GreenBeard

Well… some would go directly to next of kin, some would be claimed by banks to repay the loans they live on, and most would end up in the private “charitable” foundations they use to evade taxes (which are themselves usually operated by some blend of next of kin and their ideological proteges). There’s a complex web of ways they avoid that money falling into public hands, but the general answer “None” is correct.

Misdirection. You’re comparing the equivalent of small local retailers with a multinational mega-corps the scale of Amazon. Such projects are a rounding error in the wider market.

But how does being fed useful information, coding for us, providing interesting stories, a caring AI boyfriend or girlfriend lead us to enslavement?

The “Usefulness” of this information is questionable at best, and wildly incorrect all too often. “Coding for us” is a double edged sword in that it makes an appealing shortcut, while also leaving us at extreme risk when it makes what is all too often a critical mistake we don’t understand, a problem which will only get worse as we gradually forget how to code for ourselves. Also, it’s not a “Caring AI Boyfriend” its a simulacrum of human interaction that does not care about anyone or anything. It’s a Lovecraftian horror dressed up as a relationship. A perversion that treats humanity as a disease to be treated into remission.

It’s only as environmentally destructive as the environment in which it operates, if you train your AI in France using Nuclear power it is effectively carbon free training is it not? The biggest limitation on the carbon use of AI appears to be entirely limited to how fast or slow the USA transitions to renewable energy.

Distracting hypothetical - ie a red herring. The question is not is it conceivable to build AI in a way that isn’t inherently environmentally destructive. It isn’t being done. Not at scale, nor is there any plans to do so. There’s no intention to reduce reliance on fossil fuels powering datacenters. There isn’t even a suggestion of intention to give lip-service to the problem so fantasizing about it serves no purpose.

enrich themselves? I thought AI was a massive money losing adventure bubble that was about to pop?

These are not mutually exclusive. The golden parachute problem still exists.

enslave humanity? I thought AI was slop not worth of even being used because apparently all it does is hallucinate answers?

That it is worthless doesn’t make it not psychologically destructive. People want things that destroy their lives all the time. Drugs, gambling, AI sex bots, etc. We’ve known for a very long time there’s ways to hijack people’s behaviour and make them behave in ways that violate their values and good sense. The fact that AI slop directly engages in hacking our brains, and filling our heads with junk data and hallucinations is not internally inconsistent.

I think people should be very careful about how dependent they become on such things, because inevitably if adoption ever does creep up the spike in prices of accessing those models is going to be astronomically more than having some jingle writer slap something together. Right now they’re desperate for adoption but those servers aren’t free to run. If they’re ever going to turn a profit the fees for accessing these tools are going to be orders of magnitude more than any small business owner can afford, and by then, there won’t be any aspiring new artists to take a cash job; they’ll have either starved to death or moved on. You’re basically Wille E. Coyote-ing yourself off an advertising cliff using AI like that, and same for other similar uses.

If that’s the part you like, then you’d love the two battles of Mag Tuired. The absolute shenanigans the Tuatha De got up to fighting the Fomorians was legendary. Their analog of Tyr coming back with a silver hand that moves like flesh to replace his lost one and retake the throne of the gods was wild.

It’s as if they want to give everyone a reason to want to see them suffer. The greatest harm they do to these innocent families, but not far behind is the harm they do to the rest of the Jews worldwide. The state of Israel is the most anti-semitic organization since the end of Nazi Germany.

If you think Loki is fun, you should try the Fenian Cycle of Irish/Gaelic mythology. You’d probably get a kick out of the kid raised by his aunt the druidess and her warrior-woman “Roommate” who goes on to fight a giant boar, become a genius by sucking his thumb while cooking salmon, and to become leader of the high king’s own mercenary company after discovering his divine heritage.

Has this ever actually been implemented? I see “windfall taxes” legislation floated every couple of years, when price gouging goes to 11. I never see anyone ballsy enough to implement it.

Rarely and never high enough to check price gouging.

Hey there bud, we’d totally be down to help you out there but whatever you caught seems to already be making Alberta sick and we don’t want it catching on any worse up here, eh. We’re not really big on the whole conquering thing these days either (turns out there’s consequences to that). We’ll bring some matches and have a good 'ole pork roast at the White House when you’re ready though, eh.

~Sincerely, Canada

There does seem to have been a pretty widespread shift around 5000-3000 BCE (7000-5000 years ago) where a number of different populations across Europe, Asia, and North and East Africa all shifted in a relatively small time window to a patriarchal (literally “father-lead” for people who aren’t familiar with what the term actually means) social structure. Interestingly this also coincides with a rapid loss of genetic diversity in the y-chromosome suggesting it was highly hazardous to the health of most men when this shift happened. Some have speculated that this is the point at which we went from minor territorial disputes and some mild raiding to the emergence of organized “warfare”, though the evidence is circumstantial. While cultures still often went back and forth between being more egalitarian and more patriarchal, that seems to be a major historical turning point. In the (roughly) 300,000 year history of Homo sapiens, and the several million year history of the Homo genus, that’s a relatively recent.

Makes sense that they hate children. It must really scare them, with the constant reminder that some day their reign of terror will end and they will be outlasted.

The word professional is so ambiguous as to be effectively meaningless, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to its original definition.

No one but the most shallow and superficial among us cares what you’re wearing. Thinking a suit does anything but make you look self-important and pretentious is an anachronism.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard…” friend, you literally live in an information silo. Do you speak Spanish? Because you probably aren’t hearing anything about Spain if you don’t. Do you follow any British media? Because they’re not coming to an American forum to bitch about Britain. You probably don’t care enough to even notice if someone was talking about another country, so how would you hear anything?

What’s uniquely American is making your internal drama everyone else’s problem.

I ask myself the same question every time a company raises its prices.

You killed a coral reef because you couldn’t figure out how to create headers and footers? No, there’s no AI integrated Open Source word processor.

Iron Man and Batman can only do what they do because they have the time and access to resources to do it. Guardian from Alpha Flight, for example would be something like “Working Class Ironman.” Common engineer who found out the mining suit he was building was going to be sold off to the military so he stole the prototype and became a superhero. He’s kind of an “Iron Man’s brain, Captain America’s heart” kind of character, so if you wanted the non-rich Iron Man, it exists, it’s just not Tony Stark. Tony needs to be rich or he’s not Tony Stark.

Same with Batman. The Shadow is a former soldier who uses stealth, martial arts and magic tricks to fight crime. But he’s not Bruce Wayne because being a billionaire playboy is what makes Batman possible.

Why recharacterize heroes with totally new backstories when the not-rich version is already a different superhero.

And now you’re completely characterizing my statements and lying to make yourself feel better. Good day.

I mean if your go to is to personally attack anyone who disagrees with you I don’t know why anyone would bother to have a serious discussion with you, but for the cheap seats I’ll try.

Yes, Criminal Psychopaths can, in certain circumstances be good people, other than the fact that they brutally kill some people. No mass murderer has ever been arrested that their neighbours weren’t standing there saying “but he was such a nice guy!” That doesn’t mean I don’t think they should be dealt with harshly, but the reality is, there are people who are good husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and friends who also do absolutely monstrous things when no one else is looking. While we’re at it, there’s no such thing as someone who has never harmed anyone. We’ve all done things that hurt people, and no, just apologizing doesn’t make it all go away. Some harms are more serious than others but no one is blameless. There are absolutely people who tend more toward good, and some that tend more toward bad, but I’ve also watched “good” people rationalize and try to justify some absolutely wild levels of cruelty under the wrong circumstances.

Look, I get it, you’ve been through some shit. I’ve been there and the idea that some people are good and some people are bad and as long as you find the good people you’ll be safe is really comforting. Unfortunately it’s not true. There’s no such thing as someone who is always cartoonishly evil, and there is no one who is perfectly safe, not even you.

There are no objectively good and bad people. Never have been, never will be. Every one of us is a grab bag of contradictions. Objectively good people are not rare, they’re fictional. If you seriously look under the surface, we’re all both monsters and angels on some level. Some of us just have better self-control and/or fewer opportunities to be actively transgressive.

As others have pointed out, there’s no “black-and-white” (if you’ll pardon the irony) way of categorizing people. Bad or good people are fictional. Even the best of us have ugly parts to how we behave, and otherwise terrible people can show surprising compassion. Our values can conflict and in the moment we chose to do something wildly out of character, or indulge in impulses we didn’t even realize we had.

In the real world there are no absolute heroes or villains. A man who gave his boots to a homeless man one moment, could beat another to death a few months later. Human beings are wildly inconsistent.