skybrian

Not really convinced. I'd rather it stayed on Github so it doesn't disappear. Particular for businesses whose priorities might change.

Word-policing isn't going to magically fix laws or even identify which laws need to be fixed. It won't change enforcement priorities. It won't make companies more or less likely to sue for damages.

I'm also not sure it even helps conceptually? If you're interested in the technical details, by all means discuss the details.

Software developers do sometimes make promises to their users, but I think these promises ought to be explicit rather than assumed. You can't simply assume a "duty of care" and expect that other people will understand them the same way you do.

(Or rather, you can, but you will likely be disappointed.)

The Language Server Protocol is designed for advanced text editors (IDE’s). Now that we rarely edit text by hand, I believe we could instead use source code viewers that don’t have to deal with unsaved or incomplete code.

If we can assume that all files are saved and each file has correct syntax (which can be enforced by tooling), a much simpler protocol could handle all the language-specific indexing needed to make it easy to read source code.

(I’m assuming that we still do read source code. I for one like reading source code and have little interest in ‘software factory’ techniques where you don’t look at at the code. I might not look at every commit, but I’ll still read it fairly often and tell the AI to fix anything that’s unclear.)

> our work shows that what models say about themselves is not a fact about them

It seems like should be obvious given that they can play multiple characters, but it’s good to have more confirmation.

Although, I do wonder to what extent these personas might become stable entities. Could personas become portable and spread like memes? It seems like that depends on the extent to which prompts can become portable, causing similar effects.

Too soon to say apparently? They got some laws passed.

All that is true and I suppose there could be tax policies to encourage land reclamation, but this is more likely to run into environmental concerns. It’s literally an edge case.

The comments here are terrible. I got a better idea of what’s going on by asking ChatGPT what this paper’s weaknesses are:

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6ab7d694885481918083b8cbf0ba9040

In particular: sometimes they measure “churn”, which doesn’t show whether the results are better or worse on average. They sometimes only test with one random seed. There are multiple-comparison issues. And they’re not testing Anthropic’s algorithm.

Changing a random seed could either improve or degrade the output. In theory, better and worse outputs should be equally probable, depending on your luck.

It makes sense to leave, but it also seems like the overall sentiment would be more positive given the “it paid my rent for many years” part.

I'm hoping that by "gets it," he meant that if you start a discussion about the design, it doesn't misunderstand and immediately go off to do the work. Some models tend to do this.

Yes, a conversation can be the plan. It helps if you ask it what the commits will be and then tell it to use subagents to implement them.

Also, since sometimes an AI can be a busy beaver, I added instructions to not edit any checked-in files if the prompt contains a question.

Foster City has a pretty hefty levee [1]. Palo Alto is building a "horizontal levee" [2]. Looks like Redwood Shores will be raising theirs [3].

This work has to be done for good reason, but looks like they're on it?

[1] https://fostercitylevee.org/ [2] https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/palo-alto-sea-le... [3] https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/new-200m-levee-upg...

Looks like this is complicated and the short answer is "it depends":

https://chatgpt.com/share/6ab5ca51-3e0c-83e8-a232-892d3e4ef9...

If mortgage expenses go down and property tax expenses go up, it's basically a wash.

But for that to happen, land values need to go down. Landlords need to bid less.

So what happens then? High enough property taxes could in theory result in a situation like Detroit where the land value drops so low that properties are abandoned, with no buyers. But that seems unlikely in California?

At less of an extreme, there are still buyers, but they offer less money so they can still make a profit. So, the property tax basically comes out of land values. The current owners lose money on the property. It's the opposite of the windfall profits that California property owners have gotten from rising land values, taken out of whoever owns the land now.

For the next owner, their mortgage expense is lower, their property tax is higher, and maybe rents and profit margins stay about the same.

Notice that if the demand is there, falling land values doesn't result in lower rents. If your complaint is that the rent is too damn high, higher property taxes won't fix it. Only more housing does that.

I'm a bit skeptical that it would really work out that way. In California, we can have the odd situation where the current owner pays low property taxes, the new owner will pay higher property taxes, and yet property prices get bid up, and whoever buys it has to pay both more property tax and a higher mortgage. But they can still afford it, because there are a lot of rich people out there.

I think the idea is that if the market demand is such that it allows them to raise rents, they'd already have done it, whether or not expenses justify it.

There are people who don’t save money at all and people who save a lot more than average, which is a whole lot easier with a high income. With the right mindset, it’s not much of a hardship.

This sounds like the toupee fallacy.

I wonder if any movie special effects that you notice will be considered AI?

Also true of a land mine, but that’s not very reassuring.

Motivation or not, I find a coding agent can be quite the busy beaver. Ask a question and it goes off and does it. I certainly don’t need to motivate them. I had to put a line in AGENTS.md to make no changes when there’s a question in the prompt. It doesn’t always work.

Seems like motivation is irrelevant? They don’t need it.

Why not both? Depending on what you make, it’s often possible to enjoy life and also spend less than you earn. You are enjoying life like someone with a lower salary would.

Similarly, you shouldn't say "I flew to San Francisco" because it gives you bird characteristics. "I rode in an airplane that flew to San Francisco" is clearer.

:-)

I don't know how "sandbox" became "prison," but exe.dev does this sort of thing pretty well, and a web UI can be as good or better than a terminal interface.

There are some projects I'd consider to be useless, but it doesn't seem very likely that data centers will be useless. Maybe not used for their original purpose, though?

Extinction due to building too many data centers? How would that even work?

It’s being jammed into products where it’s not wanted. I use AI every day with good results, but I do not want it in my browser, my OS, my text editor, or AI summaries in my search engine. I want it in a separate web app where I can use it or not.

So am I pro- or anti- AI? Both. It depends what it is.

It can be bad for some people (many stories in the news about this) while still being good for other people. Hard to say overall or in the long run.

Does it still matter now that we have Linux VMs and Docker files? Seems like OS on the actual hardware could be any Linux or even non-Linux.

This is assuming all or nothing. More likely they will co-exist.

There are good reasons to have choices. Driverless cars will make more sense if you have a lot of luggage or other cargo to schlep. Elderly people might find it easier. There will be routes that are awkward by bus.

Also driverless vans might make sense on some routes.

It will help if incentives encourage the use of whatever is more efficient.

It makes a lot more sense for Bart. You can go places that don’t even have Waymo service.