Recent submissions

Comment · 6 days ago
My (very amateur) interpretation is that this weakens confidence in P!=NP. Would like to hear from some experts in this area, if this is so or not.
Comment · 7 days ago
Yep. My father was in the biz, and I heard the stories at the dinner table. This has been a long evolution, and the old ecology no longer exists. AI has just given the pre-existing trend another (vary large) extra kick.
Comment · 7 days ago
Bad example.

In every war, countless innocent people die due to mis-targeting or other failure modes. At times the casualty count there exceeds military deaths. It is so common that we have a term for it: collateral damage.

So the question is: does AI lower such damage?

If AI had not been used in the attack on Iran, history indicates the death tolls in this regard would likely been much higher.

Not making a political statement or implying support for the war. Just making a point that these comparisons are more complicated that your example.

Comment · 8 days ago
Isn't that a good thing? Since these models generate garbage output of very low quality, they will never compete with the high quality generated only by human artists. Therefore this is a passing fad and human artists will always dominate.

The worst result would be if these models were any good vs being absolute slop. Then human artists would need to worry. But in fact there is no need to worry at all, as surely people (aside from a few people with bad taste) will clearly see the difference.

Comment · 1 month ago
Well, at least the AI market is validated now.
Comment · 5 months ago
You can't reduce people to their behavior ...

As a first approximation, why not? Behavior is generally all we have in front of us, plus any other assorted social signals. Internal mental states are invisible, as is the personal history of the individual. We might note a man beating a kitten on the sidewalk, and believe this behavior sufficient grounds to reduce this person to the category "dick", even if we remained unaware of his high intelligence, his doctoral paper on gender-inequality, and the fact his mother hates him.

Comment · 5 months ago
Yeh, my sense as well. I'm just out of college, and can tell you people my age use AI all the time and will probably be happy with this change. There is a diehard anti-AI group, but it seemed smaller all the time over the past couple years.
Comment · 6 months ago
Tesla is profitable, as a matter of public record. And SpaceX is, by all accounts, extremely profitable.
Comment · 6 months ago
No, the benefits are that something can be mass produced magnitudes faster and easier, which in turn also creates more latitude for creativity and new spaces.

It's a true state-change, which makes the argument pretty compelling IMO.

Comment · 7 months ago
What if the braincell-vibe JS libraries turn out pretty much identical to the legacy human JS libraries, aside from being better-commented. That might lead to an existential crisis for some folks.
Comment · 7 months ago
Exactly.

Clearly, some white-collar jobs will be replaced. Hard to argue against that, given it's already beginning to happen. So the question becomes what is the eventual rate of conversion and what is the subsequent economic impact over time? I don't think anyone has a credible handle on that, except to note that it won't be zero.

Comment · 8 months ago
Columbia. Challenger.
Comment · 8 months ago
Yep, and the same with the internet. During the 1990s and 2000s, people kept wondering why the internet wasn't showing up in productivity numbers. Many asked if the internet was therefore just a fad or bubble. Same as some now do with AI.

It takes time for technology to show measurable impact in enormous economies. No reason why AI will be any different.

Comment · 8 months ago
This is actually an old syndrome with technology. It takes a longt ime for the effect to be reliably measured. Famously, it took many years for the internet itself to show up in significant productivity gains (if the internet is actually useful why don't the numbers show that? - a common comment in the 1990s and 2000s). So it seems to me we're just the usual dynamic here. Productivity in trillion-dollar economies do not turn on a dime
Comment · 8 months ago
I've got people in my social network who firmly believe that every car is, in fact, "driven by Indonesians". Apparently a widespread belief.

I've pointed out that these vehicles are quickly become more prevalent, here and (especially) in China. To which the counter is that there plenty of Indonesians to go around.

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