6177c40f

I thought they typically had safeguards to prevent this, but maybe not all models do. Not trying to be obtuse here- but how is this different from the fact that I could go to a hardware store and buy a propane space heater with zero restrictions, then ignore the instructions and use it in an unsafe way? Why don't we require some kind of professional to "prescribe" us a space heater then?

I think you're talking about subvocal recognition [1]. People are indeed using ML for it, but it looks like it's more complicated than it appears. Still, I think it's only a matter of time before it's available to the average consumer, which I can't wait for because I've wanted something like this for a long time. I do my best thinking when I'm hiking, and I'd love to be able to dictate my thoughts on the move without looking like I'm talking to myself out loud (even though I am, I guess) in public.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocal_recognition

Tangentially- Why, in America, do we need a doctor's prescription to purchase a CPAP machine? Of course, I know plenty of bad reasons why, but I'm wondering if there are any legitimately good reasons at all? This reminds me of the situation with hearing aids, where the FDA recently reduced the barriers to purchasing them and this appears to have been a good move.

Unclear, but some really preliminary research suggests it might actually neuroprotective [1] and cardioprotective [2]. A lot more research needs to be done though, it seems.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36191807/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36515811/

I think it's because tech is the only thing the average HNer knows enough about to know that they know nothing.

This is not exactly new, see this paper from 2016, for example: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12808

I've done it both ways, while GPT-4 seems to be better at sticking to valid moves, neither play well, and neither noticed when I won. If you claim victory at any point, they'll congratulate you and concede the game, which is pretty funny.

One the other hand, I've not yet gotten it to play a successful game of tic-tac-toe (if it can play correctly at all, it plays exceedingly poorly and its descriptions of its moves often have no relation to the moves it actually made). So your mileage may vary.

That's what we've always tended to assume would happen, but now it looks like it may not go that way, thus my concern. If knowledge workers could be replaced first, I don't think anyone's going to wait around for robotics to catch up before doing anything.

Looks like it's time to brush up on my Latin then

Tangentially, something that I see come up in all these threads is the notion that knowledge workers unemployed by AI will retrain into some physical labor job. My question is, at that point, who's buying all that labor? Will the workforce just consist of executives and the manual laborers who work for them?

Eventually you make robots that can maintain other robots who can maintain the maintaining robots.

What's really the point of AI? Is perfect efficiency and maximized profit really the end goal we've been trying to achieve this whole time?

As a midwest native, I've got to say that this is my favorite kind of pizza. And honestly, there's not really any rules as to how exactly it's made or what goes on it. Get the crust thin and crisp, and put on it whatever toppings make you happy. The key is that it's meant to be delicious, not fit a standard mold.

Is this a joke? Even as far as fringe vaccine alarmism goes, this is especially sketchy and substanceless.

I found pictures. You really do not want to see them, but if you must, here: https://interestingengineering.com/science/mini-antlers-mice...

It may be that that ultimately proves to be the most likely explanation, but I strongly disagree with the level of certainty you're attaching to that claim in this case.

I don't really get how people can be so quick to dismiss long covid as made up. Is it too much to just admit that you don't have enough evidence to decide whether it's real instead of trying to write claimants off as grifters or mentally ill?

Further, it's odd that some people aren't willing to even entertain the possibility that it could be real, given that a number of examples of post-viral syndromes have been observed in other viruses. E.g. post-Ebola virus syndrome [1] and Epstein-Barr's role in the development of multiple sclerosis [2]. At the very least, this warrants taking claims of long COVID seriously, does it not?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Ebola_virus_syndrome

[2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/epstein-barr-...

Unfortunately it's stuff like this that's poisoned otherwise cool new tech for me. I can't help but wonder "how will this be used to advertise to me?"

> I might not want to buy that feature but it allows for some interesting possibilities.

In practice, not everyone might have the choice to just not buy that feature.

> “It should be noted that ecDNA is a feature of cancer and not healthy tissue, so that raises hopes that when we find ways to remove it – through drugs or some form of therapy – then it will not have unpleasant side-effects"

Hopefully it's different enough from that other DNA that doesn't occur in chromosomes: mitochondrial DNA. Also, maybe someone can explain, but hasn't there been research showing that some forms of extrachromosomal DNA are normal and probably vital in eukaryotes? E.g. [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3225859/

Unfortunately, doctors might be replaced by diagnostic AIs. It'll be AIs all the way down by then.

My understanding is that we don't even know for sure if it went extinct. We just don't know what it actually was/is. There's been a number of extant species that people have proposed as being silphium, but it's very hard to say if any of them actually are, and if so, which.

Derek Lowe is one of my favorite bloggers for sure. I also really like his "Things I Won't Work With" series, for example: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

I've not read it myself, but An Elegant Defense [1] by Matt Richtel has come highly recommended to me. My understanding is that it takes a more human-interest angle, but also does a good job explaining how the immune system works and how it can go wrong at a high level. May be worth checking out as well.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41806641-an-elegant-defe...

I don't really understand how stack ranking is supposed to work. If 5% of employees must be ranked low, and they improve, they'll either be ranked low again or someone who wasn't ranked low will be ranked low- even if that person's performance hasn't changed. This just seems designed to ensure there's always some group of fall guys and also to create teams that are competitive with themselves to a toxic degree.

Because I doubt that the ranking system will be objective or even closely tied to any real measure of skill, performance, merit.

I hope some of those trees are still around somewhere waiting for someone to find them.

The contents of the mind should be sacrosanct- the deployment of technologies for reading the mind should go no further than it has except in medicine and research, and only then with explicit informed consent, of course. Honestly if this tech advances and becomes the norm for employers/the government/etc. to use, that's when it's time to drop out of society and become a hermit or something.

Has anyone ever done research to see if pervasive use of facial recognition has any real effect on reducing crime?