Biden's getting hammered on Israel, high prices, illegal immigration and his elderly infirmities-- by Democrats. The MAGA noise machine, with blood in the water, piles on. Dems have younger and much more talented pols. They need to grab the torch from this delusional Biden claque. Biden's Trump's ticket back to the Oval.
I'm no expert but I see airfoil planes and rockets as separate development tracks. And for rockets we have:
"A record from 1264 states that a rocket-propelled firework went off near the Empress Dowager Gong Sheng and startled her during a feast held in her honor by her son Emperor Lizong of Song ...."
"Rocket propulsion was common in warfare, as evidenced by the Huolongjing compiled by Liu Bowen (1311–1375) and Jiao Yu (fl. c. 1350–1412). In 1240 the Arabs acquired knowledge of gunpowder and its uses from China. A Syrian named Hasan al-Rammah wrote of rockets, fireworks, and other incendiaries, using terms that suggested he derived his knowledge from Chinese sources ...."
Of course if one looks at this as passenger carriers vs. non-passenger carriers, then the Wright Brothers are the correct precedent. That's perfectly legitimate, but for some reason it doesn't strike me that way.
Absolutely correct. Rocket technology is very old. We went to the moon with rocket technology, not flight technology. Flight technology advanced rapidly from 1903 until the 70s, but we still use many the same air-frames today, albeit with advances on details and electronics.
The latest Google Pixel 8 add with the manipulated photos should be scaring us, too. Once upon a time "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" was a nice selling point. Today, what can you trust? Or rather, what will enough people trust to get them to think what you want them to think?
Monetary compensation is only a small fraction of job satisfaction. I had spent nearly 3 decades in emergency room nursing (as well as my year as a medic in Vietnam) and the emotional reward in guiding patients and their families through the end-of-life journey was way more rewarding than a "successful" cardiac arrest resuscitation (rare, even in the best of circumstances). I was paid well and fairly as an RN, just not as much as writing code did. Kinda hard to get a hug and a heartfelt thanks from a few lines of program code. All the thanks I got from patients during 30 years in the ER paled in comparison those I received in 7+ years in hospice. That, and I met the best friend I have (aside from my wife) at my final place of employment.
A monster piece today, JVL. I value your efforts to help us see around corners. Just a coupla comments:
1. I first heard of AI in the 1990s when I worked in tech user support at an aerospace company in what was known then as the Business Systems Dept. One of our programmers was getting a masters in AI at Univ of So Cal (USC), at company expense. It didn't really show up on my social science-infused radar until recently. ChatGPT came on the scene last year when I was working in a school library. It was Topic A with English teachers. Once Trump came on the scene and destroyed people's ability to distinguish between fact and opinion, and I read Jonathan Rauch's "The Constitution of Knowledge" I knew AI along with climate change were the two greatest threats to humanity.
BTW, thinking about USC's AI program, I checked to see their latest. I thought you'd find this of interest, the USC Center for AI in Society: Collaborating with communities for a more just, healthy, and sustainable world. Their mission is to "develop, test, iterate, and demonstrate how AI can be used to tackle the most difficult societal problems . . . through a partnership with AI and social work" (https://cais.usc.edu/). I would say that's another promising place for AI.
2. Agree the question of what AI will do to the liberal order needs to be investigated. My bet is that American citizenry is NOT prepared to deal with the impact of AI on our '24 presidential election, so we have to find out how to get them up to speed, and fast. SOMEBODY must be thinking about this.
3. Yes, fast revolutions don't allow existing sytems time to adapt. I would point out that the speed of AI development in the US is fueled by private capital, and in a free market, only government can slow that down. Will the Right agree to this violation of their sacred belief? Also, the crude summary of Darwin - "adapt or die" - comes to mind. My bet is that there isn't much slack in our society now for any more disruptions, so we must be prepared for more social unrest and political instability including violence. That's the worst case. The best case is somehow we figure out how to provide for those who can't adapt. We should plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Sorry to burst your bubble, JVL, but everyone knows the Kitty Hawk flight was a hoax, staged by the Wright brothers in a sandbox in a back yard in Brooklyn. BTW, the same sandbox was used by NASA to fake the moon landings.
I'm sorry, but I can't get that worked up about future sentient machines overthrowing the established world order when the American public is ready and willing to put a flesh and blood former game show host back in power to accomplish just that. Say what you want about a computer-generated authoritarian regime, but at least it will follow something approaching linear logic.
That's one of JVL's points. I've been of the same mind, thinking a little about how our enemies will use current and immediate-future AI to push Trump back into the presidency.
You know how email identity theft schemes use ridiculous scenarios to focus their efforts on the most gullible? The current versions of misinformation, AI and deep fakes are basically that (think classroom litterboxes). It's probably time to make our peace with the fact that the next presidential election is going to be decided by people who fall for the political equivalent of Nigerian Prince scams.
But it doesn't have to be that way! Trump isn't president today is he? He was stopped by multiple people, over time, along the way of his attempt at a coup.
This is a case of two or more things being true at the same time.
Targeted AI used in medicine and bringing scientific research forward around climate change and green energy generation, as examples, will be enormous positives.
It's the ability to "gate" AI, to turn it off, that concerns me as well as your concerns about AI influencing elections and the disruption it will bring in the inevitable "creative \ destruction" of jobs as it is integrated into the economy.
I think that our biggest problem with AI is that we don't want to fix the problem. 30% or so of the electorate WANTS Putin deepfake content alleging that Biden is part of a secret child cannibalism ring with Hillary Clinton and George Soros.
One small quibble: it could be argued that German missile technology developed during WWII was much more foundational in the development of manned spaceflight compared to contributions from atmospheric flight.
"We are 30 years after NAFTA and the political and social instability created by the birth of a globalized economy is still increasing. Not great, Bob"
This is true, but it's also true that we in the US have done essentially nothing to mitigate it. The response for a good 10 years after from the powers that be was basically "too bad, so sad, they'll adapt." Even after it became clear that huge regions of the country haven't, in fact, adapted, you still have one party who wants to answer by teaching 55 year olds who live apart from all technical infrastructure to code, while the other party promises to overturn economic reality and bring back coal while making Them suffer. None of that is an answer. At some point our society stopped believing that anything other than the passage of time can fix our problems. *That's* why everyone is despairing and fascists are getting loud. And that's the problem we need to be attacking.
I worked with a man who was a NASA retiree, he would tell a story about trying to convey to people just how short a time had elapsed between Kitty Hawk and Tranquility Base. As a very young engineer he had given a tour of a NASA wind tunnel to Orville Wright and not that many years later, Neil Armstrong sat in his living room. I was in awe of someone like this who had not just personally witnessed such breathtaking technical advancements but had contributed to them. Americans are no longer in awe of such things and that is one of our problems.
Question: How do you get people to stop taking everything in their life for granted? You can read about the before times when no-one had electricity or flushing toilets or antibiotics or cars or planes, or the tsunami that just killed 10,000 people or the starving children in Africa, etc. But does it REALLY resonate with anyone? Our opinions and understandings are entrenched in our lived experiences. I think humans have always be so. So yes, I agree that Americans now live in less awe of the amazing technological miracles in our midst because they are commonplace. And the AI potential is too far advanced for most people to comprehend the probable consequences of its development. There is nothing like it in their lived experience (unless they were alive to understand what the Wright Bros were actually accomplishing...)
We will stop taking everything for granted when we have no other choice. Too many parents are choosing to avoid childhood vaccines, which will eventually destroy herd immunity, resulting in many children dying from preventable diseases. Climate change has become difficult to ignore and the resulting heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, famines, etc., will make large parts of the earth uninhabitable and force mass migrations. This has already started to happen and will only accelerate as the climate worsens. Add racism, Fascism, antisemitism, and AI to the mix. It ain’t gonna be pretty. Sigh.
I would say a related but bigger problem is that we no longer even believe ourselves capable of such things. Kennedy declared that we would reach the Moon, and we did it within 10 years. Today people talk about going to Mars, but the only way anyone figures we'll *get there* is if some demented robber baron can overcome personal pique long enough to take us.
So short a period of time to fall so far, but here we are.
I name all of my personal computers Skynet-something, so I'm not downplaying the dangers of AI. That said, what is it you think we can do about the Russians, the Chinese, or the Kangaroos, for that matter, using AI to help Donald Trump become President? Nobody did anything the last time they did it with slaves on fake news farms. How can we stop them from using AI to do the same things or worse?
I am really not sure they have to, we seem to be doing it to ourselves just fine. I am sure if they see a possibility of reality breaking through they will step in however.
The medical AIs are incredible. Mayo Clinic has one that is guaranteed to put hundreds of medical informatics people out of work right now. Do you want to hire me to explain skin cancer in the immunocompromised patient, or do you want to ask an AI and get an answer in a minute? Well, do you want a right answer or a wrong answer? Because that matters to some people. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter as much as you might expect.
I think of AI like Family Feud, not Jeopardy. You don't get the correct answer, you get the most popular answer. For a lot of questions, that's the same thing. I know the difference, but the people who would hire me don't know, and I'm not sure they care. Until someone gets sued for recommending the wrong treatment, but frankly I don't know how that would happen. One thing I know is that medical uses have to be blessed by the FDA. Mayo Clinic will clear that hurdle but small companies won't. That's bad for small companies and competition, but at least it prevents awful people from telling us all to stop getting vaccinations.
Outside of medical applications? There's no FDA watching your back.
Medical imaging and analysis is a great example of where AI is probably better than humans at catching things. Initially it will be AI+human to validate findings. But just like the computer eventually beating the chess grandmaster, once they can do it better than a human there’a no going back.
Biden's getting hammered on Israel, high prices, illegal immigration and his elderly infirmities-- by Democrats. The MAGA noise machine, with blood in the water, piles on. Dems have younger and much more talented pols. They need to grab the torch from this delusional Biden claque. Biden's Trump's ticket back to the Oval.
I'm no expert but I see airfoil planes and rockets as separate development tracks. And for rockets we have:
"A record from 1264 states that a rocket-propelled firework went off near the Empress Dowager Gong Sheng and startled her during a feast held in her honor by her son Emperor Lizong of Song ...."
"Rocket propulsion was common in warfare, as evidenced by the Huolongjing compiled by Liu Bowen (1311–1375) and Jiao Yu (fl. c. 1350–1412). In 1240 the Arabs acquired knowledge of gunpowder and its uses from China. A Syrian named Hasan al-Rammah wrote of rockets, fireworks, and other incendiaries, using terms that suggested he derived his knowledge from Chinese sources ...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireworks
Of course if one looks at this as passenger carriers vs. non-passenger carriers, then the Wright Brothers are the correct precedent. That's perfectly legitimate, but for some reason it doesn't strike me that way.
Absolutely correct. Rocket technology is very old. We went to the moon with rocket technology, not flight technology. Flight technology advanced rapidly from 1903 until the 70s, but we still use many the same air-frames today, albeit with advances on details and electronics.
The latest Google Pixel 8 add with the manipulated photos should be scaring us, too. Once upon a time "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" was a nice selling point. Today, what can you trust? Or rather, what will enough people trust to get them to think what you want them to think?
I know that you know that globalization of the economy didn't start with NAFTA. China doesn't call their latest sell Silk Road for nothing.
Monetary compensation is only a small fraction of job satisfaction. I had spent nearly 3 decades in emergency room nursing (as well as my year as a medic in Vietnam) and the emotional reward in guiding patients and their families through the end-of-life journey was way more rewarding than a "successful" cardiac arrest resuscitation (rare, even in the best of circumstances). I was paid well and fairly as an RN, just not as much as writing code did. Kinda hard to get a hug and a heartfelt thanks from a few lines of program code. All the thanks I got from patients during 30 years in the ER paled in comparison those I received in 7+ years in hospice. That, and I met the best friend I have (aside from my wife) at my final place of employment.
That's why.
Cool. Thx. Glad it worked out well for you.
A monster piece today, JVL. I value your efforts to help us see around corners. Just a coupla comments:
1. I first heard of AI in the 1990s when I worked in tech user support at an aerospace company in what was known then as the Business Systems Dept. One of our programmers was getting a masters in AI at Univ of So Cal (USC), at company expense. It didn't really show up on my social science-infused radar until recently. ChatGPT came on the scene last year when I was working in a school library. It was Topic A with English teachers. Once Trump came on the scene and destroyed people's ability to distinguish between fact and opinion, and I read Jonathan Rauch's "The Constitution of Knowledge" I knew AI along with climate change were the two greatest threats to humanity.
BTW, thinking about USC's AI program, I checked to see their latest. I thought you'd find this of interest, the USC Center for AI in Society: Collaborating with communities for a more just, healthy, and sustainable world. Their mission is to "develop, test, iterate, and demonstrate how AI can be used to tackle the most difficult societal problems . . . through a partnership with AI and social work" (https://cais.usc.edu/). I would say that's another promising place for AI.
2. Agree the question of what AI will do to the liberal order needs to be investigated. My bet is that American citizenry is NOT prepared to deal with the impact of AI on our '24 presidential election, so we have to find out how to get them up to speed, and fast. SOMEBODY must be thinking about this.
3. Yes, fast revolutions don't allow existing sytems time to adapt. I would point out that the speed of AI development in the US is fueled by private capital, and in a free market, only government can slow that down. Will the Right agree to this violation of their sacred belief? Also, the crude summary of Darwin - "adapt or die" - comes to mind. My bet is that there isn't much slack in our society now for any more disruptions, so we must be prepared for more social unrest and political instability including violence. That's the worst case. The best case is somehow we figure out how to provide for those who can't adapt. We should plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Doesn't AI software retain that material on which it has been trained?
Sorry to burst your bubble, JVL, but everyone knows the Kitty Hawk flight was a hoax, staged by the Wright brothers in a sandbox in a back yard in Brooklyn. BTW, the same sandbox was used by NASA to fake the moon landings.
I'm sorry, but I can't get that worked up about future sentient machines overthrowing the established world order when the American public is ready and willing to put a flesh and blood former game show host back in power to accomplish just that. Say what you want about a computer-generated authoritarian regime, but at least it will follow something approaching linear logic.
That's one of JVL's points. I've been of the same mind, thinking a little about how our enemies will use current and immediate-future AI to push Trump back into the presidency.
You know how email identity theft schemes use ridiculous scenarios to focus their efforts on the most gullible? The current versions of misinformation, AI and deep fakes are basically that (think classroom litterboxes). It's probably time to make our peace with the fact that the next presidential election is going to be decided by people who fall for the political equivalent of Nigerian Prince scams.
But it doesn't have to be that way! Trump isn't president today is he? He was stopped by multiple people, over time, along the way of his attempt at a coup.
This is a case of two or more things being true at the same time.
Targeted AI used in medicine and bringing scientific research forward around climate change and green energy generation, as examples, will be enormous positives.
It's the ability to "gate" AI, to turn it off, that concerns me as well as your concerns about AI influencing elections and the disruption it will bring in the inevitable "creative \ destruction" of jobs as it is integrated into the economy.
I think that our biggest problem with AI is that we don't want to fix the problem. 30% or so of the electorate WANTS Putin deepfake content alleging that Biden is part of a secret child cannibalism ring with Hillary Clinton and George Soros.
One small quibble: it could be argued that German missile technology developed during WWII was much more foundational in the development of manned spaceflight compared to contributions from atmospheric flight.
"We are 30 years after NAFTA and the political and social instability created by the birth of a globalized economy is still increasing. Not great, Bob"
This is true, but it's also true that we in the US have done essentially nothing to mitigate it. The response for a good 10 years after from the powers that be was basically "too bad, so sad, they'll adapt." Even after it became clear that huge regions of the country haven't, in fact, adapted, you still have one party who wants to answer by teaching 55 year olds who live apart from all technical infrastructure to code, while the other party promises to overturn economic reality and bring back coal while making Them suffer. None of that is an answer. At some point our society stopped believing that anything other than the passage of time can fix our problems. *That's* why everyone is despairing and fascists are getting loud. And that's the problem we need to be attacking.
I worked with a man who was a NASA retiree, he would tell a story about trying to convey to people just how short a time had elapsed between Kitty Hawk and Tranquility Base. As a very young engineer he had given a tour of a NASA wind tunnel to Orville Wright and not that many years later, Neil Armstrong sat in his living room. I was in awe of someone like this who had not just personally witnessed such breathtaking technical advancements but had contributed to them. Americans are no longer in awe of such things and that is one of our problems.
Question: How do you get people to stop taking everything in their life for granted? You can read about the before times when no-one had electricity or flushing toilets or antibiotics or cars or planes, or the tsunami that just killed 10,000 people or the starving children in Africa, etc. But does it REALLY resonate with anyone? Our opinions and understandings are entrenched in our lived experiences. I think humans have always be so. So yes, I agree that Americans now live in less awe of the amazing technological miracles in our midst because they are commonplace. And the AI potential is too far advanced for most people to comprehend the probable consequences of its development. There is nothing like it in their lived experience (unless they were alive to understand what the Wright Bros were actually accomplishing...)
We will stop taking everything for granted when we have no other choice. Too many parents are choosing to avoid childhood vaccines, which will eventually destroy herd immunity, resulting in many children dying from preventable diseases. Climate change has become difficult to ignore and the resulting heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, famines, etc., will make large parts of the earth uninhabitable and force mass migrations. This has already started to happen and will only accelerate as the climate worsens. Add racism, Fascism, antisemitism, and AI to the mix. It ain’t gonna be pretty. Sigh.
Yes, as I say, most humans take notice of things only when they pop into their lived experiences and usually not much before
I would say a related but bigger problem is that we no longer even believe ourselves capable of such things. Kennedy declared that we would reach the Moon, and we did it within 10 years. Today people talk about going to Mars, but the only way anyone figures we'll *get there* is if some demented robber baron can overcome personal pique long enough to take us.
So short a period of time to fall so far, but here we are.
I name all of my personal computers Skynet-something, so I'm not downplaying the dangers of AI. That said, what is it you think we can do about the Russians, the Chinese, or the Kangaroos, for that matter, using AI to help Donald Trump become President? Nobody did anything the last time they did it with slaves on fake news farms. How can we stop them from using AI to do the same things or worse?
My Instapot is named Skynet.
I am really not sure they have to, we seem to be doing it to ourselves just fine. I am sure if they see a possibility of reality breaking through they will step in however.
The medical AIs are incredible. Mayo Clinic has one that is guaranteed to put hundreds of medical informatics people out of work right now. Do you want to hire me to explain skin cancer in the immunocompromised patient, or do you want to ask an AI and get an answer in a minute? Well, do you want a right answer or a wrong answer? Because that matters to some people. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter as much as you might expect.
I think of AI like Family Feud, not Jeopardy. You don't get the correct answer, you get the most popular answer. For a lot of questions, that's the same thing. I know the difference, but the people who would hire me don't know, and I'm not sure they care. Until someone gets sued for recommending the wrong treatment, but frankly I don't know how that would happen. One thing I know is that medical uses have to be blessed by the FDA. Mayo Clinic will clear that hurdle but small companies won't. That's bad for small companies and competition, but at least it prevents awful people from telling us all to stop getting vaccinations.
Outside of medical applications? There's no FDA watching your back.
Medical imaging and analysis is a great example of where AI is probably better than humans at catching things. Initially it will be AI+human to validate findings. But just like the computer eventually beating the chess grandmaster, once they can do it better than a human there’a no going back.