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This is the right take to me. I can't say with absolute certainty, but it feels strongly like the eugenics aspects were there more for shock value... perhaps overestimating the public's capacity to recognize the farce.

And so much of it is so obviously absurd. Invokes everything from Gilliam's Brazil to Kids In The Hall.

As others have said, it's a reflection of what we currently are, magnified. Many aspects of which are not as implausible as they once were. That's where the continued buzz it gets comes from, I think.

I do think the eugenics stuff would be avoided if it were to be made today. If that turns out to be how Mike Judge actually thinks, well, I'd be very disappointed and would have to eat some words.

I recently switched to Zen with Ublock Origin and it does seem like some sites are slower than before. It's got me suspicious that site owners are increasingly throttling users with adblockers. YouTube absolutely does.

Zen is my favorite browser experience by far, and I've been using the web since Netscape in 1994. But the slowdowns do put a damper on things. Also some of the streaming platforms don't seem to play nice with it.

Thank you, that's the sort of response I was hoping for, actually analyzing the efficiency of the thing. Waste heat is something I think we can get a lot more juice out of in the future.

Since I haven't seen anyone bring up the viability of this method yet, here are a few additional bits of info I dug up:

> the total mass of the completed apparatus is around 400 kg with 20 kg of alcohol in the refrigeration cycle

> The group, led by Malcolm McCulloch noted that the design was still "nowhere near commercialised", but might allow the efficiency of the original Einstein–Szilárd design to be quadrupled.

It would be great if someone could improve this tech to where there's a breakeven point of ownership (preferably less than 20 years) when it becomes a better deal than other modern refrigerators.

"We have every location associated with you in the crosshairs of tamper proof missiles and surrounded by infantry with heavy vehicles. Do what we say or we will destroy you and everything you care about."

And that's just the most obvious one. There are many other kinds of threats which are much more subtle.

That is how governments traditionally stay in charge, and I expect the pattern to continue. Citizens simply don't have access to the levels of destruction the state is capable of, by design. The common people can have all the advanced technology they want, so long as it doesn't threaten our leaders' monopoly on violence.

> It is just a matter of time. The state, as we know it, will collapse or will be greatly reduced

Doubt.

The networking between people in power at the top will, in my opinion, most likely assure that they remain in power, because at the end of the day that is what they want most.

I expect government will seize control of the most advanced models (if they haven't already), and the rest of us will be throttled, and status quo will be maintained. I do not expect that either super advanced agents or the owners of the hardware they run on will be able to pull off the kind of coup you describe. At all.

> Writing commands is inherently the most accessible form of controlling computers

Not if you don't know enough of the commands and have to research every one you need, and it's for a problem you likely won't encounter again. Oh, and you have to do this without breaking anything. To say this can slow a person down is a dramatic understatement.

There is a reason menus were invented very early on in computing history, well before 1970.

No one knows the future, but my (half serious) prediction is that governments will step in, public access to high end models will have an 'IQ governor' and/or throttling applied, the most advanced models will be put behind closed doors, and the biggest AI companies won't be allowed to fail.

Those who are in charge will try like mad to keep things exactly the way they are, with only slow and incremental changes which they can reap maximum rewards from. Same as it ever was, right?

We could develop ASI, and it could give us the blueprint for a peaceful paradise on Earth for every human, and in my current opinion, the leaders of the world would lock it away and never let it see the light of day. Perhaps they'd even destroy it. [Sorry, I'm a bit jaded this morning.]

Wow, that is really close to what I had in mind, and helpful info. Cool! Literally! Appreciate you sharing it.

As I feared, though, with a price tag of $10k USD, you're halfway to buying a solid used car (preferably hybrid) with air conditioning... which could sleep at least two people fully reclined, plus kids or pets. So you might as well do that. I'd love to see a viable path to bringing this price down.

Regardless, there do seem to at least be niche applications even at this price point.

My response to this for a while (and what I think is one of the few rational responses) has been that it doesn't matter at this point whether consciousness, sentience, sapience or whatever you want to call it is 'actually there'.

What matters that growing numbers of people already believe it is, and their response to that belief will affect the real world, regardless of its truth. This debate is never going to end.

All we can do is try to anticipate where the debate is going, how it might affect us, and how we can make contingency plans for the different ways this could all play out.

It did occur to me that a small, efficient portable icemaker would be an okay runner-up solution. I think being able to cool the air in a small space would be more comfortable overall, though, and wouldn't involve getting wet.

I've been thinking for a while about whether it would be feasible to produce an affordable 'personal cooling chamber' for lower income people in places getting scorched in the summer that don't have A/C.

Basically an automotive air conditioning unit hooked up to a battery and solar panel, with a tanning bed type form factor (up to maybe capsule hotel size), painted or coated to reflect light & heat. Highly portable.

I'm not sure if it's remotely practical, but it would be interesting to run the numbers, and I'm certain there is at least someone out there who would buy it even if the cost turned out to be higher than I envision.

I have to agree, yurishimo's assumption of returns is wildly optimistic.

At a more sane expected return of 5% annually, you get $50k a year to live off of to just keep what you have (or rather, watch it slowly erode in value due to inflation).

That is basically a one person income, maybe two adults if you pinch pennies and live in a crappy apartment or a low-end house in a midwestern suburb.

You can get a lot more lucky with a million bucks than you can with 10k if you gamble, but there are no guarantees. Risk tolerance is the most impactful variable. For those in the low risk tolerance group, I think you'd need at least 2 mil these days. And that's with being frugal, as well as probably not having much left over for kids.

You would think so! Perhaps in a more sane situation. We tried it and it did not help. Priorities shifted, facts on the ground changed, emergencies came up, and there was almost no chance to focus for long periods.

Part of it was me not handling certain kinds of stress well, but a different management approach absolutely could have made a difference. To cut them a bit of slack, this particular boss had come from a prior position where they were managing hundreds of roles... to a small shop where they managed just a handful (and only one other dedicated IT person). They had trouble breaking away from the "throw everything at the wall and go full steam on it all" approach and dealing with scarce resources more carefully.

I was utterly convinced at age 14 that I had ruined my life and any chance of a good career. I also was pretty sure the world was going to end soon. I started smoking cigarettes and experimenting with various risky behaviors. A few years later, I became suicidal for a time.

It wasn't until my late 20s that I started living a more 'normal' life, but by then I was a decade behind in career development and other things.

Academic concerns may not by themselves count as trauma, but combined with other factors they can be the thing that pushes someone into total hopelessness.

I was thinking more about parts and pieces of what runs in that rack for hobbyists.

Or they'd be part of the customer base for leasing compute from someone else who bought the rack.

Although there is such a thing as hobbyists with a ton of money who want to experiment with large models on enterprise grade hardware. Probably not a lot of those, though, of course.

Whatever it is suited for that they can get a decent margin on. Or, you know, hobbies.

The demand is there and the market will find pricing that works.

My expectation is that government has already stepped in quietly and worked out an arrangement where they have unfettered access to the most advanced/dangerous models, and the public's access will be continually throttled from now on in various ways.

If this has happened (or is about to happen), it is difficult to predict what the ramifications could be. But I do believe we are entering another Cold War in this way. And I don't trust our leaders to always do the right thing, to put it mildly... even if they created a purely benevolent superbeing that only wants to reduce human suffering and make the world better, I don't think they'd listen to it over the other superbeing which simply wants to make sure all of its owners' perceived enemies get pwned.

Things could get very ugly and we should have responsible adults with critical thinking skills at the helm. It does not appear this is currently the case, or that the electorate is willing/capable of doing much about it.

I would very much like to know more about your educational approach with regard to:

> When I provide a demo of e.g. local AI, say in LM Studio showing the console of it rapidly flashing through thousands of words

Because I am one of those individuals very interested in doing more to actively inform my family, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens facts about AI. I've actually considered doing talks at local libraries for senior citizens (or whoever), etc., and trying to build up a systematic way to get more other folks doing the same.

This really elegantly sums up two of the most major areas of research in the field right now. I expect people are going to hammer at both problems for a while. It will be interesting to see how much useful stuff is built as a result.

Yes, it's all about the amount of money invested right now. Justifying that was always going to be tricky, and it still is.

The compute capacity, however, is here to stay. There will be a seemingly endless line of people queued up to buy it at pennies on the dollar if this whole thing blows up financially. And they will use it!

Or, you can do like one of my former bosses, and just rattle off a list of 60+ major projects which would require a team of 10 to make any reasonable progress on in the near future, then pin it on one underqualified person, refuse to provide a proper budget, and continually press them about why targeted deadlines are being missed.

Yep. 1998 was when the first HD broadcasts started in the US, and it took a few years before everyone switched over. Before then, everything was 720 × 480 at 30 fps, and before the mid-80s (and for many shows for a long while after) the sound was mono, not even stereo.

Data requirements for this would be far, far lower than what is considered standard now.

I prompted it with "How uncontrollable flatulence taught me to handle business curveballs" and I was definitely mildly amused by the results. So much detail.

Depends what you mean by "used to". The 17th century or before? Sure.

However, I would argue that in the US, we "used to" have far better separation prior to the 1970s, and even better than that before the 1930s. It has significantly deteriorated over the past 100 years, and the deterioration has continuously accelerated during my lifetime.

That is a position of privilege not everyone has, and it is almost certainly temporary for those who do have it.

With the additional detail and the numbers you provided, that seems reasonable. Steepness of hills is definitely relevant, haha.

Minor nitpick with your first sentence: I do not believe "anyone with a bit of training" is an accurate way to describe what is required for pedaling a bicycle at 20 mph for 5 solid hours.

At a time when I was in better shape than the average person, the most I ever worked up to was 40 miles, and it was brutal. In my entire middle-aged life, I have met exactly one person who believably claimed to have done 100 miles in a day. I'm sure it's easier than many/most people think, but not 'anyone' easy, with just 'a bit' of training.

This is the part of the thread I was looking for.

Obviously the whole question is how a robot cleaner compares to a human.

As you point out, the potential for robots far outperforms humans in multiple categories (although clearly not all by any stretch).

I'd say pricing around that of a lower end new car - or nice used one - seems about right to me. In terms of justifying the price, another thing I haven't seen discussed much is the competitive advantage this can provide. If you're spending less time cleaning, that's more time for other things.

> the poweruser toolbar style

These can be great for discovery. But one must-have for me is a unique keyboard shortcut assigned to each button on the toolbar. Because if I use a feature often, I would 1000x rather use the keyboard to invoke it than have to drag a mouse to click a button.