No lol, Stephen Wolfram is more invested in his writings than he is in Mathematica. He genuinely believes he’s going to revolutionize math and physics.
He’s smarter than your average nutjob, but he’s still a bit of a crank.
Agreed. This is a standard supply chain attack that has little to do with AI except that it is written in the 'english-as-a-scripting-language' that LLMs execute.
Every repository is vulnerable to this kind of attack, and pip/npm have been attacked in many times in similar ways.
Well no, that's really not related to the issue at all.
This is a bog-standard supply chain attack against their skills repository. It's not an LLM-specific attack, and nearly every repository (pip, npm, etc) has been subject to similar malware.
> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough.
You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed.
There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsic value of art, etc.
This is a weird quirk that I observe in all sorts of contexts. "No one's talking about [thing that is frequently discussed]!" or, "There's never been [an actor in this identity category] in major movie role before!" (except there has plenty of times) or sometimes "You can't even say Christmas anymore!" (except they just did) The somewhat inaccurate use of hyperbolic language does not mean that there is _nothing_ to the particular statement or issue. Only that the hyperbole is just that; an exaggeration of a potentially real and valid issue. The hyperbole is not very helpful, but neither is a total refutation of the issue based on the usage of hyperbole.
@dang has noted this phenomenon in various forms multiple times. The most recent one I can find:
> It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side. One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others. This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours.
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I find hyperbolic comments on recommendation threads, e.g. "I can't believe no one has mentioned <blah> yet", to be quite annoying. Every item recommended on this thread is going to be "first" when it's first recommended. Trying to rocket your suggestion to the top of the pile by suggesting it's self-obviousness doesn't mean it's a better suggestion than any others.
> ... emitting a NYC worth of CO2 in a year is dizzying
Simplified comparisons like these rarely show the full picture [0]. They focus on electricity use only, not on heating, transport, or meat production, and certainly not on the CO2 emissions associated with New York’s airports. As a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate, a flight from Los Angeles to New York with one seat is on the order of 1,000,000 small chat queries CO2e.
Of course we should care about AI’s electricity consumption, especially when we run 100 agents in parallel simply because we can. But it’s important to keep it in perspective.
Yes, it's being discussed a lot. No, it's not being discussed enough, nor by all the right people. It has the potential to cause untold suffering to the middle class of developed nations, since it's moving too fast for individual humans to adjust. On the Problem Scale that puts it on the "societal emergency" end, which basically can not be discussed enough.
> You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed
It’s not just being discussed, it’s dominating the conversation on sites like Hacker News. It’s actually hard to find the useful and informative LLM content because it doesn’t get as many upvotes as the constant flow of anti-LLM thought pieces like this.
There was even the strange period when the rationalist movement was in the spotlight and getting mainstream media coverage for their AI safety warnings. They overplayed their hand with the whole call to drop bombs on data centers and the AI 2027 project with Scott Alexander that predicted the arrival of AGI and disastrous consequences in 2027. There was so much extreme doom and cynicism for a while that a lot of people just got tired of it and tuned out.
I think maybe people who write that it's not being discussed really mean that people aren't doing anything based on the discussions. Overall all of this is just sort of happening.
Because those criticisms misses the forest for the trees. You might as well complain about the pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution. AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations.
The more interesting questions are about psychology, productivity, intelligence, AGI risk, etc. Resource constraints can be solved, but we’re wrestling with societal constraints. Industrialization created modernism, we could see a similar movement in reaction to AI.
Well, that's just it. Those extentitential risks aren't even proven yet.
Meanwhile, threats to resources are already being felt today. "just overhaul our infrastructure" isn't an actionable solution that will magically fix things today or next week. Even if these don't end up being big problems in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean they aren't problems now.
Well considering people that disagree with you “shills” is maybe a bad start and indicates you kind of just have an axe to grind. You’re right that there can be serious local issues for data centers but there are plenty of instances where it’s a clear net positive. There’s a lot of nuance that you’re just breezing over and then characterizing people that point this out as “shills”. Water and electricity demands do not have to be problematic, they are highly site specific. In some cases there are real concerns (drought-y areas like Arizona, impact on local grids and possibility of rate impacts for ordinary people etc) but in many cases they are not problematic (closed loop or reclaimed water, independent power sources, etc).
Well why would we ask you (no offense)? What is the questionable data you're talking about?
RAM and GPU prices going up, sure ok, but again: if you're claiming there is no net benefit from AI what is your evidence for that? These contracts are going through legally, so what basis do you have to prevent them from happening? Again I say its site specific: plenty of instances where people have successfully prevented data centers in their area, and lots of problems come up (especially because companies are secretive about details so people may not be able to make informed judgements).
What are the massive problems besides RAM + GPU prices, which again, what is the societal impact from this?
What's not being discussed are the people building these things are evil and they're doing it for evil purposes.
I spent some time thinking of a better word than "evil" before typing this comment. I can't think of one. Doing something bad that harms more than it helps for the purposes of enrichment and power is simply put: evil.
>Genie 3’s consistency is an emergent capability. Other methods such as NeRFs and Gaussian Splatting also allow consistent navigable 3D environments, but depend on the provision of an explicit 3D representation. By contrast, worlds generated by Genie 3 are far more dynamic and rich because they’re created frame by frame based on the world description and actions by the user.
You should switch to something else immediately. Windows 10 is no longer receiving security updates and will become increasingly unsafe to leave connected to the internet.
I only startup the PC to play games from Epic / Steam. Maybe watch Youtube sometimes. Nothing else, I use my mac for actual work. Realistically speaking, how dangerous is it for me to stay on Win10 until I am forced to switch?
Fedora and Linux Mint is my considerations at the moment.
Or like how there are two layers of right-click menu in windows explorer - the new simplified menu, and then 'Show more options' for the old menu just in case.
Much of the outrage over Recall seemed excessive to me as well. People spun it as 'Microsoft is spying on you with AI!' even though it was never that in any way.
>most weapon systems use SoCs and microcontrollers that can be fabbed on "legacy nodes"
The argument is that existing weapons systems are essentially old tech, left over from previous wars in previous decades. Many of them are less useful in the modern battlefield, e.g. defense systems built to shoot down missiles are easily overwhelmed by drones.
If there's a real war, it will be fought with next-gen weapon systems - probably autonomous drones that will require high-end AI chips.
It was a fantastic bluff from the USA to make the USSR believe that Bufford "Mad Dog" Tannen was in charge of the nukes, when in reality it was Doc. Brown.
He’s smarter than your average nutjob, but he’s still a bit of a crank.
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