1,324 karma · joined February 26, 2022
Sadly, education does not correct psychopathic traits, which might be overrepresented in c-suites, and selected for in politicians.
It might be critical for humanity to identify and edit out these traits in ai, while we can.
Remember when the frontier labs found out that curated high-quality training was critical to making better models?
Basically, just like high-quality and more education tends to make better humans, on average, I think we can expect quality education to turn out better ai, on average, and with better repeatability than with humans because of better control over the initial conditions and environment.
A 'regular' autoencoder is a neural network trained to compress data and then reconstruct it.
A neuromorphic autoencoder is instead implemented using brain-inspired computing elements like spiking neurons, event-driven updates, local interactions, sometimes specialized hardware. In this paper, looks like the autoencoder is being used as a structured energy-minimizing circuit for an Ising optimization problem. The architecture manipulates Ising clauses rather than only pairwise spin interactions.
Ordinary artificial neurons compute matrix ops such as y=f(Wx+b), while this uses artificial neurons that accumulate input, which emit a spike when they cross a threshold, like biological neurons (event driven neural dynamics).
Ah yes, the fox guarding the chicken-coop; the auditors are to verify that the fox is indeed guarding the chicken-coop per the standards the fox has set. No mention of disappearing chickens anywhere in the standards.
Answering the implied statement - pensions invest in PE only to the tune of about 14%. [1]
So what's your alternative proposal for people in retirement?
Do you have any evidence for this claim?
> Pensions fund a significant part of PE and they do so because they need around a 7% return in order to look solvent.
Again, please provide some sources for this claim. The S&P 500 index has returned about 15% on average over the past 10 years, and historically returned about 10% on average. [1]
> So if you wanna fix or ban PE, solve pensions.
This is a misinterpretation at best. Pensions do not make operational decisions at PE - PE management does.
This statement mistakes a funding source for the whole business model, which is problematic. Pensions supply capital, but PE’s behavior is from the general PE model: buy companies, use leverage, extract fees, seek exit in 5 to 10 years, and earn management fees plus carried interest. That structure exists whether the capital comes from pensions, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, endowments, family offices, or wealthy individuals. Public pensions are one major funding source, not the whole machine.
This statement also implies that PE is mainly a pension-funding response, which would be a falsehood. PE did not buy nursing homes or hospitals or vet clinics or prison telecoms or ambulance companies or dental chains or infrastructure-like services merely because pensions put in capital.
Excellent question. Global GDP estimates going back to 1 CE are here [1][2]. I would argue that GDP is a good proxy for an estimate of the summation of per-capita intelligence being used for "productive" ends, by definition.
But, the global average GDP per capita is [3] with a similar hockey-stick curve, and it is unclear whether the per-capita intelligence used for "productive" ends has also been increasing similarly, because the confounding factor is the effect of tools as force-multipliers (impact on productivity). The Flynn Effect is the strongest indicator that yes, average intelligence has been rising as measured in certain populations where cultural differences do not wreck the applicability of IQ tests.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-gdp-over-the-long-...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20260525015042/https://ourworldi...
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-ca...
> I see no indication that current human intelligence is at anything close to a historical pinnacle. Human knowledge, yes, but intelligence? No. Collectively, we're dumb and trending dumber
Also, I think we (non-scientists) might be overestimating the average historical intelligence - see Flynn Effect [1] - perhaps because of a bias in our perception of the past levels based on who published books and thoughts - basically more intelligent members of our species.
> and the tendency towards lazy thoughtlessness which AI engenders
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
[2] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.20 — 5th c. BCE Greece. “So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”
[3] Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2 — 4th c. BCE Greece. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/stasis/2017/honeycutt/aris.... Aristotle treats public persuasion as necessary partly because ordinary audiences cannot easily follow complex chains of reasoning. He says rhetoric addresses deliberative matters before people “who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.”
[4] Plato, Republic, Book V — 4th c. BCE Greece. https://topostext.org/work/768. Plato distinguishes philosophers from the many “lovers of sights and sounds,” who enjoy appearances but do not apprehend deeper truth. The text says their thought is “incapable” of grasping the underlying form or nature of beauty, and that few attain that deeper vision.
[5] Confucius, Analects, Book 2 — 5th c. BCE China. https://www.chinastory.cn/ywdbk/english/v1/detail/20190722/1.... "Learning without thought is pointless, Thought without learning is dangerous".
[6] Buddhist tradition, Dhammapada, Appamāda-vagga. https://suttacentral.net/dhp21-32/en/sujato. Dhammapada contrasts heedfulness with heedlessness, treating heedlessness as a central human failing. In one translation: “Heedfulness is the state free of death; heedlessness is the state of death. The heedful do not die, while the heedless are like the dead.”
[7] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, “Idols of the Mind” — 1620. https://history.hanover.edu/texts/bacon/novorg.html. Bacon argues that the “Idols of the Tribe” are rooted in human nature itself, and that human understanding distorts reality like a false mirror.
What about 'machines' with hands and human-level cognition?
When GPT3.5 first came out it became clear that the Turing test was obviously deprecated in the age of LLMs and a product of its time - 1950 [0] - that had a limited understanding of Intelligence/Cognition. Today, as science discovers Whale language [1] and various degrees of animal cognition [2], the Turing test's limitations are even more stark.
> That's a far more dangerous thing to have built.
Perhaps it is time to retire it and its derivatives as a benchmark for artificial intelligence. Also, here in 2026, I don't believe any serious AI researchers rely on the Turing test anymore.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test [1] https://ls.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berkeley-and-project-ceti-st... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cognition
PS - I think you're being unfairly downvoted
No public forum is naturally immune to the spread of (guerilla) marketing. [1]
[1] Internet Rule #48
MS thinks CoPilot is the Clark Griswold of LLMs when it's really Cousin Eddie...
Please provide evidence for your claim. The wiki rfc [5] that you linked doesn't provide any DDOS evidence at all, which is odd for wikipedia.
> This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting
This appears to be a concerted effort to blacklist archive.today by unknown actors. There were at least 3 attempts with odd efforts to sway the vote [1][2][3] (the notes in the sidebars at those Wiki RFCs document these actions by bots and others), and a successful attempt to undo the blacklist [4], and then yet another attempt [5].
I'm curious as to why you did not include this very relevant background information in your comment?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...
What about Ukraine holding Russia back, and now looks like it might actually win? What about the most recent additions to NATO. Hungary's regime change? Canada's save? EU's pivot to arming itself, and quickly?
Buds of green, yeah?
Maybe it isn't quite as black & white as that?
What about an ad run by a non-profit that doesn't have any marketing professionals at all? Said non-profit attempting to connect to consumers?
What about listings on craiglist? or facebook marketplace? or personal ads in the local newspaper?
Do you have a proposal/alternative to help with market discovery, customer discovery? Search has in the past served that function, but is likely to be soon dead.
Ah, the proverbial silver spoon. Sadly, I never had that luxury. If you look through my comments, you'll notice I'm more at the get-off-my-lawn point.
Also, what happened? Real world wear you down and turn you cynical? It is possible to be hopeful and cynical at the same time. This tech is something new we're seeing: the future is as yet unwritten. r/LocalLLaMa works well, so there's hope even if corporate ai goes kaput.
My generation has been lucky to see a few new things, though we certainly live in interesting times. Moon Landings. Berlin Wall fall. Moore's Law. EU (I have the old coinage to serve as a reminder). Space Shuttles. China and India integrating with the world. Cellphones. The Internet. Digital Photos. Linux. Solar. 3D-printing. Smartphones. Tablets. Bitcoin. EVs. Mars rovers. Asteroid visits. Internet from space. FTTH. MRNA. Gene Therapy. MRI. Ultrasound. Wi-Fi. Mesh Wi-Fi. Reusable Rockets. Cubesats. Selfies from space. Drones. LoRa/LoraWAN. Maglev HSR. And now AI, real AI. Chinese-like Whale Language.
There's hope for the future yet. You can help make it happen right. But only if you leave the cynicism at the door. Can't give up - it's our kids' futures at stake.
> the closer the expertise you spent your whole life building is to being worthless.
Perhaps it is time for life to be considered intrinsically valuable, instead of being "worthy" only based on output or capability. Disability, animal and environmental advocates have been fighting for this for a long time. Not too long ago women and minorities were in the same boat. Even now, there are many advocating and fighting for a return to the dark old days.
> Along with all the rest of what humans find meaningful and fulfilling.
Some humans. Many are content to enjoy simply existing, and the beauty of life and the universe around us. Just like many non-scientists today enjoy and benefit from the work of scientists, tomorrow too many will enjoy learning from, and applying the coming advancements and leaps in many fields.
And those of a scientist or other research-type mindset? No doubt they will contribute meaningfully by studying the frontier, noting what remains unanswered, and then advancing the frontier, just like researchers do today; just because scientists in the past solved many questions doesn't mean that there aren't any questions to answer today.
IMHO, AI means that the frontier expands faster, not that it is obliterated. Even AI cannot overcome the laws and limitations of physics/universe: even Dyson spheres only capture the energy of one star, thus setting a limit on the amount of compute, and thereby a limit on intelligence. And we are a loooong way from a Dyson sphere.
i wonder if this is physically/mathematically impossible: the mere act of living involves processing energy, and therefore doing work :)
And there is a lot of energy to be processed in this Universe before the heat death...
Perhaps it is time for life to be considered intrinsically valuable, instead of being "worthy" only based on output or capability. Disability, animal and environmental advocates have been fighting for this for a long time. Not too long ago women and minorities were in the same boat. Even now, there are many advocating and fighting for a return to the dark old days.
> Along with all the rest of what humans find meaningful and fulfilling.
Some humans. Many are content to enjoy simply existing, and the beauty of life and the universe around us. Just like many non-scientists today enjoy and benefit from the work of scientists, tomorrow too many will enjoy learning from, and applying the coming advancements and leaps in many fields.
And those of a scientist or other research-type mindset? No doubt they will contribute meaningfully by studying the frontier, noting what remains unanswered, and then advancing the frontier, just like researchers do today; just because scientists in the past solved many questions doesn't mean that there aren't any questions to answer today.
IMHO, AI means that the frontier expands faster, not that it is obliterated. Even AI cannot overcome the laws and limitations of physics/universe: even Dyson spheres only capture the energy of one star, thus setting a limit on the amount of compute, and thereby a limit on intelligence. And we are a loooong way from a Dyson sphere.
PS: I think you're being unfairly downvoted. Your question is not invalid and deserves responses, not downvotes.
Like, say, cash, or check, or wires, or any other payment mechanism?
Shock of the unsavvy
It's quite the achievement, that the inventor(s) of Bitcoin have continued to stay anonymous to this day.
This completely ignores the MAD era and the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe by force. It also ignores the Korean war stalemate, the Vietnam war loss, as well the most recent Afghan loss.
Post-Soviet disintegration management, the successful integration of Eastern Europe, China, and India into the Western Bloc ways were genuine wins. That's post-1989, not post-ww2 (yes, I realize technically that's post-ww2). So there was not really a world-wide dependency between WW2 and 1989 on the American military. Western Bloc, yes, world-wide no.
The current stalemate is only a surprise to the unaware and folks listening only to American news channels. Before the beginning of the current conflict, even $20 chatgpt provided enough insight to accurately chart the course of the conflict in probabilities. Even without chatgpt, folks keeping track and keeping an eye on real news and past policy decisions and progress were able to predict that Ukraine had a very good chance of stopping Russia in its tracks.
The trouble isn't with the availability of this data, it's hubris. Time and time again. Caesar. Napoleon. Hitler. Korea. Johnson in Vietnam. Soviets in Afghanistan. US in Afghanistan. Ukraine. Iran.
But hubris exists because sometimes it works, and for quite some time. Genghis Khan. Pax Romana. Soviets in Eastern Europe. US in Western Europe. Europeans in the Americas. Russians in Eastern Asia. Europeans in Asia and Africa. Palestine. Tibet.
Why it works, and why it doesn't, is an active research topic. [1]
Analysts paid to predict the future will of course argue this vehemently from their pet PoV. And the decision-makers are too domain-challenged to know whom to believe*. They didn't have chatgpt :-)
[1] https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obr...
* Or they just don't care
In a properly structured organization, of which there are many and who are required by regulations and/or best practices, senior executives tend to have need/role-based access to information, just like everyone else in the organization. So they may have access to strategic business information, but not patient records or payroll. They may have access to planning data, but not the financial records of individual or clients. Etc. etc.
Smaller or newer orgs may not have this compartmentalization, but in general I think the principle holds true for orgs over a certain number of folks in size.
That would be a capable 'personal assistant', or 'executive assistant', of 'chief of staff'.
Why? because the point is, just like in real life, to abstract away the complexity, irrespective of domain.
"Average user" implies someone not skilled or savvy in the domain you're thinking of. For a medical doctor, the 'average user' is not-a-doctor. For a technologist, the average user is not-a-technologist. For an insurance specialist, an average user is not-an-insurance-specialist. Etc. etc.
The personal assistant, exec assistant or chief of staff are themselves not necessarily experts in any domain, but they do rely on specialists to get stuff done.
So the UI for this killer app is basically voice input, keyboard input, camera input (mirros of human output) in the user's language with natural language interaction, and the output is voice and monitor/screen, and possibly a robotic arm/hand/body (mirrors of human input). Anything more complex than that would require tailoring it to a domain/domains.
If you doubt this analysis, think of all those folks for whom the IE/Chrome icon was/is "The Internet". Sure, you can go one level deeper with having them put in URLs, or operate email through the aol/gmail bookmark or desktop icon, maybe open documents/files from 'My Documents', but are they going to go any deeper than that, for the 'average user'?
Just out of curiosity, why don't you want your public blog archived? not questioning, just trying to understand the logic/motivations?
Also, I think you're being unfairly downvoted.
And I think the value that various cloud companies and tech companies derive from open source by far exceeds their contributions to it. When you add in the economic contribution, those OSS value-adds are an order of magnitude higher.
According this Harvard paper [1], the cost to create wide used open-source software once is about $4 Billion. The replacement value to firms that use OSS, if they had to build or buy the equivalents themselves, is about $8.8 Trillion. The Software spending effect (how much firms would need to spend on software without OSS) is 3.5x.
According to this EU study [2], EU companies invested about €1B in OSS in 2018, but in return the impact on the European economy was estimated €65B–€95B.
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=65230 [2] https://opencommons.org/images/c/c1/The_impact_of_open_sourc...
Any app with this behind the scenes is a non-starter for me.
And anyone think that all those folks ditching Win11 will be going for or recommending any app built on this?