Just recently, I used generative AI integrated into databricks to build complex sql queries via English, used Google Gemini in Google sheet to formula a tricky pivot table, chatGPT build a cloud formation schema for new infra for a service & to navigate some tricky database primarily key setup for dynamodb; used copilot integrated into my IDE to speed up unit test and simple refractors and code complete every other line written.

I nor the other millions of subscribers to these tools are not subscribed because it barely works it's because it lets me work more efficiently.

It save tons of time across many product for many things that used to be sources of frustration or slow mundane tasks.

"Hype" is all it takes for that to be the case. Then every product had to "add AI" features to keep ahead of competitor's marketing.

1. Spend hours and $ hiring a graphic designer to make one

2. Spend hours learning/doing it myself

3. Spend time searching the internet looking for images that aren't copyrighted, or spend time finding an image I like and spend time and $ figuring out how to pay/license it

4. Spend a few seconds prompting AI

I know this comes off snarky but it's been decades now and we've got to be the change we want to see in the world. "business person at the office" banner image is completely useless.

But I've found a pretty interesting middle-ground/sweet spot (mainly with less technical audiences) where a nice graphic can really improve attention and retention, especially on a slide deck. For a recent example, I wrote about the importance of passwords for a "security awareness" training (the audience here are people in Pakistan who have only recently started using the internet). To help illustrate/reinforce the idea that if somebody gets your password they can "hack" you, I generated some colorful images of hackers, computer security, and even one with a person being arrested (in that section I was describing the law that could hold them accountable for breach of others personal information if their negligence allowed an adversary to gain access to the system). Personally to me it's fluff, but I ran a small (and not very scientific) A/B test with the first and second group and the version with the graphics was shockingly better at it's goal of raising awareness.

That being said, visual input and aesthetic are deeply intrinsic human things and expecting us to move beyond that is very unrealistic.

The best we can do is optimise the IG methodology and/or use open, perpetually royalty free images and clipart for illustration.

I’m not sure gen ai even helps with increasing productivity yet - since tons of existing tools and services do all the same things without having much of this ai (ai chatbot better than a web search? gimme a break…)

- Call Customer Service, go through a crazy flow chart and be redirected to 10 different people.

- Go shopping, sift through thousands of reviews/images/fake products to find one that works.

- Manually create graphics/designs for unique rooms

- Request a junior employee to write some basic code.

- Request a junior employee to perform task X.

The AI also has the advantage that it can scale up to 24/7, on-demand work without an additional engineer.

Not as much "labor-saving" as bureucracy expanding and automating "bullshit jobs" jobs that shouldn't exist in the first place.

I disagree, because 1. I live close to a former Uranium Mining site

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environm...

2. Chernobyl

I live in the fallout area and mushrooms and boar meat is still contaminated 37 years later. Over 1000 km away from the plant.

I understood nuclear to be, from most any lifecycle analysis, the modality with the fewest externalities of any grid-scale tech mature enough to field, and somehow almost cost-competitive even while regulated (as it is today) to safety thresholds many orders of magnitude more conservative than the incumbent technologies.

It sounds like you’re informed differently than me. What’d the better way that you propose in the last sentence?

[0] https://zionlights.substack.com/p/everything-i-believed-abou...

I am not anti nuclear btw. I just call out BS, when I see BS.

And I just shared what affected me personaly, if you want to know more about potential and actual disasters:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_a...

Multiply that with x, if you increase the number of plants.

And watch out for Murphy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law

Please google Thorium and Minor Actinide Incineration.

>Chernobyl

The manifest incompetencies of a literal Communist government are none of the US' concern.

I'll be happy to compromise with you, though. If you support nuclear in spite of Chernobyl, I'll support the death penalty for any capitalist that oversees a nuclear meltdown not caused by an ICBM despite your lack of knowledge about the history of the USSR, and nature of communism. I might even support burning at the stake or something if that's what it takes to make the obviously correct decision for human progress. McCarthy wrote that link decades after Three Mile and Chernobyl. He wouldn't have done so if he didn't also know what I'm relaying to you now. Received opinion is the least grounded kind.

EDIT: Lol I missed what thread this was in. Again, was Three Mile Island a Thorium reactor? We'd all save so much time if questions were directed to Google instead of me.

We are bad at construction, and productivity in the entire sector has been stagnant for half a century. In the meantime, we have seen soaring productivity in manufacturing, meaning that labor costs go up too, but without the corresponding productivity increase.

For a nuclear peoject, where so many of the very high up front costs are labor, this is devastating to the cost structure.

And of course, delays are devastating to costs when financing costs are more than 50% of the cost of the entire project.

Fix construction, and maybe nuclear will make financial sense. But not until construction is fixed.

It remains to be seen if any can deliver. Early indications have all been extremely negative.

Also, basing energy supply considerations solely on a dollar cost notion is questionable, even if the dollar cost values were true. It's turning out that 'high nuclear energy cost' FUD is part and parcel of much of the 'green' movement and based on faulty LCOE assumptions that are spread uncritically by self-styled 'greens' on social media.

Ignore the greens, and definitely do not adopt their innumeracy, as so man nuclear advocates have done.

The real foes of nuclear right now are the economics and construction costs. The high costs are not "cherry picked," they are the data that are exhaustive and what everybody has available for decision making.

The people that need to be convinced to build nuclear are utility execs, not the public. There are a plentitude of sites that would be happy to add reactors to their existing pair, if somebody would come with the money.

That's the real fight here.

Also, this assumes dollar cost is the only relevant factor which is deeply unserious considering that we're dealing with a global long-term issue.

It's a bit strange to rally against cherry-picking and then referring to projects outside of relevant jurisdictions. For some reason we cannot replicate their results, we can have it as a goal perhaps but as a basis for a cost calculation I would opt for jurisdictions that are home or close to home (in a cultural sense).

> Also, this assumes dollar cost is the only relevant factor which is deeply unserious considering that we're dealing with a global long-term issue.

For investors it is the only relevant factor, which is what you initially replied to.

However, as for the massive logistics and management problem of actually constructing a nuclear reactor, it's unclear if having government employees would be better. It's clear that the current contractors are terrible, but that's no guarantee that the US gov would be better.

Whereas Ethereum has clearly shown that you can have a safe chain without this craziness.

But from reddit to Bitcoin talk to Bitcoin core development, there's a handful of people that control everything and want the status quo preserved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...

of course there are others who disagree with him but they're wrong of course

With AI, on the other hand, efficiencies help. Of someone comes up with AI hardware that does inference or training 10x more efficiently, people will incorporate that and the energy usage for the same amount of work will decrease.

[0] https://journals.iucr.org/a/issues/2008/01/00/sc5015/ ("Busting out of crystallography's Sisyphean prison: from pencil and paper to structure solving at the press of a button[...]")

(Well, long order, actually. Short order once the technology ripened on its like fifth iteration)

(Then click a little more haha)

Many people are named McCarthy.