> if you control an almost omnipotent genie

I think this is the major hole in the argument, and in the "AI maximalism" position you present. There is no such thing as an omnipotent genie, or a magic eight ball that can answer any question. Any technology has limitations, and if you assume as a premise that the technology does not have meaningful limitations (or that the limitations are irrelevant, which is really what you said), the conclusions you draw will also make no sense. This is how you get nonsensical ideas like the singularity.

Taking an idea or potential of an innovation to its extremes creates nonsense. Trying to predict the future that way always fails.

I remember the discussions and predictions when e-books or internet newspapers were first introduced. In 2026 they still sell actual newspapers where they print yesterday's news on large sheets of paper. People still pay for that instead of checking X for free. We all buy and read actual books. TV hasn't killed cinema and YouTube hasn't killed TV. Real world doesn't work in extremes.

Real world also doesn't have 'infinity'. You can't just use undergraduate engineering math to create a feedback loop and explode a variable to infinity. Things don't work like that.

A huge fraction of people that work at Anthropic probably _believe_ ideas like the singularity though

it doesn't make it true though. People in Jonestown literally "drank the coolaid" believing something that was false.

Does that matter for whether anthropic takes actions based on it?

So you think AI can't or won't be able to take over massive parts of the US knowledge economy, be implemented securely to surveil citizens' every move and nearly every thought, and won't completely upend scientific and technological research?

What I'm getting at is that even if it isn't literally omnipotent, it's indistinguishable from the impact it's likely to have on society.

It's more obnoxious, but less creepy. They're not really bad in the same way.

Do you mean (((x)h)g)f ?

since the order in which things happen is "h first, then g, then f"

> it’s not straightforward for the TV and every other device in your house, including your family’s

The principled position behind "you should install something" is that in the scenario you outline, you cannot just install something, and this is a kind of power over you that you are relinquishing to both YouTube and the TV manufacturer. You will not get it back.

Wouldn’t the principled position be to just not use the service? You should just consume freely licensed open source no rights reserved content on peertube

Of course that depends on your principle. There are lots of ways of justifying the same behaviour, of course. the principle I had in mind was "A remote server has no right to determine how you consume the data it sends to you", not "everything should be free". This is an anti-DRM position, not an anti-copyright position.

If it's fair enough for Youtube to send me a video full of ads, then it's fair enough for me to run a program that removes the ads. The only way Youtube's business model actually works is either a) people watch the ads voluntarily, or b) they are able to force your computer to not do what you tell it to and instead to show you ads. Because all computers are general purpose computers, option b allows the server to impose arbitrary restrictions on you, not just reasonable ones. You might think watching ads is ok, but future restrictions (like fiat banning you from otherwise public content) might not be. That's the argument.

Of course, if everyone used an ad blocker then Youtube's business model would not work. But businesses are not entitled to a revenue stream.

> You wouldn't refuse to even look at the code of a colleague who has ever made a coding mistake, would you?

Not sure that is the position you're arguing with. I would refuse to skip code review for any colleague, no matter how trustworthy they were. This is the behaviour we are expected to accept to get productivity gains, when the colleague is an LLM.

Of course not. The point is that you will not do the research as well without the social activity. If you hate social activity, fine, but if you don't, then you should do it.

That really depends. Some research benefits more from solitary study and work. Saturating everything with "collaboration" is not always the best way. It an be an impediment.

(Of course, when we use technology and read books, there is a remote participation in the social as these are cultural and thus social products, but that's not what is meant here.)

"Pacing the frontier" means "implementing regulatory capture". They don't necessarily care about preventing open weight models from existing, just on preventing the people with money from being able to make use of them.

They would leave a competitive advantage to non-US companies. Even if, and that's a big if, they can coordi ate with Europe Asia would still ignore them

Legislation that prevented US companies from using open weight models would have the desired effect. They're the only people paying for AI anyway.

Unfortunately for them America's share of the economic pie is a lot smaller than it was just 20 years ago.

The Chinese will keep doing what they are doing, the EU has no love for Silicon Valley and the rest of the world votes with their wallet.

I don't see that text anywhere in the article.

It sounds like you're parodying the article but putting it in quotes is misleading.

I am parodying the article. Agree to disagree!

How else would you format such a parody?

By either preceding the quote with something indicating you're making it up or not putting it in quotes. Like, "This article is basically just saying the data to ink ratio is the ratio of data to ink."

Italics are also a good option. They're annoying to read, but I think that actually helps when you're parodying that type of prose.

> We solved [trivial problem]. We will surely solve [incomparably harder problem].

Based on what? This will not happen!