Without the scammy crypto angle ("Worldcoin") it's less ghoulish than before. And a company collecting biometric data to run an identity service isn't necessarily evil. But this one is not to be trusted, because the individual behind it is not to be trusted. The moment it suits his world-bending needs to sell my eyeballs to the fascists, he will do so.

It’s also without the at least superficially well meaning goal of universal basic income. I guess it makes sense this was where it was headed.

If "people are confused" I think it's because you are rejecting empirical evidence that The Onion is relevant without offering any counter-evidence of your own. Is it possible it's just no longer relevant to you personally? (I myself am a proud print subscriber...)

Yeah some people do like feet.

""Across a variety of tasks, including mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension, we find that although AI assistance improves performance in the short-term, people perform significantly worse without AI and are more likely to give up. Notably, these effects emerge after only brief interactions with AI (approximately 10 minutes)."

Approximately 10 minutes is enough time to see the benefits but not the disadvantages. These effects might disappear again after multi-week interactions with AI, after it has led them down the wrong path, wasting hours; gaslit them into believing an incorrect solution is correct; or repeatedly misunderstood the problem.

This initial honeymoon phase happens whenever someone starts using a new tool, fades after weeks or months, and and is not the time to evaluate the deleterious effects of the tool.

The AI marketing just need the publicity people generate during the honeymoon phase. Falling out is generally gradual and typically in silence.

Amicus brief is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.46...

I'd be curious to know how OpenAI and Google employees came to learn about and sign on to this brief (and, relatedly, why my OpenAI friends aren't on it.)

Yes, it would help so much. Especially if a lot of people with money and power voiced their honest opinions at the same time.

Minor correction: "sparks of AGI" was in reference to GPT-4, which came out 5 months later in 2024. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712)

Ah, that’s my mistake. Thank you. I saw 2023, I thought GPT-3. Even still, people talk about GPT-4 today like it was a quaint little demo. It was a magnificent achievement, it scared the pants off of a lot of people, and sparked a new round of “is AI conscious?” discourse.

Not to be confused with The World Almanac and Book of Facts, which is still publishing after 140 years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Almanac)

> I am far from a SamA stan, but this line was pretty good a zinger:

That zinger seemed similar to how Trump deals with criticism from the media -- he tends to begin with an attack on the ratings / popularity of the speaker.

I too loved that song as a kid, but it's from 1985. It felt like the right song for that era too!

True! But so indelibly linked to the 1997 election, and all the promise and promises of the incoming Labour government.

Exactly. I think everyone in the UK of a certain age would just think New Labour if they heard that song.

Also made a bit of a comeback with the Starmer govt, after it was played at the election announcement and tapped into the 90s revival with Oasis & Britpop coming back in vogue.