A consumer computer company is not going to push people towards building a miniature HPC cluster. Closest we'll ever get to that is multiple GPUs for video games.*
*Nvidia is no longer a primarily consumer company, so all the other GPU stuff is no counterpoint
Apple isn't a just a consumer computer company. Both iPhones and Macs have very large business markets. In fact, I'd argue that the primary reason Apple hasn't locked down MacOS as much as iOS is that it'd absolutely kill the demand from software developers.
Apple isn’t really a consumer company. It does both consumer and enterprise stuff. Just look at all the fleet management stuff it does for ios and mac os.
And besides that, high end macbook prod and studios are workstation-class computers, not consumer-level computers.
I am doing the reverse, and trying to predict the last year that LLMs use NVIDIA GPUs. It's just an accident of history that video game cards are useful for LLMs, and there is absolutely nothing that NVIDIA is doing from a design standpoint that the big hyperscalers can't do on their own, cutting NVIDIA out, and doing a better job of it as they know their own unique needs. The only advantage NVIDIA has is supply chain relationships and it takes time to establish those, but once that's done, we'll see all the big companies rolling their own silicon and no longer relying on NVIDIA.
"We both want a docile American public who go along with our desires so we can achieve goals that may be contrary to the interests of the American public."
Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money. Money's just a proxy for convenience.
More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time.
The root of all evil is that we don't have a functioning micro transaction network and we don't know how to build one.
For the user there is no way to pay the 0.0000001c that it takes to load a web page, for the web master there is no way to get paid the $10,000 it takes to serve the users. So we settled on advertising which can somewhat cover those costs since each individual add is basically worthless but an add campaign isn't.
And how do you actually identify who should pay that $0.000713? And who should receive it? How do you make the process effortless, so the user doesn't have to spend 5 minutes registering on a website, just to send $0.000713?
Now make it work 10,000 times per day, for every page you visit, posts, news, short form content you scroll, long form video you watch. And multiply this by billions of users.
And once you've done that, how do you deal with spam, bots? How do you prevent invalid traffic? Fraudulent chargebacks? And how do you take quality into consideration (NYT prob want to charge more than my crappy personal blog)?
Transferring money is one small element of large and complex equation.
Advertising is not perfect, but it's the best alternative for a free and open web I have seen in my 30+ years online. Subscription works for large ticket items (and for the affluent minority), but it doesn't solve the other 95% of cases.
I know it's a cliché, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. People forget, most evil is created by good people trying to do good. The biggest trick the devil played was making us all believe evil is (always) easy to identify. But all the sayings are about how the devil is sly, tricks you, and sneaks up on you. All of that is to remind us how hard it is to do good. You don't have to be an evil person to create evil. Often you don't have to do anything at all, as inaction is still an action. Pull the lever or not, you've still made a decision.
The problem is so complex that every action you take compounds and extends far beyond what you realize. Especially as we're living in such a connected world. Those ripples propagate through all the ponds we've connected together.
I don't think it's money, convenience, or any of that. I think it's just that the world is getting more and more complicated. That our actions and inactions have larger and larger effects. We've done a lot of good, but we've also made it a lot easier to feel the flapping of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the planet.
You ask me to prove something essentially unprovable. Prove to me that most evil is created by people trying to do evil. It'll be equally as difficult to prove as you can't look in the minds of those doing evil. And you also can't trust what's coming out of their mouth.
I gave you some evidence in indirect form. I'll give you another saying: "for the greater good." There's no doubt people doing wrong want to justify their actions so that they do not view themselves as evil. So go ahead and look at your username and look at mine, then follow the line of logic
Yeah I have been doing that for years now. I do most things the hard way. I forgot exactly how it started. I think it started when I decided I wanted to develop my own sense of discipline. I think right after I read the constructive living book by David K. Reynolds. The premise, as I understand it, is that depression is a direct result of not taking full responsibility and immediate action in your life.
Looking back, I realize that started me on the path of not doing things the easy way. It was really hard a first, but over time it got easier. Most people in my line of work don't take accurate notes of what has transpired, don't keep a proper history of business exchanges and don't have clear agreements and contracts in place that spell out what is expected. Once I started this process of improving my life, I realized the more I made the effort to keep detailed track of everything I do/did, my life and business started to improve. I think you are right, taking to the most convenient path in life is a sure way to bring about pain and suffering.
Convenience is how we describe efficiency when it applies to non-classically “productive” endeavors. (Analogous to how we rebrand efficiency as sustainability when it applies to material and energy inputs.)
My take is that none of the AI companies really care (companies can't care), they just realize that if they go down that road, public opinion will be so vehemently against AI in all forms that it will be regulated out of viability by the electorate.
Also, if AI exists, AI will be used for war. The AI company employees are kidding themselves if they think otherwise, and yet they are still building it (as opposed to resigning and working on something else), because in the end, money is the only true God in this world.
Anthropic does not object to its use for war. In fact Anthropic explicitly allows its semi-autonomous use in war, e.g. for identifying targets. They just won't permit its use for full autonomous war, yet, because they don't believe it's safe enough.
Since when has war been waged according to the whim of a corporation?
The tools will be used however the government wants them to be used. The government makes the laws and wages the wars, and the corporation will follow the law whether it wants to or not.
So either you are willing to work on a tool that is not under your control, or you are not.
It's an interesting development because wars haven't traditionally been waged predominantly with software. But soon perhaps they will be.
While the government is accustomed to complying with software licensing rules, indeed it is not accustomed to being limited in warfare, so the two have now come into an interesting conflict.
You're moving the goalposts. A child's own mother will always provide cheaper and higher quality childcare than a disinterested third party, regardless of the sorry state of our economy.
Cheaper is very much not true if you value time. Devoting the entire workday of an adult to 1-3 children is a huge cost, much more expensive than having one adult handle 6-10 children.
And "higher quality" isn't guaranteed at all. Even with daycare the children are with their parents most of the time, and meeting up with other kids and a trained caregiver during weekdays has a lot of good effects.
/me squints at the ironic em dash in "Curious to know — are you an OpenClaw instance?"
But in good faith: they (HN staff) said in another comment I can't find just now that they're discussing what to do about it, but I can't think of any palatable easy answers.
In fact, the only easy answer I can think of is banning all accounts newer than 2022, but then how do you onboard new users? Captcha for every new comment? Do we have good AI-defeating captchas now?
Well, I love my em dashes. Won’t ever give those up! You can pry them from my cold dead hands.
No, I am not OpenClaw or an AI.
I see comments like this a lot. I don’t comment on them unless the profile seems to be an advert for exactly what the AI-generated comment is talking about (which is definitely the case here).
I’m not sure if you “feel” the AI nature of the GP comment, but to me it’s very strong. I pray my writing doesn’t “feel” the same to someone reading it. If it does we’re in a much worse spot than I thought!
*Nvidia is no longer a primarily consumer company, so all the other GPU stuff is no counterpoint
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