Asimov being Asimov, the human consequences of the decline and fall of the galactic empire happens mostly of screen.

How exactly Trantor in a couple of hundred years went from a bustling planetary city to a planet where the last survivors scratch out a living from farming the former imperial grounds, is better left unexplored. If you are living in that world you are much more likely to be among the masses were stuff happens that will eventually be noted by Foundation scholars as “population decline”, than being a Foundation scholar.

“Elsa” does not feature in “The Snow Queen”. The kids in that story are Kai who gets abducted by the Snow Queen and Gerda who rescues him after a long journey which she manages by being good and very, very Christian. It’s also pretty racist, though tame by European 19th century standards. I don’t know who made up Elsa, but I guess they had long signed over their rights to Disney.

As the purpose of the system is what it does, the purpose of copyright is to centralise ownership and control. But then again that is also the purpose of the AI bubble. So they will fight, and the public is likely to lose.

Given the last post, it appears Apple has both an AI hype division and a reality based division. Must be fun for people who has to work with both.

I have written observations on how I see the nonsense crest peaking. Just the other day a collegue remarked that they had been at a conference and it was less AI than last year.

Today, however, I was at an audio / video trade show. I don’t usually go to such, but it could be a good opportuinty to update on what is availble, and was close by, it was free and you got a free lunch. There was some interesting stuff in the monters, Yealink had some new stuff for conference rooms. Then just before lunch everyone headed to the key note adress. And it was horrible. It was a CEO who bragged how he had got ahead in life thanks to his “entrepreneurial mindset”, though I would more say he bragged about bullshitting his way through life. And then it got worse when he got into AI. He quoted AIs answer on why AI acted in certain ways (“Just ask it!”), he claimed AI would cause at least 5 “penicillin-events” in the next 10 years, raising life spans to 180 and wiping out disease. At this time I just stood up and left, and skipped the free lunch.

It had just been 15 minutes out of an hour, and while he hadn’t touched the topics of audio or video, he had established that nothing he would say about that could be trusted, which means it wouldn’t matter what he said about their actual products. No great surprise that a bullshit artist likes the bullshit machine, I am a little surprised more people didn’t leave, but then again social norms and free lunch.

I think this is correct.

Nokia managed to push Ericsson out of their dominant position because Nokia were more of a consumer products company, including consumer electronics. But because Nokia did phones as consumer electronics, they didn’t think about them in terms of a platform and had a poor position to compete with smart phones. Their best bet would probably have been to make hardware that ran Android, and at the time I was a bit surprised that they didn’t. Their hardware reputation was stellar.

Elop’s and Microsoft’s actions were still scummy, though from Nokia’s perspective they sold a failing part of their business for billions. Microsoft of course continued to run the phone sales into the ground.

the game memorizes these moments, what you say, how they react, and creates story arcs based on it

LLMs famously can’t be consistent, so your fantasy game would have story arcs that doesn’t fit together, brings back characters that are already dead as if nothing happened, and everyone would have a son named Dorian.

Throwing rocks into an increasing pile and after each throw burning offerings to evaluate how much closer we are getting to having a cathedral.

Possibly the worst way of building a cathedral, except it doesn’t really qualify as “building a cathedral”. Some workmen may take the pile of rocks and build an actual cathedral, but that doesn’t mean that the step of throwing rocks was necessary or desirable.

Good point.

Heinlein is a bit tricky because on one hand he clearly has a Point of View, but on the other he tends to reuse material, which includes prodding at earlier systems until they get sufficiently dystopian to demand a strong Individualist Man to step up. Don’t know if he set that up on purpose or if it was a consequence and set up things, or just the need to churn out new books. Sometimes I got the feeling that he tried ideas on for size.

Oh no, the AIs are replacing us!

I didn’t know that uwu news influencer was a thing. Kind of a clash between style and topic there, but hey whatever gets the word out.

I think he means “mass sterilisation of a population” Vs “mass murder of the same population”, which is genocide either way, and then he would opt for the faster method.

Or something. Feels extra creepy discussing which genocide is better with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

I know you mean sovereign citizens, but reading “sovcit” my first thought goes to Eastmeg One (and my second thought goes to Eastmeg Two, obviously).

Sounds like getting a professional to file it (at least the first time) will in the end cost less.

But congratulations on the move!

So now I won’t have to search for places to buy my rocks when Google tells me to eat rocks? Now it can just tell me that Bedrock Gravel and Quarry has all the stones for a balanced diet.

Overheard my kids, one of them had some group project in school and the other asked who they had ended up in group with. After hearing the names, the reaction was “they are good, none of them will use AI”.

So as always kids that actually does something in group projects doesn’t want to end up in a group with kids that won’t contribute. Difference is just that instead of just slacking off and doing nothing they will today “contribute” AI slop. And as always the main lesson from group projects in school is avoid ending up in a group with slackers.

3. You get better at being smart by INT-grinding. A machine could be INT-grinding the whole time. It’s like in Oblivion if you wanted to grind Speed you could go into a city, stand in a doorway and place something heavy on the jump key on the keyboard. Then while you take care of the dishes or something, your character grinds. But for INT!

If it gets smart enough it will start finding hacks, like those INT- increasing potions in Morrowind that increased your Alchemy so you could make even better INT-potions.

It might even get smart enough to escape the Elder Scrolls; and start playing another game!

Reads “Does AI make researchers more productive? What? Why would it?”

Thinks “When does statistically likely text without relation to truth make researchers more productive? Well, when they are faking research”

Gets to article. Article is about faking research about AI making researchers more productive.

I signed it but had the same assumption that it wouldn’t pass with 400k signatures over the first 362 days. But it did! The graph the last three days must look vertical.

Anyone who’s eligible and wants to sign it can still do so today, Saturday 17th. To show the popular support.

The marketing documents provided with the photo say there is “no regulatory oversight — U.S.D.A. confirmed in writing.” It’s not clear what the company means by that. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Seth W. Christensen, said he was not able to confirm whether the agency had corresponded with Haemanthus. “U.S.D.A. does regulate vet diagnostics,” including blood testing, Mr. Christensen said.

Ah, yes, medicine. A field without regulations. Hope they have some non-scammers in the family that can take care of the kids.

I’ve never looked into how they do the phrenology but was immediately struck by the “female” skull having larger forehead. So they say women are big brained?