somewhereoutth

I like the phrase Work Shaped Objects to describe the output of gen AI (I thank The Tech Report YouTube channel for bringing that to me).

So - prose, code, or image, it appears that some work has been done, but in fact the [actually needed] work has likely not been done.

It sad that it has come to this, but your approach is correct - it is the act of writing (code or prose) that is important, not the finished output itself.

Interestingly, this applies not just for learning, but also to a great extent in production/work contexts too.

I went to buy a new phone about a year ago - all the branding/blurbs etc was "AI this! AI that!"

I didn't end up buying at that point, but 6 months ago my existing phone failed, so I had to return to the shops. Same phones for sale more or less, but not a single word about AI anywhere.

Also, writing, indeed any making activity, forces you to think clearly. Often that is the deepest purpose of prose, even code - forcing the author to confront the problem and sharpen their own understanding of the world we share. That it then communicates something to another person (or to a machine), is a happy bonus.

An awful lot of effort has gone into making LLMs present as human/intelligent. Without that they would just be a prose / code / image generator and/or search assistant, and nobody would be pouring 100s of billions into the technology with the end goal of replacing expensive human labour.

everyone (on all sides!) is losing at AI and we'll see increasingly frantic attempts from all players to paper over the cracks as this extreme resource misallocation bites.

and I suppose the rest of us will have to wait until the grim laws of finance do their work before our own sweet release.

Exactly this. The overall productivity of not doing something should never be underestimated.

This chart of free cash flow for the big tech companies should worry people:

https://www.advisorpedia.com/media/media/2026/02/23/trailing...

Somehow we've managed to turn software from a machine for printing money to a machine for setting it on fire.

However, who will pay for the very expensive training if the ROI isn't there? Absent government subsidization, then likely the frontier models will be sold off to the hyperscalers by the bankruptcy administrators to wring a few more dollars out of them as they become out of date and more and more irrelevant - assuming that inference alone is profitable at a price the market is willing to pay of course, if not then yes the lights will indeed be turned off.

Banning smoking from indoor spaces did in fact make it go away [from indoor spaces].

Actually, the analogy is compelling - an addictive habit that is pleasurable to the user, profitable for the supplier, but others around them must suffer the effluent with consequent deleterious effects on [mental] health. And similarly, the worst [mental] health effect is of course on the user themselves.

As with smoking, probably we can't/shouldn't stop individuals from indulging in this habit, but surely we can protect the rest of society.

The key point I'm trying to make is that the shade structure or outer shell should be separated by at least 50cm, and in such a way that even the slightest breeze moves air though it.

Great for low density single storey dwellings, not so helpful for medium/high density multi-floored residential.

But there is no airflow inbetween the outside and the building core - the panels are still part of the building itself.

Maybe we need shade structures - a shade above/around the building and detached so that air flows underneath and there are no thermal bridges to the building proper. Like you would make to protect tents at e.g. Burning Man.

Of course the tragedy is that the actual food had the 'AI' treatment years ago (in the US), the artwork is only now catching up.

I suspect it is a fair representation of the food you would receive - looks kinda like real food, but actually isn't.

the key comparison is variable reward.

That 'triggers a surge of dopamine and creates highly addictive habits' [thanks Gemini!]

LLM use for code generation does exactly that, sometimes it works amazingly, sometimes it fails inexplicably. Whether it is negative sum or not doesn't really matter. Indeed it may well prove to be negative sum, especially if we step back a bit and consider the business benefit of the code produced, not just lines of code or even features produced.

> and a few new tricks I discovered

This right here. Any gambler would recognize that statement.

So... basically watching them set fire to money in realtime??

The EU is predicated on the pooled sovereignty of its constituent countries, as exercised thought the EU Council. Apart from a limited number of certain matters, any EU country can veto any decision made by the EU Commission, or indeed the EU Parliament.

I went to look for a new phone about 6 months ago - everything was AI this, AI that, all the display stands made a big deal about AI (to the extent I considered a 2024 phone because no AI). In the end I didn't buy at that point.

Just last week finally I had to buy a new phone, and so I went shopping again - this time no AI was mentioned anywhere. Not online, not on the stands in the shops, nowhere. The silence speaks volumes, as they say.

*to billionaires

but snark aside, society needs to have a big conversation (meaning political) about what is good and what is bad about what should really be understood as the 'connectivity revolution' of the last 10-20 years.

was this before or after Lisp's epiphany for lexical binding?

Following S.I. notation, we might have Tk for token, so kTk, MTk, GTk etc.

> Money doesn't appear out of thin air.

In fact [fiat] money does appear out of thin air (well, created by banks when they originate loans) - and has to to support a growing economy. Unfortunately, for various reasons, rather too much has been appearing, and has been funneled to the already wealthy.

So apparently grid forming or synthetic inertia can be provided electronically nowadays, but presumably it would not be too terrible to put a rotating mass in between the (e.g.) solar power source and the rest of the grid? So the electricity from the solar panels runs a motor that turns a generator. I suppose power is lost through friction and other inefficiencies, and you'd need to co-locate the solar panels into a big enough farm.

1. Both costs (going down) and performance (going up) likely are, or will shortly, approach asymptotic limits.

2. CFOs are seeing the token spend on the bottom line, and are not happy. CFOs don't care about 'the next big thing', they just count beans, and they are coming up short. CFOs tend to be the grown-ups in the C-suite, they will shut things down if they need to.

3. See 1. and 2.

Yes. As makers we tend to assume that the more that is made the better, and that simply by having lots of (shiny!) stuff we will get paid/honored/favored etc, whereas in fact often this stuff becomes someone's problem somewhere.

Banning online advertising would solve very nearly everything. Specifically, social media would die (and traditional media would get a new lease of life).

An intermediate step would be to ban personally targeted advertising, at least then the playing field can be leveled somewhat.