ben_w

16 ms·

331.
by ben_w 2mo ago
Fair competition under capitalism necessarily drives down profit margins; high profits are either temporary, or due to a lack of competition (e.g. someone has a patent or other IP, or regulatory capture). For example, while a lot of the eco
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by ben_w 2mo ago
Do you have any idea how many people on this site to this day mock OpenAI for being cautious enough to not immediately release the GPT-2 weights? The discussions I saw here about the red team results for ChatGPT 4 completely failed to convi
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> These chatbots have no understanding of truth. Sometimes I forget that for all that my philosophy qualification is mediocre, it is more than most people ever bother with. Outside mathematics (and, I guess, "common sense" defi
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> This single statement, monstrously ahistorical as it is, allowed me to dismiss everything else you're saying because this narrative emerged only recently, around 2014 or so. Oh? Which part of this is wrong? All of it, or just part
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by ben_w 2mo ago
It's a metaphorical toxic garbage fire, but unless I've missed some news the current state is somewhat different from the "actually set fire to it" historical events referenced earlier: https://en.wikipedia.or
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by ben_w 2mo ago
Wouldn't they need to build the ballroom first, before burning it down?
337.
by ben_w 2mo ago
Squirrels have been observed performing deception against other squirrels. Dis/honesty certainly requires some intelligence to pass, but it is a low bar, and one which research has shown that LLMs can perform, e.g. this paper linked
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by ben_w 2mo ago
I read all these think-pieces about how AI lack intelligence, yet I cannot help but notice these "not-intelligent machines" keep doing more things that used to be considered "uniquely human" and which humans used to do i
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> Is it AISI's job to waste the time and resources of open source projects by attempting to spread malware? Before LLMs got good enough to do this, lots of people were dismissive of their capabilities and didn't take seriously
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by ben_w 2mo ago
I don't think it's a fair take when every evil is considered, because that list includes Pol Pot, whose regime would make the Pizzagate conspiracy theory seem like an day ending in y. But the USA does not come across as a strong m
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by ben_w 2mo ago
It is still a barrier even just by being different. The British drive on the left side of the road, all domestic manufacturers make cars which are left side drive. If you are from the majority of the world which is right hand drive, you can
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by ben_w 2mo ago
Unfair? I didn't say unfair, I said it was "in the room" with us. Most NTBs aren't unfair, but also most don't fit in a room and unlike language are abstract in ways most people don't engage with. The local job
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> are the trade barriers in the room with us? Yes. And I'm saying this in the EU. e.g. Ein Beispiel ist die verschiedene Sprache. Although perhaps German is one of the stranger cases, given that I've seen the English phrase &
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by ben_w 2mo ago
His re-election suggests we need to. Even if good times return, we can now never be sure the bad are more than one election cycle away, and given the USA's bicameral government and staggered elections, that means 2 years, not 4.
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by ben_w 2mo ago
I am not sure how much of it is that, versus a mix of tariffs being paid by the recipient rather than the vendor, versus all his unpredictable behaviour being an inherent non-tariff barrier, versus it not mattering much what a deal with the
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them. China yes, Russia no. > And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win. For this to be intentional, the
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by ben_w 2mo ago
Sadly not. Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> The point is to prop up Putin. Attacking one of Russia's few allies and weapon suppliers is counterproductive to such a goal, even if higher oil prices also help the Russian state finances.
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by ben_w 2mo ago
Far too often the answer has been that it doesn't matter, because the reason you stopped using Jira is the company stopped sending paycheques. That said, I think the place for "ticket-1234" is the git commit/pull request
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by ben_w 2mo ago
It's a fairly standard technique, dating to one of the previous AI summers, there's loads of them. When they're small (~"differential diagnosis between 5 common illnesses"), they're basically normal computer pr
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> You can see data on US LNG imports to the EU here. [1] After the invasion they more than tripled with the US now accounting for more than 58% of EU imports. Gas prices are up more than 10x relative to their lowest lowest in the 2020 be
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by ben_w 2mo ago
No disagreement there, if you look at "sanctions" then yes, there have been none of relevance for a very long time. I guess "tolerable" has more than one meaning, so I should have checked which one was intended before st
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by ben_w 2mo ago
May I suggest the one common in my childhood playgrounds as an alternative? How do you escape from a perfectly sealed room with a table in it? You run around the table until your legs are sore, use the saw to cut the table into two,
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> If intelligence requires sentience for you, then ... well, I don't think we really agree what that is either, never mind how to measure it. But LLMs certainly don't have it right now Probably. Hopefully.
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> The "something deeply wrong" part about AI, that even most technology enthusiasts evidently do not seem to grasp, is that it is still fundamentally a statistical model — an algorithmic construct — and does not possess any rea
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> What exactly was the British “response” when the Soviet Union invaded “Eastern Poland” on Sep 17, 1939? Other than being at war with the nation who had allied themselves with the USSR's joint invasion of Poland? Also, why even ask
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> Wrong. And of course refusal to start pipeline operation and the ridiculous legal shenanigans (at EU level) were down to US pressure. Sounds like you're agreeing with me that they did in fact refuse to start pipeline operation. Re
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by ben_w 2mo ago
The iPhone X, like all models, is a different model than all the others; the maximum price for one model is not going to be the maximum price for another. > Apple sets prices based on a 30% raw profit margin and ignores the market except
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> It literally cannot, because it's not parameterized on the amount of additional plants being planted. Primary production of the planet, i.e. total carbon fixation, is broadly not influenced in this manner. The things which do infl
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by ben_w 2mo ago
> What do you think? Should people stop "correcting" AI writing when it is actually more logical? Although AI writes better than the average person in objective measures, the fact it is *everywhere* means its voice is instant c

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