Why should a report about crimes committed by the IDF write about crimes committed by Russia or by Hamas? That's the most ridiculous attempt at whataboutism I've seen in a long time.

You did not respond to the point.

> they're applying this argument asymmetrically to their allies vs. foes

If a law is on the books, but it's only applied to a specific set of people in a retaliatory fashion, then it's worse than not being applied at all.

On the contrary, I found it a nice piece of rethoric to reflect on how misaligned incentives can overrule each individual's preferences in order to induce the group to take the opposite path.

> Give it six months

Ah, the "six months till AGI" meme, but unironically :)

Also, before citing Terence Tao on LLMs maybe you should read what he has to say about it...

It's been doing all of the actual coding part of my job for the better part of a year, and you're commenting on a post about how it just released another round of math breakthroughs, besting a bunch of top humans. It can search the web and analyze documents it finds for me. It can do reverse engineering. It can analyze and create images.

Not sure what your definition of AGI is, but it clearly has superhuman performance on most knowledge work already. Do you think after already having demonstrated that it can solve top problems, that the final frontier it won't be able to cross is explaining its solutions to the experts that were researching those problems, and eventually to e.g. grad student or postdoc level practitioners as a lecture course/set of notes?

Isn't it curious that while LLMs are apparently on the precipice of "AGI" and possessing superhuman capabilities for knowledge work, the frontier labs are still hiring armies of humans as "Account Associates", "Account Directors", "AI Support Engineers", and "Applied AI Engineers" (https://openai.com/careers/search/). Since those roles are much more pedestrian than top math problems, one might expect the frontier labs to be at the forefront of automating those jobs using their world-beating models. Wouldn't that be a more direct flex of their economic value?

"Can do the coding part of my job" is your definition of "almost AGI"?

I don't know a single taxi driver who 5 years ago would have claimed "my car can now park itself, FSD must be barely 6 months away".

No, but when Waymos were able to do the driving part, they probably should've seen the writing on the wall.

> It's been doing all of the actual coding part of my job for the better part of a year,

Makes me think of the Upton Sinclair quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Not sure I follow: if it weren't incredibly useful, my salary wouldn't depend on it since it wouldn't be doing my work for me, innit? So if I am dependent on it, that's just agreeing that it's now replaced programming per se as a professional activity. That quote applies to the people selling the tool (not me), not the people who it will replace (me), and in the meantime who are buying/using it.

I think the point is that people (software engineers included), will be biased to believe AI won’t replace them because believing otherwise would cost them their job (and therefore salary).

I’m not taking a side on that debate, just clarifying the relevancy of that quote.

Then you don't understand the process at all. You will get something back, you will get an immense amount back. But (almost always) not directly. A mathematician will not suddenly solve a theorem that will enable a cure for cancer or better solar panels or whatever. But working in mathematics will build the gradual understanding that will enable those practical breakthroughs to take place. It's also the most important part of how the people that create those technical breakthroughs will be trained.

This is the most cogent argument I have heard: depriving mathematicians the ability to solve these challenging yet low ROI problems now prevents them from building the foundational knowledge needed to later solve something truly groundbreaking.

Whereas for an LLM, it's just a way to ~waste~ spend tokens.

Unless you think the future doesn't need mathematicians, we ought to respect their requests.

> AI math is happening and there's no going back.

> I suspect that this is in fact the source of much of the angst.

Your comment reveals that you absolutely did not read or understand the Field medalists' open letter... Please, why would you refer to their complaints and claim you disagree when you clearly aren't engaging with the arguments presented therein!?

I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with this. I could just as easily say that you didn't engage with anything I wrote and just wrote an emotional and emphatic comment upset with me with no actual informational content whatsoever.

Speaking in favour of peace in Palestine can get you thrown out of the country.

I know what you're going to say: not a citizen. But first they came for the foreigners, then...

This comment could not have been more stereotypically American. I stress "stereotypical", I'm obviously not saying Americans in general are like this.

> I don't like Trump. But how has he weakened privacy rights?

Attacks on rule of law and civil liberties have increased, and the right to privacy is one of those liberties. It's of course not limited to Trump, he wasn't in office when Snowden showed the world the scale of American mass surveillance on domestic and foreign citizens.

> Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

I'm totally unsure what you are attempting to imply. That mass surveillance by the American state stopped at some point in the last 10 years?

> Allies spy on each other. The Europeans do it to each other massively and have done since the dawn of Europe. Good lord, go read some history.

What does that even mean "read history" ahaha. Espionage != mass surveillance. You do understand the difference, do you not?

> thanks for the classic European condescension

> I consider Europe to be dominated by happenings in DE + FR + UK. I don't care what Latvia does.

l m a o. Oh say can you see...

> Of course. As I noted before, dripping in European condescension. Nothing you can actually point to, just condescension from a region that has been left behind over the past century.

Let's see about that; Just me, some small guy with no knowledge on the topic.

> Which right or in what way has the right to privacy been attacked?

The US scans your device if you enter their land, e.g. Oh; I heard ICE uses cameras to spy on their own citizen? What about the raising Flock Cameras?

> But I do not think privacy in the US today has suffered. Please educate me.

A giant corporation just attacked another one. There were no repercussions. If you think that isn't privacy: How about leaking civilian data to outsiders of the government? DOGE, anybody?

> I am not implying anything. The Freedom Act curtailed a bunch of activities. You are implying nothing has changed. All of the Snowden revelations implicated many European countries: intelligence agencies spying on each others populations. I am asking you if you believe nothing has changed in the US do you 1) have any evidence of this and/or 2) believe that anything has changed in Europe? You've answered neither.

Why does he has to provide evidence but you don't? Also, I have never heard that an European Country spied on civilians from another country. That's an US and Chinese business model. Things changed in the US. It is now a lawless country. A war mongering state which dumps its allies for their own benefit. They are actively hostile. Your second question is so unspecific I have to require elaboration: "believe that anything has changed in Europe?" - I assume you are referring to Privacy Laws? We had plenty of new laws _protecting_ consumers in this regards. Handling data responsible. Wait; What are you guys doing over there? Ah, right: You are pushing Age Verification and demand information on our criminal record systems. You are pushing biometric tracking. You are telling buys of your weapons that you have the right to disable them. Honestly: The US sucks right now. You guys have elected the stupidest idiot, twice. And now without any regulation you are actively supporting a technology which will undermine _all_ citizen in the world.

> Do you understand that the mass surveillance of European people was done at the behest of the intelligence agencies of those countries? And ditto for the NSA. The agreement was "you spy on mine and I'll spy on yours and we'll swap the intel". I am not talking about espionage. Foreign intelligence agencies spying on foreigners...what did you think they did?

Again: You are accusing all twenty five member states in one statement. To me you are just yelling polemic nonsense. EUROPOL is _cooperating_ with the US. They are hunting people breaking our laws. If any individual is lawless within our boundaries of justice, European states have the rights to try to prosecute them.

> God, it's so painful. Yes in the same way that you talk about the US as a monolith and not 50 individual states. You don't care what Rhode Island does any more than I care what Latvia does.

You are implying your behaviour. The US has _one_ president in order to bundle the power. Your states have their national rights. If you compare the US to the EU you are not informed.

> Christ you guys are insufferable. It's no wonder everyone is leaving in droves.

By appearing with such statements on the Internet as an European Civilian you are undermining our values. Maybe if you can not align with them you should proceed your journey.

> Like the surveillance state is insane. No e2ee chats, backdoors in everything.

?

I can't imagine anything more unappealing than exchanging AI generated images with my wife every time one of us cleans the kitchen or finishes reading a book on time. Goes to show, people really are different!

You really can't see anything positive in celebrating achieving stuff with someone you love, just because AI is partially involved?

I dunno, that feels like an unproductively strong disdain towards AI. But like you said, people really are different, I guess!

edit: I realise I'm assuming AI is the issue here, maybe it's not?

I assume it's a combination of feeling the same way if they just sent eachother feel-good stickers, and involving AI for... some reason.

That is correct. It's basically saying that you made an effort when you didn't.

Personally I don’t want to see any image generated by AI as it is just all fluff and adds no value. A simple text saying you did the thing would be sufficient

Yes. My partner would tell me to fuck off if I did that.

my partner would lose so much respect for me if I did that. and that respect was hard-won, she had a mediocre dude as a longterm ex (the type who would probably send LLM-generated achievements) and basically had to remap her base expectations to fit me being minimally pro-active and emotionally regulated