fugalfervor

I get it now. You're one of the robots! That's a pretty good bit.

I work at Microsoft and my team's a bunch of harmless dorks and weirdos that I like very much. YMMV but perhaps the unfavorable decisions you have formed about a small subset of Microsoft employees should not be extended to the full 223,000 workers employed there.

Not really. I'm thinking that robots have limited capactiy to help with community, maintaining mental acuity, and strength training which as I understand it are the three most predictive factors in quality-of-life outcomes for the elderly.

I'm not saying that robots can't help care for them, but rather that the proposed uses of robotics are optimizing for problems that are ultimately not the most important problems to those nearing death.

I am saying that people don't want elder care and community automated away. Businesses surely do. The elderly surely do not.

How exactly is building a robot to take out the trash "robot care for the elderly"? Any chore done by humans -- including but not limited to the elderly -- that can be automated by a robot is considered "robot care for the elderly"?

If that is what the above poster meant, they should have stated it more clearly because it did not come through.

I've never thought of it like that, but I can't think of a counterexample.

You should say this out loud to the people in your life who have kids!

No, lots of people do not feel similar. You may also be out of touch.

Slack built into and accepted by the system does not mean that you can surgically remove that slack and not have wide-ranging negative side-effects.

What a limited understanding of how tangled systems operate.

A simplistic understanding that posits to explain everythin, but understands little.

A thought-terminating cliche, if you will.

It's also a very simplisic understanding and an identifier of someone falling victim to the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Microsoft employees (developers) were told during an internal keynote that we need to be more judicious about using AI because it is expensive, makes some tasks take longer, and there is no evidence supporting increased productivity.

Overinvestment in AI.

As mentioned elsewhere, my org is asking us to reduce usage because it is expensive and there's no evidence it improves productivity.

If that's happening at [redacted] of all places, I think it's reasonable to think that the technology may not be as transformative as predicted due to its (currently) poor performance in generating revenue.

We're profiting from its inefficiency by selling compute to other companies, especially AI startups. It's expensive and unprofitable for them and a cash cow for us. The position we're taking is bearish and somewhat more reversible than that taken by Meta, for example.

> I’m not going to produce a laundry list of how it’s already impacting engineering productivity and practice

That's because you don't have one.

I work for a big tech company. My org is being asked to be more judicious with AI usage because there is no evidence that it improves productivity and is in fact slowing some work down. Recent studies back this up. It is affecting practice, not productivity.

> The fear and anxiety are driven by some people’s natural responses to that, as they see it, too.

How do you separate that out as the cause of the anxiety, when the leaders of AI companies are actively fearmongering about the power of their technology?

Good lord. The technology is nowhere near profitable and there is no clear path for it to become so. The new reality is not in any way stable.

Nevertheless, you seem to insist on one vision of the future, predicted without evidence. I suggest the unpredictability of (or absence of) that future and you expect that I should explain exactly what the alternatives are.

Do you have evidence that rules it out? It's a distinct possibility. A lot of complaining and commiserating had to happen before unionization took place en masse.

> There’s no organizing going on here

How do you know there aren't people organizing after discussing something online and realizing there are others out there who agree with them? You assume, but you don't know.

And yet, you speak confidently, as though you do know. What's with that?

IMO their best album. A good synthesis of all of their best experiments and some of their rock roots.

Bodysnatchers stands out to me as an example. In the beginning of the song you are in a tight, non-reverberant space, standing directly in front of the amp while a band performs off-kilter riff rock. In the B section, there's heavy reverb, a broadening of the imagery. You go from claustrophobic to the wide-open expanse of outer-space before coming back down.

Or All I Need. Loud-Quiet-Loud. But during the loud parts, mixed low in the background (imperceptible unless you're looking for it) are violins playing a quarter-tone apart creating a "haze" of sound. Sonically: you are at a basement show of a local band, with overtones bouncing off of the near walls and mixing together into that haze.

There are precedents for these, but Radiohead has not paid this kind of attention to the ambiance and the ineffable effects of the spaces in which we listen to music before or since. It was their most difficult album to make; they agonized over every detail, threw out entire mixes and started over, fussed over every parameter and tried as many permutations as the could. According to Thom Yorke, it was so unpleasant that they never want to make an album like that again. I think it's the kind of thing where they couldn't get back into that creative mindset again even if they tried. Changed by the experience.

And if you don't consciously register any of this, it doesn't matter. It'll have its effect on you, and the songs are well-written regardless of the production.

> 1/this thread doesn’t seem designed for that;

This thread is not designed for discussion? I'm not even sure what that means. If the sentiments expressed in this thread lead to people discussing the same topic elsewhere, does it matter what this thread is "designed for"?

> 2/I’m not sure what outcome you’re contemplating

What does that have to do with anything? I'm responding to a comment complaining about the fact that others were complaining about a narrowly envisioned future which seems, to them, inevitable. I'm merely pointing out that the dissenting opinions could have value to individuals who want different outcomes from the ones predicted.

I am thinking of a study showing that political pundits do worse than chance at predicting the political future (this does not include election modeling, which is not punditry).

There's no realistic way to compose a statistical model for what will happen to a society when a powerful new technology is introduced. Predictors of our brave new AI world are going to be about as accurate as our pundits.

You'll note that I didn't make a prediction. Nor did I tell someone their prediction was wrong. I called into question someone's certainty about their own prediction.

More important than paying the bills.

Love to a family member.

> But if you really think the right thing to do in response is to complain and commiserate, I don’t think that is helpful, either.

What if complaining and commiserating leads to fighting for political actions that lead to outcomes we like better?

> I don’t, necessarily; but I do know that if you’re not even trying, then you’re putting yourself at greater risk.

We could also all put our gifts toward preventing the "new reality" you see as inevitable, and put you at greater risk.

The future isn't written yet. Your ability to predict it is an illusion. In aggregate, people whose job it is to predict large-scale economic events are worse than chance in their predictions.

Don't invest in companies that do crimes.

they might be willing to hire you to help rehabilitate their image

If they get more decisions like this and they're overextended with AI investment, they'll be pretty fucked. Of course, the cockroaches will scuttle away without penalty.