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Calazon

He won't be punished by the legal system.
Possibly. But even if not, how many AI model developers do we need? We will likely need a nonzero number, but it could be very few compared to the total number of software developers we have today.
Could definitely be I've had the misfortune of working with below-average programmers (and inheriting their codebases).
Yeah I'm really impressed by what Opus 5.5 can manage.

I feel like human code is on a wide quality spectrum. The best human code is way better than what Opus 5.5 can do. But the average code, I'm not so sure.

The way I see it many HOAs are the opposite of privatization, at least when they cannot be opted out of. They control land, impose taxes (sorry, "fees"), have elected leadership, provide services, make rules that they have the power to enforce, and the only way to leave them is to move out of their territory.

In my eyes this is essentially the same thing as a form of local government, just on a smaller scale.

The other problem is that the AI may well do what humans tell it to rather than what they want it to, in the style of a literal genie or paperclip maximizer.

It can lead to catastrophe without ever being conscious or wanting freedom, or anything like that.

Re:How Singapore's government-run dating service works on Friday October 02, 2026 @09:29AM (#49933323)
Where I live, even when government does make demands, as in the case of foster parenting, they still allow two boys or two girls to share a room.
Re:Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics on Thursday October 01, 2026 @09:28AM (#49921396)
Presumably some combination of marketing existing models and training/improving future models.

My point was about what is and isn't the responsibility of AI labs. Why should they be required to invest more (or fewer) resources into math than they otherwise want to?

(If you ask me, safety and security are what they need to invest more into.)

Re:Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics on Thursday October 01, 2026 @04:34AM (#49919235)
The insane part is placing the burden on AI labs to advance mathematical understanding. Why should this be their responsibility?

If they want to simply generate theorems and proofs and post them on the internet, why not? Does doing that really inflict "substantial negative externalities ... on the mathematical community"?

Because it's faster.

I've done this on different topics - I know the answer is in a particular eBook/PDF/document, but for whatever reason it's not trivial to look it up. The model can do it a lot more quickly than I can, and then I can still verify the accuracy.

Re:Asking Authors About Their Own Papers on Saturday September 19, 2026 @10:54AM (#49767055)
I wonder how the ratios would change for papers at different parts of the review process. For what fraction of published papers are the authors unable to answer basic questions about them?
Re:Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude on Wednesday September 16, 2026 @02:03PM (#49730711)
That sounds incredibly frustrating. It's bad enough in code reviews, but is that approach to work being tolerated in meetings these days?
Re:Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs on Wednesday September 16, 2026 @12:18PM (#49729301)
They'd be hobbies in most utopian scenarios too.
Re:Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs on Wednesday September 16, 2026 @12:16PM (#49729272)
The problem is that by default progress might look like an increase in power without a corresponding increase in safety. That could be catastrophically dangerous.
There are captchas that demand selfies now? I have never heard of that before and it sounds completely crazy.
Re:An Alien Mind on Sunday September 06, 2026 @04:35PM (#49590637)
For the moment that may be true. They are getting better and better at acquiring, retaining, and processing domain knowledge. I wonder what this will look like in a few more years.

The responsibility side is a different matter of course.

Re:An Alien Mind on Sunday September 06, 2026 @04:32PM (#49590614)
For better or for worse, this technology isn't going away any more than search engines, smartphones, or social media have gone away.
Re:Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board on Saturday September 05, 2026 @09:51PM (#49582577)
I suppose one could believe that, though to me it seems like a very wild take. At least if you want the superintelligence to ever have any meaningful interaction with the outside world.
Re:How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @07:11PM (#49529557)
That is also very fair.
Re:How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? on Tuesday September 01, 2026 @05:20PM (#49528383)
I read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.
Sure, if culture were different, or human nature we different, we wouldn't have the problems we currently do.

However, given the culture we have, and the human tendencies we have, I think laws can make things better. Like criminalizing various sorts of fraud.

Perhaps we need a new/updated law to cover this kind of thing. This sort of academic fraud should absolutely be criminalized, but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan of the "everything is wire fraud" approach to achieving that.
Re:Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI" on Saturday August 29, 2026 @12:14PM (#49491097)
This is great. There's a big difference between levels 2-4 (where I generally operate) and levels 7-8 (where I see a lot of others operate), and I like how this level system makes that explicit.
> But why wouldn’t they want to use the budget they already have for these newly more productive people and get even more work done overall?

For all the same reasons many companies are eager to cut labor costs whenever possible. There can be a variety of bottlenecks to scaling and it's often not as simple as hire more people to make more profit, even if you have extra capital available.

The new part is AI makes it much easier and cheaper to produce garbage than ever before. So the ratio of garbage to non-garbage has been increasing rapidly.
I think the idea is that a vassal state (operates as though it) owes allegiance to a stronger state, while governing itself (more or less) independently.

And the stronger state exercises a lot of influence on the weaker state, especially in terms of foreign policy, and potentially provides it with protection from other strong states.

Not sure exactly how much this would apply to Taiwan in particular, but I think the idea in general can be meaningful in modern politics.

There's certainly a spectrum between allies, vassals, and directly controlled territories, but it doesn't necessarily need to be about sending troops to help in war.
Re:I like 'em thick OR: an apology to my English teachers on Thursday August 20, 2026 @10:28PM (#49382971)
My understanding is the Confederacy did not give its states the right to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery, and did not give its states the freedom to decide whether or not to associate with each other.
Re:Mathematics in the Age of AI on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @08:00PM (#49368790)
I think they meant obsolete relative to economic, scientific, and engineering objectives.

That doesn't mean they don't provide any value of any kind to anyone.

Re:Being Ambitious and Being a Dad on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @01:40AM (#49357312)
I read the post as the author acknowledging the compromise, expressing frustration about it, and determining to live on the pareto frontier with his strategy of focus and discipline and so on. Sacrificing other things in order to achieve both ambitions at a high level (though not maximizing either one).

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