jlaternman
The levels of clickbait in that headline are absurd. It's like seventh hell of clickbait.
Also it doesn't come from the source. WSJ headline is: “The Hidden Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA”
So someone's running experiments of some sort on HN, driven by AI, is my read. Hope they snub that shit out.
Humans appear to intelligenty communicate, however these are just cleverly disguised sound patterns produced by the brain that happen to increase the likelihood of food going into their mouths, and various similar reward attracting mechanisms that make survival outcomes more likely. So human intelligence could be reduced to something like "fancy food-attracting algorithms" using the same fallacy.
I'm kind of on the fence on the subject of whether LLMs could be compared to the complexity of the human brain, myself.
South China Sea aggression lists (I didn't say anything about a list of wars with names):
- https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/world/asia/diplomatic-res...
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/asia/south-china-se...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/15/world/asia/so...
Starting conventional wars in the style of Putin isn't necessarily the sign of good will or peace you appear to accept it as. And aggression can be defined in different ways. Aggression to hold their own order inside their current territories is another aspect of this. Suppression of their own populace is an aggression that exists around the clock, and has notably expanded in Hong Kong to disgusting levels in the last few years.
Threats to world powers who dare to speak up are another one, such as the one during Covid that threatened bluntly to pluck out one of the five eyes if they're not careful with their words to protect freedoms in HK. – https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54995227
Aggression within their own ranks is also visible, such as removing major military leaders recently under suspicion of not being "all in" in terms of loyalty to the CCP's wider project (whatever that is).
Chinese companies thrive in an entrepreneurial framework, then their leaders are routinely kidnapped if they speak out against the party's aims. Minority communities are sent to camps and sterilised. Tibet is under intense surveillance and constant dictates to move ancient towns somewhere else if it's in the way of say a new dam they want to build.
This deeply internal and covertly outwards aggression cannot stand. It's evil incarnate. Sneaky and covered over just-enough, but visible enough to see the nature clearly.
Relies on navigable seas means nothing in the context of seas becoming dominated by China. Then, they would have that, simply not in a cooperative way.
We could expect China to be extremely aggressive in asserting control over waters they dominate, because that is what they have done for decades. As aggressive as they can be.
Not being able to read the argument, I'll just note that dogs are horrible sound polluters. Possibly only when they have bad human owners, but I'm pretty sure they're biologically evolved to mark territory by sound pollution, and should learn to shut up, too.
It's as if the boundary of user and LLM is not clear in its thinking, as two separate things. It can be pretty damn weird at times. For example, identifying itself as the user. In this case, it's the other way around. Has been a long running thought of mine for a while now, why this would be.
It sounds like they are in a cutthroat market, and realised they couldn't afford to stake that principle. And that it wouldn't matter if they did – it would just assure them being handicapped in a field where no others followed suit.
Better hills to die on.
For those reading who are curious on which comment is accurate, I would encourage you to read up on it to confirm for yourself. It's a highly fascinating subject to read about.
Another thing the Spanish Civil War did make Orwell was a hardcore realist.
"Half a loaf of bread is better than no loaf."
A few recent example purchases (macOS): BBEdit, Base, A Better Finder Renamer, Nitro (that’s lifetime, though I actually prefer “until the next major version”).
It's clearly intended to be used as bait for phone snatchers. That iPhone dangling loose a foot below your arm in free air is just too tempting… no thief can resist. But, then! You start swinging that motherf*cker, and your iPhone becomes a deadly weapon before any potential thief has time to think.
Third parties are sure to fill the market with the most obvious additions, e.g. metal spikes, studs, mildly poison-laced hooks. I assume there will also be training courses scheduled in Apple Stores around the world to clarify this accessory's purpose — not to mention, to teach proper technique and the ethical considerations of when to stop striking with the iPhone Pocket to avoid manslaughter charges in your region.
This is a move by Apple to subtly promote armed, deceptive martial arts as self-defence. To promote the Bushido spirit as a practical coping mechanism in these stressful times, and to empower its users in everyday situations. I for one think it's Insanely Great, and right on that bold frontier of innovation and Thinking Different that Apple built its reputation on.
IMO the issue is we won't be able to adequately answer this question before we first clearly describe what we mean of conscious thinking applied to ourselves. First we'd need to clearly define our own consciousness and what we mean by our own "conscious thinking" in a much, much clearer way than we currently do.
If we ever reach that point, I think we'd be able to fruitfully apply it to AI, etc., to assess.
Unfortunately we haven't been obstructed from answering this question about ourselves for centuries or millennia, but have failed to do so, so it's unlikely to happen suddenly now. Unless we use AIs to first solve that problem of defining our own consciousness, before applying it back on them. Which would be a deeply problematic order, since nobody would trust a breakthrough in the understanding of consciousness that came from AI, that is then potentially used to put them in the same class and define them as either thinking things or conscious things.
Kind of a shame we didn't get our own consciousness worked out before AI came along. Then again, wasn't for the lack of trying… Philosophy commanded the attention of great thinkers for a long time.