2,491 karma · joined November 27, 2017
I'm not saying that the company shouldn't pay a direct tax on their profit, but that I want to know the real number counting everything. Focusing on some fraction of that number can be misleading, especially when the editors try to distill it into a short title, with possible agendas no less.
4 decades is not a long time. It is a minuscule amount of time in the grand scheme of things.
Plenty? In what way? There seems to be one company that makes a keyboard phone with outdated CPUs and other hardware, to make ends meet and be able to produce such a phone economically.
So already at this (primitive) iteration of tech there is a device that connects to your brain and helps you do something, something that you would find very useful no less, if your goal is to learn to operate your brain in the best way possible. Now this is even possible with this (primitive) iteration of this tech. The effectiveness is reported by a lot of people, and it is also calibrated on tibetan monks who meditate for a living. There is also a similar institutional device with more thorough processes called "40 years of zen" (but you have to go to a laboratory).
Now imagine what the next iteration would make possible, and for example how good would a device like this be if it could actually read direct signals from the brain instead of having to read them through the skin?
In terms of security, you could solve 80% of problems you mention by a hardware onoff switch, which would cost next to nothing. A large part of rest of the problems could be solved by limiting the information flow into a certain format/context: imagine just a 4K screen inside your mind that you can look at if you wish, but you always know that information comes from that screen and not from somewhere else. Even just such a dumb usage would be tremendous upgrade to humans everywhere. How do we know it won't give you any "thoughts"? Just limit the information flow to pixels. The interface won't even know what information you look at your internal screen, the most mischievous thing it will be able to do is to maybe make things black-and-white, or make something flicker in an annoying manner.
What?? Where exactly in the current world do you see this? It doesn't reflect reality at all...
> Should I tell him about statistics? I’d be heartless if I did.
What?? That's the only actually truthful and objective information you can give to him. How is that "heartless"? You don't need to tell him that in a cold voice and never acknowledge his fears and feelings, you can discuss all that and make him feel better somehow.
But telling someone truthful information - is not heartless, it's one of the best things you can do for them.
What does this have to do with the market? People don't want physical keyboards because they are "used to" them. They want because the experience of typing is different.
AlphaStar: excuse me??
People write that these games have predefined rules, as opposed to real-life scenarios.
Such people have probably never actually played Starcraft or any other similar games. Sure, the rules of how much damage each unit does, etc. - are fixed. (Actually not even they are fixed throughout the months, and a good player needs to be able to adapt to changes). But what the actual games end up being rarely depends on these rules directly.
What happens instead is a meta-game that is created between you and your opponent where you have to read their strategy and come up with creative ways to deal with it.
In fact in real life the situation is similar: the laws of physics are also always the same, the stats of airplanes are also the same for most of a given year, how much damage can it do, which angles of attack it can support, its speed etc. But it's the combination of these rules in real life situation that makes for the real meta-game.
AlphaStar is absolutely an example of an AI that deals with this exact problem.
PS. Sometimes I see how in the future when we create human-capable AI, these people will still say "but it's just statistics, it's not real intelligence, it's just advanced SVMs". Who cares about what the underlying primitives are? 2+2 does not equal 4 in complex systems like this, it's the emergent endogenous effects that produce all the bang. I don't care if it's all 1s and 0s, or some other small statistical primitive that you could reduce everything to: what's importan is the high-level computation and what it can achieve.
Imagine what a similar investment in a stationary solar panel in that same yard would yield, a panel that will charge 100% of time.
This argument gets thrown around sometimes, but if you really consider it:
Who has time to wait a day or two at a random place, with no infrastructure? People who have no valueable job (where time is very valueable), and at the same time are outdoors enthusiasts who can sleep in a random spot? But who at the same time are in the market for a futuristic EV? Even for those, how many times out of each trip would that be a viable solution? If you consider this in practices, it just makes much more sense to call the tow truck.
And if you know that you are going on a really long trip where there is really no possibility to even call a tow truck (but like, where is that? Where is the place where you have a close proximity to an EV charger, otherwise you wouldn't be going there, and no possibility for a tow truck to access?), even in that unlikely circumstance - you can just already buy a 1000$ 10kg diesel generator and bring with you for emergencies.
Cost is the reason. You have to consider cost.
Yes, those are all useful things but you have to (as a manufacturer, at least) weigh them against all the costs of building this feature, making production more complex, deal with the returns/breakages, etc. etc. So like the parent comment said, the consensus seems to be "just not worth it".