daveshistory

Most computer users have very few real demands to make and it suffices.

Perhaps Gemini's been training on sources too young to listen to Radiohead.

Honestly, I didn't tell it to add that gun to the picture, it did that on its own!

That's a fair point.

Well, it's okay for them.

I don't know why you'd read literally the last 25 years of leaks from mass surveillance programs and think for one moment that they've just, gosh, overlooked the opportunities.

After 30 days and before the heat-death of the universe?

I saw a Discman in a museum a few years ago.

A Discman. They couldn't even use a Walkman.

I go back and forth on it a lot myself; and it's not just in the office context.

Grandkid's sports club had an AI-made song about the group at Christmas. It was "good enough" for that. Did they steal the job of a local band? Well, in the sense that the club would have had to commission a song. But in reality, the club wouldn't have paid money for that.

They won't pay money to commission Anthropic (or in that case I assume something like Suno) to make the song in the future either. They just won't pay the money at all. A lot of "valuable" human work will be replaced, but it won't be profitable for the companies. I bet more stuff is being transcribed now than ever before -- but not much money is being made on it.

I think technically it's referring to the advice, which is in the singular.

"These AIs are usually right about things I don't know anything about" sounds like the textbook example of risky thinking though.

I would imagine it is like transcribing, an industry I was in for a little bit when I was younger. I saw the same transition there and imagine it will be elsewhere. First it's a bunch of people saying "AI can't take our jobs, our jobs are thinking jobs." Then it's "Sure, you could use AI, but there's no real advantage to it because it makes so many mistakes."

But pretty soon after that it's "Why am I paying a transcriptionist $3/minute when I can just have the machine auto-transcribe it and then my admin assistant can just scan it for mistakes."

Even if there still IS a quality difference between great writers and AI product, "good enough" is good enough for most customers, especially if you have to pay professional rates to get better.

I raised my kids with physical books. But when I was growing up we had a record turntable, and then a tape player, and I do remember having some kind of physical connection with my favorite music because of that.

It IS more inconvenient to have them pull them out. No question about that.

Pretty much. The most depressing thing about the bland slop produced by LLMs is realizing that this is what they "think" of us.

Where do you think the LLMs learned it from...

That's exactly how I feel although I do wonder if a lot of younger people, if any still become readers, will just a different, less physical relationship with their books than I do or you do.

It's probably a bad example but I don't have any physical connection with music or video anymore for instance, but I definitely remember having that kind of relationship with favorite records and tapes when I was a kid. And now I just... don't. It must be the same way for some people with e-books.

If all else fails resort to old-fashioned letter. As long as it's certified you will have proof of delivery. And then, if they continue to make unauthorized charges, it is your credit card company's problem. They are awake during business hours, and they WILL sort it out.

Certified mail? I know it's old-fashioned but then you could hold their feet to the fire if they kept charging you.

They may. I think the point was not that they were intentionally making a dangerous product, more that "Look how dangerous our model is according to some of our tests!" works as a kind of guerrilla marketing.

(Not sure that is the right word but hope my meaning comes across.)

Hardly a new hypothetical scenario, that Wargames movie is probably 40 years old now.

Many companies would say that's the best kind of risk-reward balance. For them, anyway.

Companies of all sizes should have insurance to cover such scenarios. You need to get tradesman's insurance on your repair work, or you need to ask yourself why the insurance companies won't insure you.

And then there's a whole truckload of case law about liability that comes into play.

We haven't yet written those laws for "AI."

It's Shrek logic. "Some of you are going to die, and that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."

You're asking that question in 2026?

Not wrong, that format requires a regular parade of guests with some kind of subject matter expertise, and if it's a military or national security topic, most of those subject matter experts are inevitably from a military or at least military policy background.

Don't know if it's just my settings (spoiler: I read the Guardian) or it's by tracking IP addresses, but at least for me, when I go to the Guardian, it defaults me to a US-specific home page. I assume British people see a different page, with more coverage of their government.

Well sure, of course they should. I'm just telling you how it is. All anecdotal, but in my experience, if you ask a liberal or progressive American for a foreign newspaper they sometimes read, at least four times in five, they will tell you the Guardian. They don't see that as "only getting their news from one source." They see the Guardian AS one of their "multiple sources," because at least it's "not from here."

Edited to caveat: of course, if you ask an American what foreign newspaper they read, most of the time we will say none. But if we do, it's probably the Guardian.

I sort of disagree with this. I bet if you asked liberals and progressives in a country like America for a foreign newspaper they read -- if they do read one -- in most cases it is probably the Guardian. So it may be only the best of a bad bunch but it does have that reputation.

They are anticipating a flood of complaints from various well-connected groups and individuals that it's an unfair hit piece. They want to be able to point to all the "Hey, we didn't say this ACTUALLY MATTERED" disclaimers they front-loaded it with.

Yeah, mine was about the social meaning of distances when speaking to people (not exactly my specialty!).