yes I did read all your post. It seems to have incorrect claims.
> "i completely reject it, because people seem to believe it's there to protect any rights"
Under "Your rights" section on the UK government website you can see that it grants you rights, so people have good reason to believe that: https://www.gov.uk/data-protection
How does it nag people? How does it legitimise dark patterns? What is in it regarding tracking? How does it push people to concentrate their services in a bad way? The GDPR is not just for websites, it's for all dealings with companies.
> Under "Your rights" section on the UK government website you can see that it grants you rights, so people have good reason to believe that: https://www.gov.uk/data-protection
you are soft in the head if you believe that, there's no argument to be had
The Romans built roads across Europe instead of mud paths two thousand years before bikes were invented. Humans might be able to cross dry compacted dirt, but do much better on engineered roads than on deep, wet, sticky, slippy mud, even before thinking about carts and wagons.
On that page it's mentioned that Macadam (predecessor to tarmac) was used in the USA in 1823 on a stretch of road of 10 miles which took stagecoaches 5 hours to pass in the winter before it was Macadamized, suggesting quite a desire for better roads a century before safety bicycles with chains were invented.
Then 'History of the bicycle' says:
"On the new macadam paved boulevards of Paris it was easy riding ... the "bone-shaker" enjoyed only a brief period of popularity in the United States, which ended by 1870. here is debate among bicycle historians about why it failed in the United States, but one explanation is that American road surfaces were much worse than European ones, and riding the machine on these roads was simply too difficult."
"The Good Roads Movement occurred in the United States between the late 1870s and the 1920s... a coalition between farmers' organizations groups and bicyclists' organizations .. Early organizers cited Europe where road construction and maintenance was supported by national and local governments."
Those road function more like hiways. I'm not arguing paved roads are not or didn't exist. I'm saying that many smaller roads would not have been paved.
They don't know; their whole comment is just empty insults about simpeltons. If anything should have the derision that "slop" gets, it should be the thousands of comments like that which hit HN every day.
Wikipedia: "Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day""
Britannica: "Journalism, the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary"
Stories from British Newspaper Archive[1]:
- June 1950 Cat in Tree in Sheffield - Sheffield Daily Telegraph
- July 1939 A cat which has sought refuge the top of a tree on Somerlayton Road, Stockwell, defied all attempts to get it down. - Sunderland Daily Echo.
- June 1956 A cat was rescued from a 60ft. oak tree by Southgate firemen at Abbotshall Avenue, Southgate. - Wood Green weekly herald.
- Ocober 1959 CAT UP TREE I was sorry to hear that your cat had been lost Frances, I hope he is none the worse for his experience up the tree, now. - Penrith Observer.
- July 1956 Cat in tree rescued. Worthing firemen rescued a cat - Worthing Herald.
- July 1955 RESCUED CAT IN TREE - Percy Kemp climbed 40ft up a tree to rescue a cat - Bradford Observer.
- November 1956 An emergency tender from the Eastbourne Fire Brigade went to the rescue of cat in a tree in Brassey-avenue, Hampden Park - Eastbourne Gazette.
- August 1953 Clifford Morton (25) climbed 120ft up a swaying fir tree to rescue a cat - Coventry Evening Telegraph.
- March 1950 Persian cat belonging to Mrs M. ___ ... heard meow-ing from a 40ft. tree in field nearby - Dundee Evening Telegraph.
- February 1950 CAT UP TREE A telescopic ladder. belonging to Birkenhead Fire Service was rushed three miles to Arrowe Park Road. Woodchurch. this afternoon. to rescue a cat which had climbed over 40 feet up a tree - Liverpool Echo
- October 1924 SHOTS AT CAT IN TREE .. It was stated that the boys saw a black Persian 'cat up a tree on the farm, and they fired at it - Daily Mirror
- July 1939 CAT IN TREE FOR TWO DAYS - Harlepool Northern Daily Mail
- August 1962 CAT IN TREE RESCUED BY FIREMEN - Lincolnshire Free PRess
- May 1956 The story of a stray cat, Mr. Budd and a 45ft, fir tree, was told at Wednesday's annual meeting of the Torquay and South-East Devon branch of the R.S.P.C.A. - Torquay Times
- etc. etc.
When was this imaginary wonderful time you're implying when newspapers were only speaking truth to power with mighty investigative reporting, and not literally a journal of things people did and said in a local area (or on a certain topic)?
You think an artificial intelligence would have less impact on the world than the steam engine?
The AI commentators are not saying that ELIZA will change the world, they’re saying that one of the big companies is moments away from an AGI. Sam Altman called a recent ChatGPT model a “PhD level expert”; wouldn’t infinite PhDs for $20/month or $200/month be transformative?
That is, your objection isn’t the usual “LLMs aren’t going to be AGI”, you’re saying “even if they do, it won’t be a big deal”?
>You think an artificial intelligence would have less impact on the world than the steam engine?
Not op, but yes, 100%. Steam backs nearly all development of technology of the last 150+ years. Where do you think the power come from to make things? More than half of the world's power *still* runs on steam, as will many of the systems running AI.
If steam power never existed, not only would you not exist but there's a good chance the country you live in wouldn't either. If you don't believe the effect is large, go to the farthest uncontacted place on earth and take out a CO2 meter.
It's not that I "don't believe the effect is large", but the changes from pre-intelligence planet Earth to post-intelligence planet Earth are larger because they include the invention of steam, and literally everything else too: language, writing, irrigation, cities, trade, numbers, currency, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, nations, governments, supply chains, steam, etc.
An AGI that can solve the problems we think are solvable, but we can't solve, would be huge. Any sci-fi idea that isn't ruled out by the laws of physics, but that we haven't got the brains to solve, any breakthrough that we think should be there but we haven't found, any problem that requires too much time to learn, or too many parts to hold in one human mind, any coordination that is too big for one team, any funding problem, any scarcity problem, any disease or illness problem, any long timeframe problem, are all on the table as possibilities.
There's potential there (with the pocket-PhDs), the question is whether it'll actually make a measurable difference in the long run. I mean I'm sure it will make a difference, the question is whether it's what they say it will be, and whether it'll be financially viable. At the current burn rate of the AI companies, it isn't - before long the first ones will have to give up. They won't die, they'll be subsumed into their competitors.
Anyway, the challenge is making a difference. Current-day LLMs can, for example, generate stories and books; one tweet said "this can generate 1000 screenplays a day". Which sounds impressive by the numbers, but books, screenplays, etc were never about volume.
Same with PhDs - is there a shortage of them? Does adding potentially infinite PhDs (whatever they are) to a project make it better, or does it just make... more?
This is the main difference with the industrial revolution - it, for example, introduced machines that turned 10 people jobs into 1 person jobs. I don't think LLMs will do something like that, it'll just output 10 people's worth of Stuff that will need some use.
I don't think anyone ever asked for 1000 screenplays a day, or infinite PhD's for $20. But then, nobody asked for a riderless carriage yet here we are.
> Same with PhDs - is there a shortage of them? Does adding potentially infinite PhDs (whatever they are) to a project make it better, or does it just make... more?
Yes, there is still a large demand for people with analytical thinking, a deep knowledge base, and good problem-solving skills. This demand shows up broadly across STEM fields, and it's a major reason that these fields pay relatively high.
Even just thinking of R&D, there is an immense amount of work left to be done in basic science. Research is throttled partly by a lack of cheap graduate lab labor. (If that physical + mental labor became much cheaper, the costs of research would shift - what does it take to get reagants? What does it take to build more lab space, and provide water and light? Etc.)
The present issue is that current AI does not really offer the same capabilities as a good grad student or PhD. Not just physically, as in, we don't have good robotics yet, but mentally. LLMs do not exhibit good judgment or problem-solving skills, like a good PhD does. And they don't exhibit continual learning.
No clue on when these will change, but yes, a cheap AI with solid problem-solving skills and good judgment would absolutely upend our economy.
> "I don't think LLMs will do something like that, it'll just output 10 people's worth of Stuff that will need some use."
This is why I said "isn’t the usual “LLMs aren’t going to be AGI”", but you still went straight for "LLMs aren't AGI", which was not in question.
AGI is what OpenAI says they are going for. That's the goal of all this trillion dollar investment, not to output 1000 screenplays a day, but to takeover the world, basically. What would infinite PhDs discover if they could hold all of Arxive in their 'heads' at once and see patterns in every experiment that's ever been done? What could they engineer and manufacture if they could 'concentrate' on millions of steps of a manufacturing process at once without getting fatigued or bored? What ideas could they test if they could be PhD level in a dozen subjects all at once?
A PhD generating knowledge has a cumulative effect that an equivalent intelligence generating prose purely for entertainment does not. And a whole bunch of that work isn’t really about novel insights, it’s about filling in gaps and doing knowledge work that assists people who are capable of having those insights. AI doing this enables them, also making it possible for more people to do the same.
When I got to “the initial triage was frustrating; the report was dismissed as "Intended Behavior”” I thought well there’s no need to follow ‘responsible disclosure’ then, eh?
I would have been tempted to blog about it immediately. Companies already get a sweet deal by people finding bugs for free, reporting them for free, and voluntarily keeping quiet about them for free; researchers shouldn’t also have to fight to report problems (for free).
You weren't concerned by Tesla recalling 5.1 million cars in 2024, more than Ford, and recalling the Cybertruck 5 times in 18 months[1]?
You weren't concerned by Consumer Reports ranking Tesla in last place out of 26 manufacturers for reliability[2]? Or their quality control so poor that customers are buying their own delivery inspection checklists[2]?
You weren't concerned by Tesla Owners reporting Tesla authorized repair centers keeping their cars for months unable to source parts to repair them, or consumers unable to buy replacement parts[3]?
You weren't concerned by the worker awarded $130M for hostile work environment filled with racial abuse at a Tesla factory, after paying another worker $1M for racist abuse at their factory, and facing a class action about racist discrimination[4][5][6]?
You weren't concerned about Tesla's telemetry tracking all details about every drive and sending it back to HQ to train their FSD?
You weren't concerned by any of Musk's behaviour, such as his misleading statements about FSD delivery dates and abilities for years, about the sportscar that would jump with compressed air, about the Cybertruck and Semi truck abilities, about the Hyperloop, about getting Tesla to buy his cousin's failing SolarCity, about trying to get a trillion dollar paycheck out of Tesla, etc?
China has a peopled space station in orbit right now, a planned human landing on the moon in 2030, and has been deploying moon orbit relay satellites, moon rovers, returning moon samples to Earth, for a future moon base in the 2030s.
> "all the rest of it is a terrible idea"
Having a legal right to ask a company for a copy of all the data they have on you is terrible?
Having a right to ask a company to correct errors in data about you, or delete data about you, that's terrible?
A company having to tell you what they intend do with data about you and stick to it for the threat of a big fine, that's bad?
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