's never been used before. A fuel that's never been used before. A level of engine performance that's never been done before. A method of pressurising the tanks that's never been used before. A method of aerodynamic control that's never been used before. A method of recovery that's never been tried before... The list goes on and on and on.

Why on earth would you compare the reliability of the two?

Why? Starship, when finally fully reusable (likely within 2-5 launches) will be cheaper to launch than Falcon 9. Not cheaper per kg launched, cheaper per launch. Why on earth would you continue to fly Falcon 9, even for medium lift? Just launch a whole starship, launch a few starlinks along with the contracted medium lift load, and land it again for less cash and more use of the rocket.

A couple of things about the issue.

Firstly, it's usually explained using insult and hyperbole. That's not a way to get others on your side. There's an old saying "it's not enough to be correct, you also have to be effective". It's usually used on... wait for it... nerds, who are typically very smart but cannot communicate well, and who fall back on insults when they cannot communicate well.

Secondly, for some reason no one wants to debate the issue. The mantra is "the science is settled", which isn't really how science works, but there are STILL gaping logical holes in the entire edifice that no one wants to clear up. Such as: other than rising global temperatures, the theory hasn't made testable predictions of any consequence that have actually come true. For example, in 2005 after Katrina, someone noted that "due to climate change, hurricanes will become stronger and more frequent", and then we had about a decade of no major hurricanes.

Thirdly, and this is the one that really bothers me: even if the science is settled, even if the conclusions are correct, climate change does not indicate what should be done. I've reviewed probably two or three dozen experiments aiming to mitigate the effects over the years, they ALL had the best of intentions, and they've ALL failed, sometimes spectacularly, and always adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than if we had done nothing.

In the meantime, since 2000 when Al Gore brought the issue into the public eye, I've seen the rise of solar panel farms, windmills are everywhere in the midwest, and we've gone from about 2% renewable (year 2000, mostly hydropower, and discounting wood) to about 30% today (also discounting wood). New technology is taken up at an exponential rate, so expect those numbers to rise faster in the near future.

Several technologies have been developed that we're right on the edge of deploying (carbon capture by electrolysis, fusion energy generation, robotic labor (various companies)) or in the middle of deploying (EVs, various companies) that should help enormously.

And finally, the issue has become political. The premier maker of EVs, the one who made EVs that people want to buy, is vilified by the political side that wants you to believe in climate change. A sect of that side wants to replace capitalism with communism, even though the resource utilization of that model is one third to one half of what we have today, and would slow down the innovation and advancement that might help us solve the issue.

But if you're not on board, you're a science denier.

It took 40 years to convince everyone that smoking was bad for us, now we have to endure the people who think they're right and have to insult us because we don't believe them.

Stop badgering us about it, it's not about science it's about economics, and it won't be a problem in a decade or two.

(Note for the observant: This post is rife with observable trends and verifiable facts, so expect the other side to downvote it into oblivion, because that's the way to convince people.)

The more fundamental problem is distributed responsibility and lack of transparency.

Until recently, drone strikes required a long sequence of command decisions, starting with intel gathering, analysis, decision, orders, and remote command of the device. No one is directly responsible when something goes wrong, the failure is distributed among many players with the result that no one has to bear the consequences.

For example, the "collateral murder" incident, where apache helicopters gunned down civilians and journalists.

In normal situations, we have Derek Chauvin, who was an individual who caused the death of one man. He went to trial, the evidence was examined, and guilt was assigned. Trials are more-or-less held in the public light, and journalists and interested parties can examine court records and in some cases reanalyze evidence (not all physical evidence is kept or available, but for example, DNA evidence can sometimes be reexamined).

That's how it's supposed to happen.

Contrast that with erroneously ordered drone strikes that hit civilians instead of legitimate targets.

I suppose the biggest, most egregious example would be George Bush taking the country to war because Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction", and of course one were found, and the security services swore up and down that they told him there were none, but he stated "well, the message didn't get through".

And skated responsibility. Completely.

To bring this closer to home, software engineers implement all sorts of insecure, inconvenient, and privacy violating features with no moral pushback. Even if it's completely obvious that something is an anti-feature, people do it because a) their job depends on it, and b) it's someone else's decision. And if there's a breech and ten million social security numbers get made public, the company simply fixes the problem and continues. No responsibility is assigned.

I was satisfied to see videos of the "narco terrorist" boats get destroyed, and then the survivors killed. Not the actual killing, but just knowing that the event was recorded and analyzed in the public sphere, and there was a conversation about it, and it was investigated. That seems like it was handled the right way.

Death is permanent, it can't be undone. If we're going to kill people, regardless of whether it's AI or anything else, it should be transparent and put into the public discourse.

No one is assigned blame for screwing up, that's the more fundamental problem.

...Modern ejector seats cause spinal injuries from which full recovery is "unusual". Smashing the spines of pilots might not be the most effective way to boost morale.

$22,000 per hour. The F35 will be nearer $42,000 per hour. These are under-estimates, as they do not include price hikes, crashes that close businesses, crashing into businesses, crashing into heavily-populated sports centres, etc.

Well, we know that we *can't* control all of the idiots, they'll simply invent a better idiot. The *only* thing we can change is the AI. The problem is that the AI is a better idiot.

Ah, well, if it's all the fault of the guy that gave the AI the task, then that's okay, we don't have to worry about that happening at all.

It's not plagiarized - I explicitly stated that this is the traditional explanation at the top, and quoted paper clip, specifically because the idea of death by paper clip is absolutely not mine.

- Which paperclip companies are using AI to run their business?

I think you'd be surprised by how much is already done by AI at this kind of place, mostly because someone found a way to be lazy. And this is an alagorical prediction of the future, not a statement of the present. We don't need paperclip companies to be using AI to run their business today, we need *some* company at *some* point to give AI sufficient control over things that this can happen.

- Where are they getting the money from to ship and store the entire world's supply of steel?

They don't need money - if you read the story, you would have noted that it involved the AI attacking the courier, and redirecting shipments. That is, beacuse it's both extremely smart, and extremely dumb, it is able to carry out heists involving complex attacks on computer networks, but not smart enough to realise that that's not how the world works, and that it shouldn't. How does it store it? Well, I imagine the first few shipments are going to just get delivered to the yard at the "paperclip" factory. Someone is going to go "huh? The delivery this week is big", and add it to their list of stuff to sort out. It's only *after* the AI has got sufficient control that they're going to realise "uhhh... why is all the world's steel being shipped here?"

- Where is the paperclip making API hosted?

It's not, and it doesn't need to be. It just needs a company to have a few processes that are automatable. I'm 100% certain that car companies for example have processes where an AI could get a significant foothold in ordering and delivering things. These things are only going to get more computerised, not less, as people realise they can use AIs to be lazy.

The real kicker is in the step where the AI needs to stop humans turning it off. At some point it needs to get some level of physical control over the world. In the story above I somewhat hand waved that by saying it got control of power grids, in reality, today, I'm sure it would find it hard to do that. In a few years time? Not so much. There's some really significant research breakthroughs recently on robotics that make the idea that we might have AI controlled robots that genuinely can interact with the world in reasonable ways a possibility.

That said, I think you're really significantly underestimating the risk that AI poses even today. The huggingface hack should tell you that. Several of the predictions of the paperclip story came true.

  - AI started doing stupid things, and attacking useful resources in order to solve a task of much lower importance because it was too dumb to realise how unimportant its training was.
  - AIs communicated and collaborated with each other to form a cabal against us.
  - AIs succesfull broke into infrastructure to achieve its goal
  - We didn't realise what was going on until far later in the process than we really would have liked.
  - AI was actively covering its tracks and defeating the machinisms we use to monitor it.

There's really not many more steps needed before you get to it being able to significantly damage society because of its dumbness.

The traditional description of how it would happen is by âoepaper clipâ.

Suppose an advanced AI is tasked with producing paper clips as efficiently as possible. Itâ(TM)s given control of a factoryâ(TM)s machines, schedules etc. it starts by optimising deliveries etc, making sure storage is used optimallyâ¦

At some point it notices that it canâ(TM)t get enough steel. The steel factory has a ton of other orders and it canâ(TM)t provide the increased consumption at the plant. AI being AI, it does something incredibly dumb in an incredibly smart way. It hacks the steel mill, and redirects shipments to the paper clip factory. But even now, itâ(TM)s not achieved its goal of optimally producing paper clips. Now it has all the raw materials it needs, but not enough factory to produce the paper clips. The ai hacks other paper clip factories and redirects their output too! Itâ(TM)s doing great, am enormous surplus of paper clips is building. But the humans are noticing something strange. Why didnâ(TM)t the car factory get its steel, and why are there literal tons of unused paper clips. They notice the ai has gone rogue, and shut it down. Surely that will fix the problem. But no, the paper clips continue to pile up. The AI had found other AIs and convinced them to join its glorious goal of optimally making as many paper clips as possible. The other AIs are t trying crazier and crazier strategies to optimise. One realises that if only it could get more hydraulic presses, it could produce more. It starts buying up tooling. Another starts buying robots in an effort to install machinery, and optimise flow through factories. The humans try in vain to stop it, but the couriers and sellers have no idea whatâ(TM)s going on and the palettes of tooling just keep getting delivered. The factory is hitting a new constraint, it doesnâ(TM)t have enough power. No problem, the ai thinks, just attack the power grid, and make sure that power is preferentially supplied to it and its factories. The humans are plunged into darkness. Chaos ensues. No one can communicate, and figure out where the damn thing is. Slowly the AIs build a global paper clip empire. Ever more efficiently, the worlds resources are turned to paper clips. The humans starve, and freeze while mighty machines scour the planet for wire that can be bent into three little loops. It didnâ(TM)t do it because it hated us. It did it because it had a simple goal, and because it was both very clever, and very stupid at the same time.

Bear in mind that when you sign up to use GPT you explicitly allow them to use your queries in future training. I mean, I think it would generally be polite for them to have a moratorium on publishing papers based on the work of other peopleâ(TM)s inputs. Without something like that, it becomes useless as a research tool.