lucaspfeifer

It is scary but also exciting. As long as there are humans making informed decisions, there will be demand for quality sources of information. But to keep up with AI, content sites will need to raise their standards. Less intrusive ads, less superficial stuff, more in-depth articles with complex yet easily navigable structure, with layers of citations, diagrams, data, and impeccable accuracy. News articles with the technical depth of today's dissertations.

Great, now can you make an AI-powered type checker? I wish to expel those pesky types, which too often seem to exist only to clutter my otherwise pristine code. :)

Yes, the distinction between theory and hypothesis can be important, but a distinction should also be made between popular science and rigorous peer-reviewed literature. Popular science is meant to be easy for the general reader to understand. Often that means using simpler words, as long as they are still accurate in a general way.

In this case, I believe theory is an acceptable word to use. The MW dictionary, for the definition of 'theory', says

2a. "a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action"

3a. "a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation"

Seems to me that the usage in the article fits either of these definitions well enough.

Here's a little more of that chapter:

For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. 29 They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you stark naked, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity 30 have brought this on you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.

Ezekiel 23: 28-31 (NIV)

Seems like the key issue here is this: what is the purpose of conducting the authentication? In the case of personal accounts, it's for the benefit of the individual. They get their own account to safely store personal data. Here, the individual management of biometric authentication devices, as you described, is a great thing. A passkey can be generated without exposing biometric data. The individual has the responsibility and incentive to keep their devices secure.

But the above article is an example of the opposite case, where the authentication is for public security. In this situation, the individual cannot be entrusted with their own auth, so if each person were to use their own device, it would need to be quite tamper-proof. Seems far simpler at this point to do face / fingerprint auth, where the security guard ensures that no one is wearing a mask or fake finger. Yes, there is the concern that the bio-data could be stolen / misused, and for that reason I think that bio-auth for public safety should be limited to a single standard type (e.g. face), with the others being reserved only for private auth. That way, a compromise can be reached between public safety and individual privacy.

What do you find 'loaded' about the phrase 'mixed society'? It is more descriptive than the meaningless phrase in the original headline: "How Does Paris Stay Paris?".

Two alternatives:

A. Make a stronger password, time to crack it increases exponentially.

B. Change password regularly, including after getting new equipment.

Most people trust their families more than their work acquaintances. Still, the family member must have more than trust, to do a good job in a skilled profession.

Proof? I'm not going to spend the effort to cite data here, since we have no prior relationship.

What if the family member is looking for their first job and is well trained?

Universities, especially the more prestigious ones, have been trending towards aggressively simplistic labeling of complex social issues. While their stated goal is to protect minorities, the oversimplification increases polarization and division. These doctrines in fact harm the minorities that they were intended to help, by forcing people to choose a side. Plus, they focus too much on the negatives, when we need more positive, meaningful, constructive discourse.

Nepotism means hiring friends or family. The advantage there is that you start out with a greater level of trust, depending on how long you've known the person. This must be weighed against the disadvantage that there are likely more skilled individuals to be found. When dealing with delicate matters (i.e. when small mistakes cause big problems), reliability becomes more important.

If you have a good enough model, you can identify anything.

To discuss super-intelligence, we should first define it. Wikipedia says that it is intelligence surpassing the brightest of human minds. Taken as a whole, the internet already has the knowledge of a super-intelligence: it contains more useful information than any individual human. But it is far more limited in its control and use of information.

LLMs rely heavily on inferences from their training data, meaning that they struggle to generalize to new situations. If you had a program that could use abstract reasoning to learn any topic, then it could solve any problem better than a human, given that a supercomputer can process and store more data than a human. This program would be a super-intelligence.

I expect that the development of intelligence (software) superior to humans will happen much faster than the development of superior hardware did, based on the timescales of human evolution (billions of years) compared to the evolution of civilization (thousands of years).

Here's one take: good developers learn fast, bad developers learn slow. Software is one of the fastest moving fields, so it takes a quick mind to keep up. Clearly, everyone needs some basic knowledge to program, and equally clearly, there will be gaps in every developer's knowledge. When needed, we fill the gaps as quickly as possible. If someone can learn 10x as fast, maybe they only need 1/10th the knowledge base.

Rather than everyone voting for a few people at the top, what if each level voted for the one above and the one below? That way, people would be voting for the positions and people that they know the most about.

Like the other response said, when people with only a surface-level understanding get involved, democracy devolves into a surface-level popularity contest.

Why -- because you spend your free time in a much more useful and productive manner?

No, it improves many skills, including logic, memory, pattern recognition, visualization, calculation, decision-making, abstraction, time management, risk management, etc.

Not tiptoe around people. Address their misconceptions efficiently without insulting them.

Calling someone wrong, in the extreme sense, could be taken as an insult. Whereas when calling an idea wrong, the scope of negativity is limited to that idea. Even better is to focus only on the right, and minimize the time spent on the wrong.

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The internet is still in its 'wild west' stage. When things settle down, the obscene stuff will be gone, and the useful sites will remain.

Political discussions should be open and transparent. If there is reprisal for well-intentioned statements, proportional action should be taken to stop the reprisal.

Though it is nice to allow various beliefs, it is more important to have a cohesive community, even if it means sacrificing some personal beliefs. Personal values should line up with community values. If they are in contradiction, an open discussion should be had to realign them.

In response to your second statement: Technical people have been able to explain their ideas well enough to get them funded and implemented in a business setting. So we must ask, what is the difference between getting something done in business vs. in the government.

Politicians, in order to get reelected, need soundbites that can be understood within the average attention span, which is not long enough to capture the more subtle details. Though tech people might provide them with these details, they are often lost in the execution or distorted by special interest lobbyists.

Ideally, leaders would listen to the tech experts, translate that information into plain english, compile it into a detailed and concise plan, present that plan to voters within the average attention span, and execute the plan faithfully.

Unfortunately, most of our current congress people, to use a metaphor, are not willing to 'rock the boat'. We need our politicians to put logic and reason above obedience, have high standards for legislature, and make this legislature in service of the nation.

There are benefits to reducing anonymity: accountability, trust, relationships, etc. It's why humans evolved to recognize faces so well. We decide who to trust based on experience. It doesn't matter who controls the identification process, so long as its done fairly. And if corporations or government misuse identification for self-serving purposes, we should certainly push back.