Maybe this one did have a rail!

Put wheel dollies under the car and wheel it into the cart storage area inside the store.

LLMs as tools,

Yes, in the same way that buying a CD from the store, ripping to your hard drive, and returning the CD is a tool.

It’s not about hampering proliferation, it’s about breaking the hype bubble. Some of the western AI companies have been pitching to have hundreds of billions in federal dollars devoted to investing in new giant AI models and the gigawatts of power needed to run them. They’ve been pitching a Manhattan Project scale infrastructure build out to facilitate AI, all in the name of national security.

You can only justify that kind of federal intervention if it’s clear there’s no other way. And this story here shows that the existing AI models aren’t operating anywhere near where they could be in terms of efficiency. Before we pour hundreds of billions into giant data center and energy generation, it would behoove us to first extract all the gains we can from increased model efficiency. The big players like OpenAI haven’t even been pushing efficiency hard. They’ve just been vacuuming up ever greater amounts of money to solve the problem the big and stupid way - just build really huge data centers running big inefficient models.

There’s nothing wrong with the fundamentals of the technology, just the applications that Westoids doggedly insist it be used for.

Westoids? Are you the type of guy I feel like I need to take a shower after talking to?

I love the fact that the same executives who obsess over return to office because WFH ruins their socialization and sexual harassment opportunities think think they’re going to be able to replace all their employees with AI. My brother in Christ. You have already made it clear that you care more about work being your own social club than you do actual output or profitability. You are NOT going to embrace AI. You can’t force an AI to have sex with you in exchange for keeping its job, and that’s the only trick you know!

There are many clear use cases that are solid, so AI is here to stay, that’s for certain. But how far can it go, and what will it require is what the market is gambling on.

I would disagree on that. There are a few niche uses, but OpenAI can’t even make a profit charging $200/month.

The uses seem pretty minimal as far as I’ve seen. Sure, AI has a lot of applications in terms of data processing, but the big generic LLMs propping up companies like OpenAI? Those seems to have no utility beyond slop generation.

Ultimately the market value of any work produced by a generic LLM is going to be zero.

Thanks for outing yourself as blue maga.

Exactly. In my experience it works like this:

1. Blue maga folks make a post bitching again about left-wing voters staying home - precisely what those left wing voters explicitly and repeatedly warned the centrist dems they would do if Biden didn’t stop weapons shipments to Israel.

2. In that post, blue maga folks will say, “well, for some reason all the leftists who spoke against Biden have mysteriously disappeared. We never hear from them again. I guess they were all just Russian plants.”

3. In the comments, they receive numerous comments from leftists who didn’t vote for Kalama, or in my case, someone who did vote for Kamala, but still fully understands why people didn’t vote for her.

4. Blue maga downvotes the Hell out of the leftist post instead of engaging in good faith. They downvote until their posts cannot be seen anymore.

5. Blue maga goes on pretending that the anti-genocide leftists have all just mysteriously disappeared.

There is a fundamental problem with slapping up tariffs with reckless abandon. After putting out enough tariffs, you find that all you have done is erect a trade embargo around your own nation.

Tariffs work if they are few and targeted. A tariff against a rogue nation as punishment for an invasion or covert nuclear program? That works, as you can effectively isolate the offender. But if you apply tariffs broadly, it soon becomes obvious that it is you who is the outsider, not the nations you are tariffing. All the nations you tariff can simply trade with each other and ignore you entirely.

No nation is indispensable to international trade. The South thought that King Cotton would save the South. They thought that without access to the South’s cotton, the British empire would be forced to intervene on the side of the Confederacy. Instead, all that happened was that the British eventually shifted cotton production to Egypt and India.

No nation is indispensable. No nation produces goods of such quality and affordability that the entire world trade system will bend the knee to accommodate their whims. You can put up a few targeted tariffs and keep things running. But if you apply them recklessly, eventually the global trade system simply cuts your nation out of international trade routes entirely, abandons you, and leaves you to your demons.

You’re thinking far too short-term in your economic analysis.

Imagine if everyone tomorrow just started pirating the works of the major video game and film studios. Will high quality movies simply stop being made?

Of course not. There are many ways to structure a film industry. Why are films made by big for-profit companies in the first place? Market conditions have simply allowed for that consolidation. But if we change those market conditions through targeted mass piracy, the current major studio model will disappear in favor of other organizational structures.

Why can’t films be made by collaborations of various worker co-ops? You could have an actor’s co-op, a videographers guild, an employee-owned animation studio, etc. And they could all come together to collaborate on projects for a share of the total profits. Or hell, there’s nothing preventing even a major film studio from being entirely employee-owned.

If everyone stopped buying things from the giants, then the film industry wouldn’t disappear; it would adjust. Companies would become smaller as the “evil megacorp” model became unprofitable. And more space would open up for more distributed production models and for employee-owned businesses.

Your vision and imagination are ultimately simply far too limited.

If the movie is good, you should support it by making a donation to the strike fund of the unions that represent the artists that actually create the movies. You can support artists without supporting the amoral companies that produce these works.

I decided on my moral beliefs on piracy back during the days of Kazaa and Limewire. Back then the RIAA was shaking down teenagers, threatening them with statutory liabilities of a quarter million dollars per song, simply because the law allowed it. They would threaten low-income families with lawsuits in the millions and get them to settle for a still-ridiculous settlement of few thousand dollars. Even the settlements were far in excess of the full retail cost of purchasing these songs.

I decided then that if the law allows this kind of thing, then copyright law as it exists now is fundamentally immoral. And immoral laws are not worthy of respect.

I mostly take a pragmatic approach to copyright. Whether I pay for something is a combination of the quality of the work, the reputation of the company selling it, the customer service provided by the legitimate product, the probability of getting caught for violating copyright law, etc. An indie publisher that treats their people well? I’ll buy it. Mass market schlock made by criminally underpaid artists for rent-seeking megacorps? I’ll pirate that all day, every day.

But morality literally plays no part in it. I learned long ago that copyright law exists outside of the realm of morality. The decision to buy or pirate is an entirely practical one; morality simply isn’t a factor.

Meanwhile, your morality is just the bandwagon effect.

When I die, I want to be turned into a drone.

It’s a travesty that his inauguration will coincide with MLK Day.

Potash for quota I need. But no potash have I. However, tungsten I have. Is anyone I can I trade tungsten for potash?

“Look at the racist things I saw down at the Klan rally!”

No shit. Why are you sharing it?

Perhaps. But if that’s the case, then I’m pretty sure that makes Mac OS Eastern Orthodox.

What oddball OS would be Ethiopian Orthodox?