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.

How to address superintelligence, if that is actually something we realistically face:

1. Make creating an unlicensed AI with over a certain threshold to be a capital offense.

2. Regulate the field of artificial intelligence as heavily as we do nuclear science and nuclear weapons development.

3. Have strict international treaties on model size and capability limitations.

4. Have inspection regimes in place to allow international monitoring of any electricity usage over a certain threshold.

5. Use satellites to track anomalous large power use across the globe (monitored via waste heat) and thoroughly investigate any large unexplained energy use.

6. Target the fabs. High powered chips should be licensed and tracked like nuclear materials.

7. Make clear that a nuclear first strike is a perfectly acceptable response to a nation state trying to create AGI.

Anyone who says this technology simply cannot be regulated is a fool. We’re talking models that require hundreds of megawatts or more to run and giant data centers full of millions of dollars worth of chips. There’s only a handful of companies on the planet producing the hardware for these systems. The idea that we can’t regulate such a thing is ridiculous.

I’m sorry, but I put the survival of the human race above your silly science project. If I have to put every person on this planet with a degree in computer science into a hole in the ground to save the human race, that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Hell, I’ll go full Dune and outlaw computers all together, go back to pen and paper for everything, before I condone AGI.

We can’t control this technology? Balderdash. It’s created by human beings. And human beings can be killed.

So, how do we deal with ASI? You put anyone trying to create it deep in the ground. This is self defense at a species level. Sacrificing a few thousand madmen who think they’re going to summon a benevolent god to serve them is simple self-defense. It’s OK to kill cultists who are trying to summon a demon.

We should ban the teaching of religion to anyone under the age of 18, possibly even 25. Kids just aren’t old enough to make big meaningful decisions about religion, baptism, confirmation, etc.

You have to select “prime eligible” items. Are these penny ebooks included in the minimum purchase total?

You’re a machinist! Can’t you just like…make a better one? /s

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.

^^^^^^ Having this attitude is a great way to portray yourself as straight. It’s the idea that “straight culture” == “default.” Straight culture is a thing, just like gay culture is.

Yes, you can cling to pointless technicalities. There is no one behavior that 0 gay people ever engage in, or any behavior that 0 straight people ever engage in. But this is ridiculously reductive and ignore that despite outliers, clear cultural grouping of traits exists.

I did sell my soul and vote for Kamala. And what did it get me? In response, the Democrats voted for the first anti-LGBT hate bill in 30 years.

I voted for Kamala, but I also despise this cult-like idea of blind faith in the Democrats and the absolute refusal to hold them accountable for anything.

And your question is simply nonsensical. Just completely nonsensical. Progressives voted for plenty of people to defeat Trump. Millions of people voted for their own Democratic Congress members but then didn’t cast a vote for Kamala. She vastly underperformed Congressional Democrats.

I disagree. I see the pro-Palestine comments as pretty constant. What I have seen a rise of is of comments from liberals gleefully celebrating the plight of the Palestinians.s

Exactly. Democrats ran on “vote for a Democrat to save Democracy!” Millions of voters shrugged and asked, “what good has democracy done for me?”

For being a supposed liberal, you seem to have a hard problem accepting the validity of other people’s beliefs.

Voting is a cultural thing. People have different beliefs about voting. Your way is not the only way. Your way is not the “right” way simply because it is your way.

Some people, like yourself, vote looking forward. They pick which candidate they believe would be the best. They view voting as a job interview. Others vote looking backwards. They seek to hold their leaders accountable. They view voting as a performance review.

Which way is “correct?” Neither. There is no “correct” way to vote. And it’s extremely chauvinistic and close-minded to assume that your way is the only way.

In truth, any system or movement needs both types of voters. You need a balance of both types of voters, otherwise a political party is lost. You need forward-looking voters to win elections. You need backward-looking voters to ensure that winning elections actually does your party any good. If you only have backward-looking voters, you’ll never win an election. If you only have forward-looking voters, you’ll end up with leaders so ineffectual that they don’t accomplish anything even if they do win.

Stop shaming your brothers and sisters simply because they have a different voting culture than yourself. Your beliefs are just one side of a coin. Try to keep an open mind. Try to actually earn the title “liberal.”

Have Egypt annex it?

All that would change is that now Israel periodically raids across the Egyptian border to attack Hamas forces in Gaza.

And you don’t see the problem with that? You would vote for Mussolini over Hitler. That is simply downright demonic.

Where is your red line personally? How bad would a Democrat have to be before you would refuse to vote for them? Would you vote for a Democrat that was promising to exterminate 10 million Americans, if their Republican opponent was promising to exterminate 20 million Americans?

Where exactly is your red line, or do you simply not have one?

What if instead you hid an encrypted signal within an otherwise perfectly legible audio signal? Imagine a song being played. To the ear the song seems perfectly normal. But, unbeknownst to a casual listener, there is an encrypted signal embedded within the audio signal. For example, data could be embedded within a song by ever-so-slightly raising or lowering the pitch of a song multiple times per second. Then if you had a copy of the original file, software could compare the original file to the song transmitted over the radio. The locations where the pitch rose or fell could be noted, and the data could be retrieved. You could send encrypted data without anyone realizing you’re sending encrypted data. To anyone else listening, it would simply sound like a song or other audio track being played.

My username is literal. I’m literally a wood scientist. Or more specifically, I’m a current PhD student in civil engineering and wood science. Identifying Wood by Hoadley was actually a textbook in one of the courses I took.