toss1

Recursive Self-Improvement seems very much like a mirage — it looks close but is in fact more like Zeno's paradox, but where the paradox rules.

Sure, once they get to RSI, it could be explosive improvement.

But real RSI requires closing the loop every time for every improvement.

There are three result types for each upgrade

1) the AI makes an upgrade entirely independently and it is an actual improvement

2a/2b) the AI makes an upgrade entirely independently and it is neutral or degrades the system

3) the AI makes an improvement that must be overseen by a human.

It only takes one bad upgrade to start spoiling the whole batch, even if the other 999 are good type-1 AI-self-improvements.

Otherwise the AI improvements will be limited to an AI-driven plateau or AI-driven self-degradation, or limited to a pace related to human capabilities.

They have already improved it so 80% of the Type-1 upgrades made by the AI itself. Great! Getting 80% of the next 20% will still require human input and likely the same effort. And so forth.

Just because we've gotten 80% in 3 years, and to 96% in the next two years, etc., doesn't really predict when we get to the ACTUAL 100% AI upgrades needs for real RSI.

Just thinking aloud here, but it seems it'll go at a slowing asymptotic pace, then some breakthrough may cause a jump in self-capability, but when is entirely unpredictable on any linear or exponential scale. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on it happening on an investment time-scale, maybe just a little like buying a lottery ticket.

No question, it'll be hard to convince most people of how big a deal it really is.

It is the same with almost every systemic problem that seems small now but is cumulative and/or exponential.

And for sure, if it is a few stores, it is just an expensive prank. But scale it to the size of a nation or region in a country with a largely just-in-time food supply, and you're a week away from food riots, particularly if it is combined with other attacks, e.g., on the electrical and distribution system. Not a shot fired, and the country is in chaos in a week. Because no one bothered to harden the systems that seem trivial but are critical at scale.

Thank you, very informative, and having had to support biz/network software I wrote, entirely credible.

So, how can this be solved? Ideally for the long-term, but also for the current interim state — we have a known attack vector costing millions, known exposed, and need to do something.

Short term, seems like disable defrost or other critical vectors? IDK the architecture, so IDK how difficult it would be to add a local interlock or override for critical instructions that would damage the whole contents, so the local manager must also confirm "READY TO DEFROST"?

Long term, seems the only solution is to rearchitect a truly secure solution with secure access controls, locked-down to a limited set of IP and MAC addresses, all traffic encrypted, etc. Plus a deep evaluation of the sets of instructions that could be catastrophic, and adding requirement for local confirmation/override to execute those functions.

It also seems there is a lot of available improvement in the UI so regular Joe-managers could use it. Even if they see "CHECK SENSOR AA-123", their eyes glaze over because they just see it as the gateway to a hellish maze they don't want to enter. Adding layers of actually informative error messages and walk-them-thru steps to fix it seems well within our technology. It'd probably require an additional local mini-PC on each site, but could save millions.

If this gets scaled to a whole country, when most of our food supply is Just In Time, it is no longer a prank.

They wouldn't have to hire 20 extra managers, they just would need to develop some materials and train the managers they have.

And social engineering 1000 managers is FAR more work than scaling a software hack across 1000 machines, and also far less likely to succeed. At least one of those managers is going to get suspicious and call corporate first. Moreover, it will be pretty hard to get an on-site manager looking right at the full freezers to set them to defrost....

Considering food is a national security item, the threshold must be higher.

One store loosing its frozen food is an inconvenience and insurance claim, and one electric substation failing is an inconvenience for a few days.

But whenever any one of these attacks could be scaled up, as is obviously possible with online access enabled, and the consequences become a regionally or national security threat, enabling such access must come with the seriousness of implementing national security.

Unfortunately, it is not sexy for politicians to take national security seriously, and they will get inundated with lobbying decrying the costs. Until the losses to the companies exceed the costs of security, when they come screaming to the govt for help, and demanding why they didn't do something.

This lot were already in the hindsight condition. The same thing happened all across France three weeks ago. THREE WEEKS. It was already obvious this could happen.

Of course this is not enough time to entirely change one's strategy, but it is a lot of time to install hardening measures, such as stronger passwords, limiting access to only MAC addresses of specific machines, taking access offline wherever possible, disabling the defrost cycle, etc., etc., etc., and that is just the obvious.

>>just connect the devices to the Wild Wild Web and be done with it.

Yup, they're done with it, all right. "It" being all the food being cooled for sale this week. Done.

They do not need engineers at every location to turn every knob. They need to define procedures and limits, and the ability to call the engineers when things go out of those limits. Even putting only remote MONITORING online, but requiring the local person to check and turn the knobs/press the buttons. That also adds an extra set of real eyes on the situation — when the engineer calls the local dept manager to start the defrost because the hacked line says it is now time to defrost, the local manager —with eyes on the freezer— can tell him "NO!" because this was not on their schedule and the freezers are all stocked, not emptied for the defrost.

Instead, the defrost cycle just turned on in the middle of the night, and neither the now-remote engineers nor the local managers knew until it was too late. ——Again.

Security is always a trade-off against convenience. And the idiot human managers almost always all pick convenience because their managers incentivize profit, and security costs and convenience appears to save up front. They nevermind the later costs because they'll already be promoted up or job-hopped out.

Indeed! And Elon Musk just gave the entire world a lesson in not trusting someone else's technology, by shutting down Ukraine's Starlink/Starshield used to defend against Russian jet-powered drones, cutting down the speed to near-stationary, and for no evident reason, blaming the President, and then it turns out it was likely a ploy to "upgrade their subscription". [0]

No matter what the reason or the situation, shutting off your access to the technology is their option and it will likely happen at the moment it is a greatest problem to you.

This goes so far beyond "Not your keys, not your coin", it is "Not your stack, not your sovereignty".

Obviously in this case, there is are truly solid rational and moral reasons to shut down those USDT transfers: to cut off the theft which is funding NK's aggressive nuclear weapons program. But that changes nothing about the structure of everyone's vulnerability in using technologies controlled by others such as USDT.

[0] https://newrepublic.com/post/217349/elon-musk-cut-off-ukrain...

Normalization of deviance [0], wherein a clearly unsafe practice becomes considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe: "a long incubation period [before a final disaster] with early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored or missed completely

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

And in the latest news: Residents of occupied Oleshky who wish to escape to free Ukraine will not be allowed to cross the Dnipro River – which is less than 4 km away. They will be taken to occupied Crimea or to the Russian Federation, where they will be subjected to coercive measures.

NO, the sides are not even close to the same. Stop stanning for Russia

Awesome Screed. Seriously. Particularly on-target in:

>>And then came the greedy grifters. They invested money not just to get returns (they could've gotten returns on any other established field of business), but to gamble for a chance of crazy high returns. They thought software has near-zero marginal cost. They started building walled gardens, to extract rent from users. ... So the advertisement business grew, and with it came the largest assault on the privacy of the general public ever. ... Then they realized they could use this game politics itself. ... then they realized they don't want to pay the workers anymore who support the software. So they turned against the workers.

And organizing a strike may help. But even assuming the best case, your idea spreads like wildfire and 80% of all tech workers touch no keyboards starting mid-November, the likely result is management makes a few changes and lies they are far larger and more permanent than they are in reality, and back to extraction-mining the rest of humanity for private profit.

Perhaps the very best thing would be for tech workers to self-organize to create an EFFECTIVE alternative to the extractive social media currently plaguing society. A new way for people to stay in touch that is easier to use and migrate to than Xitter/BlueSky/Farcebook/etc. (and no, Mastadon ain't it; wish it were, but...). When I try to get people off those sites, they object to not having an as-easy way to stay in touch with people they connect with. Hitting them at the root of their interests —profits— is what will hurt them, and free us.

The residents of the city of Oleshky in the Donbas, who have been literally starving to death under the Russian siege for months would like a word. The Pope managed to arrange a cease-fire long enough to provide food and evacuation, see how long it goes.

You ignore how much prevents Ukrainians from migrating or evacuating temporarily Russian-occupied territories. There is a river with many bridges out, the roads are mined, and the Russians run human safaris hunting civilians. But sure, everyone could have gotten out.

You are also just spewing the standard Russian concern-trolling line about "Russian speakers in Ukraine".

You may be fooling yourself about being some kind of "unbiased" observer, but you aren't fooling anyone else.

Even if your assertion is true (it isn't as accurately described by the sibling poster), this would neither be a weird way of "flexing" it, and does not at all come across as 'showing off' wealth and idleness as you assert.

The post says far more about your envy than anything about the video. Nothing there is out of reach of some years of hard and smart work, and if you adjust your attitude you'll likely find yourself enjoying a similar position in some years. (NB: most tools are available in very good condition at machinery auctions and re-sellers for far less than original price, and his machines are clearly well-cared-for older examples.)

Yup. Forcing technology exchange is exactly what China demanded of the US to get access to its markets, specifically to gain the advantage it now has.

Access to US markets conditioned on full tech exchange with US battery and automakers would be a fair exchange (and would likely require some temporary support of US automakers so they survive the transition).

I think he is talking about talking to users BEFORE coding

At least that is true for my software coding processes; I always found getting the actual coders talking directly to the actual users — not the managers talking to the managers — vastly improved the software delivered along all three axes of schedule, budget, and quality, and dramatically reduced test/redo cycles. Just having the coders in direct contact, they hear about the real used cases, edge cases, and frustrations, and so can make good judgements about many decisions, rather than blind judgements.

All true.

But having full control over your weapons system stack makes every one of those less of a problem.

And watch what happens when China decides it is time to use its backdoors.

What stuns me most is the utter lack of imagination, or even the ability to run through what scenarios are possible — the fact it required some idiot like Musk to actually do it for the politicians to want to act on it just stuns me.

The same is true of Chinese technology, and if anyone thinks China isn't already embedding those kinds of capabilities in consumer goods & infrastructure hardware as well as mil hardware, I'd like to talk to you about some oceanfront property in Kansas I might have for sale.

And to all those who would immediately comment "that's a nonsense accusation, they would never do that" or "that's a biased/racist/nationalist accusation": NO, just look at the reality of what has already been found, I'm not accusing only China - everyone does it, and mostly, you are EXACTLY the same people who didn't understand the threat from US tech companies until Elon actually pulled the switch.

As in the cryptocoin "Not your keys, not your coins", this is:

"Not your tech stack, not your sovereignty"

The EU REALLY needs to step up and build their own tech stack.

Looks like it is starting to happen, and Elon just gave them the most solid reason. This will cost US tech and mil giants $$trillions. Or, they will have to go back to building systems that verifiably have no external control.

Yes, my first thought on reading the headline was: "the result will be they'll just ensure everyone uses some worse AI models".

So only mildly surprised on reading the article to read they are intentionally forcing them onto a specific worse model.

The question you asked (Positing UKR taking parts of RU, etc.) *inherently presumes* the counterfactual of Ukraine being an aggressive, expansionist dictatorship. Ukraine is zero of those things, and the question is irrelevant. But IF the actual UKR had taken significant RU territory, and was offered a peace deal allowing them their full sovereignty and territorial integrity, they would immediately take the deal.

Your mobilization numbers are fantasy, and Putin has held off declaring mobilization not because he thinks he does not need to but because it would require drafting people from the middle classes near Moscow instead of the rural impoverished territories that can be ignored politically. A full mobilization could end him. If he had enough people, he would not be getting soldiers from North Korea and deceiving Africans to put into their meat grinder

Yes, Ukraine has a manpower problems also. They are solving it through innovation. And it is working. Just look at the verified death counts from both sides

You really are a persistent apologist for Putin, not some kind of middle ground arbitor you hold yourself out as.

Thank you for basically acknowledging Putin has zero interest in any peace other than Ukraine's full surrender.

Putin in the immediate term is trying to achieve by talking what he cannot achieve on the battlefield. And NO, Putin does NOT have millions more soldiers available. Russian daily KIAs are accelerating and he's already making deals for more NK troops.

The aggressive moves in Europe, ramping up every kind of hybrid warfare, active measures, and dezinformatsiya pressure they can muster shows the Ukrainians are winning with the deep strikes. Russia can not defend its many soft targets, is already in massive deficit and depleting it's sovereign funds, and will lose much more as Ukraine's new Flamingo missiles come online.

Requires concessions. Right. UKR already TODAY offered to give up 20% of their territory and condemn those Ukrainian residents to the torture and death offered by the Russians. You do not think that is a concession?

What concessions are the Russians making at the 'peace' tables? NONE. The Russians stick to their maximalist demands of taking ALL of the "annexed" oblasts they can not even take with the full might of their (declining) military, AND demand Ukraine basically disarm and become a vassal state.

Where are the Russian concessions? They do not exist.

This alone shows who is the aggressor and who is the defending victim.

Get real.

While it is generally not the brightest move, they might have been thinking it was a tear gas grenade, which are not uncommonly picked up and thrown back at the cops (using thick gloves or a rag). This is because tear gas canisters get hot instead of exploding. I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference in under a second and maybe the tear gas reaction was just slow-starting on that one.

And they literally exercise more editorial control and reach than any magazine or newspaper editorial board ever did.

Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.

If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.

No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.

If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.

Just to add to the sibling comment, Zelenskyy just publicly (again) stated on Fox news [0] he would accept exactly the deal you proposed — freezing the conflict on the current lines, and doing so in a way that prevents it from returning, i.e., your "Ukraine armed to the teeth", security guarantees, and sovereignty.

This is a manifestly unfair deal, rewarding Russia for open aggression in violation of every international law and its past agreements. Yet Ukraine is willing to do it (the President says so with confidence he will be backed by the other governmental bodies needed for approval and implementation).

Putin has already rejected those kinds of deals, and I have no doubt he will also reject this.

That is because the 100% cause of the war is Putin, his immediate desire to eliminate Ukraine as an independent and successful state, and his longer-term goal to reconstitute the Russian empire.

The sooner you recognize this reality, the sooner it will make sense to you.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/zelenskyy-says-agr...

No, you just sound like someone who has become confused by all the noise (primarily generated by Russia and its apologists).

We agree: Putin does not like any reasonable outcome and shouldn't have invaded in the first place.

You have just described a deal that Zelenskyy has indicated he would accept and Putin has already repeatedly rejected — freeze the existing lines of conflict, and allow Ukraine to remain sovereign and fully arm itself.

Putin has repeatedly flat-out refused to allow Ukraine to have anything but a crippled military.

The obvious intent is to leave Ukraine so weak it can easily invaded again, so it will either bow to every Moscow demand or will simply be fully invaded and destroyed at a time of Russia's convenience.

Why?

Because Putin can NOT tolerate any condition under which Ukraine is free to be successful or independent, and especially to join NATO (which has proven for 3/4 of a century to be purely defensive).

Moreover, Putin is now stuck, as he has broken the tacit deal with the people that he can lead with corruption and adventurism as long as the people aren't obviously burdened and standards improve. Now, he's killed a half million men, the remainder are broken monsters he can't return to society without breaking it, and he can't just declare victory and end it and still keep his position (or likely his life).

Beyond those local goals, Putin has himself said his goal is to recreate the Russian Empire, beyond just the USSR territories. It is behind all his hours of lecturing on (twisted versions of) history. He will not merely stop at Donbas.

Putin also always follows Lenin's rule: "We probe with bayonets, where we find mush, we press on, where we find steel, we withdraw.".

The only actual solution is to push back so that Russian cannot economically or militarily continue, then arm Ukraine to the teeth (whatever border they end up with).

Autocrats like Putin do not stop unless they are forced to stop.

Turkey figured it out in 2015; a pair of Russian fighters violated Turkish airspace for less then two minutes; Turkey shot them down. Problem solved, hasn't happened since.

The problem is all the EU politicians are afraid of Russia breaking up, as if it will be somehow worse than Russia reasserting imperialism. EU only enforcing a no fly zone over UKR, applying the frozen RU assets to UKR rebuilding, and hard-sanctioning RU oil and isolating RU politically would do it. But they are all too politically chicken and want to kick the can down the road. Meanwhile Russia is already waging hybrid war to break up the EU.

Globally, and historically, the fight is always rule by the people or rule by the few.

If the rest of us fail to fight, everything WILL be taken from us by the few, the despots and the oligarchs. It may not be immediate and total, but it will be inevitable. Unless we fight at every step.

The list is not one-sided, it is factual

The fact remains, it was RUSSIA who INVADED Ukraine, and did so after emphatic public declarations it would not do so, and after signing treaties it would respect Ukraine's territory

It is RUSSIA and PUTIN in particular who has everything to gain from wiping out Ukraine — a successful and European Ukraine would be the source of revolution in his country, as Russians would see the contrast of a former Soviet state with relative wealth, success, and freedom.

Ukraine has respected every proposed cease fire until Russia violated it. Russia has violated every cease fire, often including this week literally violating it as it was being announced (the "Energy CF") oplitering power plants the same hour it was announced, while Ukraine held off all energy attacks for three days while it's power plants got pummeled.

Meanwhile, the ONLY thing Ukraine has to gain it it's own freedom. It would gain nothing from Russia's failure, beyond it's own stated goal of stopping the war.

Russia could unilaterally stop the war this minute. If Ukraine stops fighting, Russia has repeatedly proven it will overrun and obliterate Ukraine.

You have zero ability to cite how Ukraine started the war, or how it could stop the war without surrendering. If you really were initially for Ukraine, it is sad to see you now both-sides-ing it and falling for Russian propaganda.

If you can show a way for Ukraine to stop fighting without surrendering or being overrun, you will surely be up for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, we both know how Russia could stop the war this minute.

>>I'd obviously prefer the latter, but not to the point that I'm willing to die to prevent the former.

Well then you are just myopically stupid and willfully ignorant of history if you DGAF whether you live in a democracy where priorities are determined, at least attempted to be determined, by the people, vs by an autocrat.

And you obviously DGAF about your children, or the future of society.

Under Autocracy everything gets worse, down to the point where the people cannot tolerate the starvation and revolution is fomented.

Of course there is the occasional benevolent dictator, and those systems have the advantage of being able to do better long-range planning and mroe rapid changes of plans. But they are not stable and inevitably a malicious or greedy dictator or oligarchy takes over, and things start getting irretrievably worse, and the population starts dying of impoverishment.

Does it really matter if you die of impoverishment from the leader's stealing or war from the leaders' theft?

The only way forward for humanity is for democratic governments to ensure continued and improved democracy AND fight expansionist autocracies to contain and eventually eliminate or convert them.

If we fail to do that, it will be only years before life devolves into feudalism of a few lords and everyone else hopeless peasants. And no, you won't be one of the lords.

Just because a claim is used as propaganda, does not mean it can not be or is not true.

Start with "1. We don't want war, we are only defending ourselves!", and 2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war!"

For this Russian invasion of Ukraine, both are 100% true.

Russia was a signer of The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994 [0], in which it guaranteed to 1) Respect [Ukraine's] independence and sovereignty in the existing borders 2) Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of [Ukraine] and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries 3) Refrain from economic coercion of Ukraine, etc.

In the weeks and days leading up to the RUSSIAN INVASION of Ukraine, Putin himself as well as Lavrov and others repeatedly announced "these are just routine military training excerses and Russia has no intention to invade Ukraine".

Then Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ukraine did not invade Russia, or even provoke it in any way. What Russia claims as provocation is Ukraine making moves to join the EU, which Russia itself guaranteed as Ukraine's right in the Budapest memorandum.

And the situation now: If Russia stops attacking and withdraws from the Ukrainian lands it agreed to respect, the war ends instantly.

If Ukraine stops defending itself, Russia will invade the rest of Ukraine, and commit the same mass executions, rapes, tortures, and kidnappings it has already done in this war in Bucha, Mauripol, Kharkiv, and more. [1] Moreover, these atrocities are accelerating [2]. This is also consistent with Russian history such as the Holodomor [3] a massive man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.

Russia has always invaded its neighbors, run a genocide, and then claimed "This was always Russia".

Moving on to 3: Ukraine is not making these claims

4: Ukraine does not claim this, beyond noting what the Baltic states also know inherently, if Ukraine falls, the front line moves to Europe, Russia will not stop, any more than it stopped at Ukraine's borders which it promised to respect in 2022, and Russia is already making kinetic attacks in the rest of the EU

5) We've already reviewed this above, Russia is deliberately targeting civilians EVERY DAY, and goes on "Human Safari" drone hunts against civilians in Ukraine, while Ukraine scrupulously targets military and dual-use targets. Russia's stated goal is to eliminate the very concept of Ukraine existing. Ukraine's stated goal is to retain it's territory and prevent Russian atrocities on it's soil.

6) Russia has repeatedly been documented, even with their own posted videos, using phosphorus and cluster bombs in civilian areas. Not so for Ukraine.

7) Documented by international organizations and even tracking only video evidence, this is true for Ukraine's fewer losses vs Russia's massive losses. This is also evidenced by Russia needing to bring in North Korean soldiers and recruiting by deception in Africa — Russia wouldn't need to take those humiliating steps if they weren't exhausting their own manpower supplies.

8, 9, 10), I do not see Ukraine making those claims, but Russia's Durgan "academic philosopher" constantly posts them

So NO, just posting a list of "these points are often used as propaganda" does not discredit the facts or make them propaganda.

But it does make more work for the people who must clean up the bullsh*t spewed by posters like you.

If you really feel so strongly about it, I suggest you move to Russia and see for yourself how great life under Putin is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrain...

[2] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russian-a...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Not great, but are you equating the turmoil right after Yanukovych was deposed, Crimea was invaded and occupied by Russia, and there were serial interim governments with a the more stable govt that came after?

Again, is this a horrible exception, or is it the standard way they operate. For UKR it is the exception, for Russia, it is the way they operate, right up to human safari FPV drone hunting and killing of civilians posted on social media by the perpetrators.

Yes, I'm sure it is not negligible, since it never is, even with the best-disciplined military. Adrenalin runs pretty high when people are trying their best to kill you and all your family, friends, and countrymen.

But we must also be sure to balance when a country such as Ukraine tries to uphold a moral standard as policy, and when they fail, prosecutes the offenders, vs a country like Russia which makes a standard practice of war crimes.