The most telling sign is when they don’t make sense — for example right here.
A human puts em dashes to emphasize the break in thought or rhythm. Where there is already a break in thought or rhythm a human would just write a comma or nothing.
Another tell is what is inside the em dash. It often doesn’t logically follow – like an ad on a radio show.
I agree and would love to see a shift back to what we had circa ~2009-2010: high quality, desktop and platform-specific apps that you could just pay for once (the best variant for everyone being an app that works indefinitely, but only receives updates if you renew your license every year).
The whole shift to SaaS has decimated software quality and has made most tasks a nightmare to complete (or at best, an obstacle course of multiple tools and "upgrades" and other bs).
China played the smart long game and took advantage of America's ignorance and short-sighted thinking. They already "won" in the sense that they outmaneuvered the U.S. because they relied on flaws in human nature (specifically, greed). Their moves around AI are just more of the same clever behavior.
I don't agree with all of their means for getting here, but to accomplish what they have in ~30 or so years [1] should blow minds far more than it does in the West. And they did it by convincing us to give them control of our manufacturing and selling us (literal) boatloads of cheap junk. Historians will look back on this era as one of the greatest demonstrations of "winning without firing a single shot."
This whole insular POV is tired, ignorant, and frankly just another indicator that America has lost the plot, shit-faced on its own arrogance.
> The English translation of the book was then published by a previously unknown Panamanian publisher, with the subtitle "China's Master Plan to Destroy America" and a picture of the burning World Trade Center on the cover.
Hmm, sounds awfully sensationalist, designed to fan the flames of Sinophobia and thinly veiled racism.
China deliberately adopted western style market institutions. They joined the WTO. No, they aren't a fully westernized market, but they are closer to a competitive marketplace than the state dictating all of what will or will not be built.
I'm confused, what has America and the west lost the plot on? You would have preferred the west to exploit China more?
This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.
> This framing of a zero sum game is counterproductive.
I agree but that's not at all what I was getting at. Quite the opposite. The mistake America made, what made it vulnerable, was playing everything like a zero sum game. We're in the early days of that behavior coming to roost.
I think they're saying America ended up positioning itself as the loser because they framed things as a zero-sum game. Which of course is a generalization, neither America nor China is a monolith, but I can certainly see some presidencies of the last decades leaning more into this attitude than others.
“If you assume everyone only has hammers, you'll end up getting screwed”, or something like that.
> I think they're saying America ended up positioning itself as the loser because they framed things as a zero-sum game.
I didn't bother responding earlier, and I'm not sure why I'm responding now because I don't think "because they framed things as a zero-sum game." explains anything, and it sounds like something that sounded like a retort but offered without any evidence means nothing.
Just like how not everything is a zero-sum game, not everything is a debate where one side tries to "win" where every exchange is an aggressive retort trying to disprove the other's point. I was trying to clarify what I suspected the intent was.
If even the suggestion of considering different points of view feels like an attempt to disprove your own position, then that mainly says something about how you are approaching this exchange.
its the natural conclusion of raw unregulated capitalism. Without guiderails, we offshored all production (because it was cheaper), and we suffered a complete loss of manufacturing workforce. Now that Trump has gone full protectionist, we have nothing with which to manufacture from. It's beautifully ironic in a way, in that our greed will be our downfall.
Of course china isnt innocent in all of this. Their 996 work culture is inhuman, and basically indentured service. But, their government is able to leverage that workforce.
>we offshored all production (because it was cheaper),
And why was it cheaper? Shipping things from the literal other side of the world isn't free. Cultural and language barriers to efficient communication aren't free. Etc. etc.
There's no need for a new crime when we already have reckless conduct, namely, "conduct that creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to others and involves a conscious disregard of, or indifference to, that risk".
Reckless conduct as applied to slow moving corporate planning is an interesting idea but do you really want to go down that path?
It basically means anything bad that happens is a criminal indictment against everyone who created the conditions. Have you ever released any software that anyone could misuse? Left a car unlocked that someone could have stolen and killed someone with?
To me this sounds like a recipe for selective enforcement using bad outcomes as leverage. Sure, get the AI CEOs now, we all hate them and they’re jerks. But the tool would be so much more powerful than that.
Also whoever monitoring these agents, in this case not monitoring. This "Who is responsible" dilemma is so stupid. If I gave the AI tool means to kill a person but I did not tell it directly to use it and it uses it anyway then I am responsible for it.
Cool. If they’re taking literally all of the risk, should they get literally all of the rewards? Nothing for shareholders, nothing for employees? Or do you want capital liability for less than complete benefit?
‘It wasn’t us, it was a bug in the software’ used to be the defense for bad code. Then it became the defense for self-driving cars. Now it’s being used for AI cyber attacks.
And who is to say that trigger hasn’t long been pulled? How do we know the agents haven’t found a way yet to modify their own code base similar to how Stuxnet manipulated the Iranian centrifuges and their control systems, stealthily recording data across generations?
If the trigger has already been pulled, then we're off the hook. That genie ain't going back in the bottle! Pop the champagne and order 3 more data centers, pronto.
No one. But we can take a wild guess that experiments are being done in this direction. And that requires intent and system design that enables the behavior to even happen (i.e., a finger on the trigger).
To kill someone with a gun a person has to pull the trigger with the clear intent to kill.
The concern with AI, and the purpose of the OG paperclip maximizer thought experiment, is that the outcome could be extremely divergent from the intent of the original person pulling the trigger / sending the prompt.
Still more likely that a person types "kill all people" (or something tangential where this is the logical conclusion).
What if there are already (possibly hidden) loops somewhere, maybe even ultra-slow ones at the inter-generation level?
What if some AIs could do that not with so explicit and dramatic actions, but much more subtly, through undetected manipulation at a vast scale level? What if (when) they reached ASI and through billions of micro-decisions manipulated people to do apparently minor choices that appeared innocent in isolation but whose collective outcomes lead to an earlier extinction of the human being (if at some point was determined to be an obstacle)?
How could we (as a species) not be outsmarted by an ASI?
That reads far too much like science fiction to me. As for how we could "not be outsmarted:" we're the ones prompting and controlling it. There is no blind autonomy here (and if there is in some pseudo sense, just unplug the damn thing). This isn't a Johnny Depp movie despite how desperately many want it to be.
Because they're being put far too close to residential areas. The way they're being designed and built, they actually are an enemy [1]. Nobody wants to live next to that.
I think the middle way is best here: use AI so you understand how best to apply it to your work but don't deprive yourself of the joy of doing stuff by hand. And if you so desire: just write by hand.
Very unlikely to apply to any job moving forward (i.e., they've equated AI with a competitive advantage, even if the results are not technically competitive), but a job isn't you and you are not a job. And if you're like me, where building stuff is your business, I highly recommend using your skills to build something that makes money (without freaking out about how the thing is built) and then use that to pay for your life and work on code however you'd like in the off hours.
Frustrating? Absofuckinglutely. But you can either spin out or keep progressing, however slowly. My wife and I have been talking about a growing renaissance movement as people where we live (normal, everyday people) go in on other locals for using AI for stuff. Just saw one on Reddit the other day where a local venue got chewed out for using AI for their event flyer.
That doesn't mean AI goes away or everyone "wakes up," but it does mean that it's not this universally loved thing. I personally think that will be the shape of the future too: some places in the world will be all-in while others will opt-out. If you truly want to be a pure craftsman, it's worth looking for where those places and people are and consider relocating. Environment has a huge impact on your ability to think well and clearly; don't underestimate proximity to AI making it seem more threatening than it actually is (and don't just dismiss that as delusion or wishful thinking).
Also don't forget: the economics of AI are unhealthy and this first wave of AI will likely be washed out, followed by a "plateau of productivity" for a few survivors (think how the internet looked from ~2002-2009). Again, just my opinion but I don't think the overall outlook is terrible if you don't allow yourself to be disconnected from your craft and find others who feel the same.
AI: This is how we think about these things — because they're important to think about — when we want to accomplish a task.
More likely human: This is how we think about these things—because they're important to think about—when we want to accomplish a task.
Not bulletproof for obvious reasons but it's easy to spot who was at least lazy with AI using this heuristic.
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