No, it's not a bunch of instructions, it's a colossal array of vectors that are the outcome of many thousands of lifetimes' worth of stimuli and reinforcement - not dissimilar in (very) abstract terms to the neurons in our brains.
You couldn't have. Mechanical machines couldn't organise themselves into human-free supply chains that are economically productive for the owners of capital. AIs could.
Any machine with an on-off switch is functionally an organized and automated work flow.
If I understand correctly youre talking about reactive adjustments, but thats not completely accurate either. There is a lot of projection that this MAY happen, but currently, the capital owner/stewards are going to constantly watch outputs and adjust to them based on the results. You're probably correct in that they will spend far less time doing so, but anyone with a vested outcome is going to have to adjust these things as the responsiblity for the outcome will always land on the owner not the machine.
I just meant that if I value, say, the security afforded by land that's been cleared of humans, and between them my owned AIs can deliver this as a 'surplus' outcome, just by processing resources available at low or no cost (sunlight, atmospheric gases, processed carcasses, etc.) then letting them run amuck is still 'economically valuable' to me, but doesn't require any human input, or a human counterparty. Very reductive example, but you can imagine a much more complex economy where a multitude of similar arrangements interact/compete to deliver outcomes of this type.
And the time wasted on transfers. I used to regularly fly from airports in NY, London, SF, Singapore, LA, Sydney, etc. I would block out the opportunities to work or rest, and the reality was that only the plane time was valuable for either. It was painful to see all the other blocks of non productive time, particularly the allowances for congestion and disruption between downtown and the airports. I would have paid thousands a flight to be able to check in/clear security at my hotel and then get driven to a holding bay at the airport, and then on to the gate, in a vehicle suitable for both work and rest.
No one seems to care anymore, but a big issue that people were concerned about in the 2000s was the switch from 'I know more about me than the blob (corps, gov, etc) does' to, 'I need the blob to remind me where the hell I was that day'. Heart rate and blood oxygen data are hard to exploit data points but not impossible(1), but facing an accusation from someone who knows more about your movements than you do is an uncomfortable scenario. Of course right now, if you're facing an acusation of this type, odds are it's legitimate, or if not, defenseable, but that was the case 15 years ago in Türkiye, but isn't now. Things change.
(Note 1:"Dr. Bootlicker, the defendant wants the court to believe that she calmly placed herself between the agent and the minor he was trying to apprehend, and asserts that the agent's claim, that the defendant's actions constitute assault, is, in her words, 'ridiculous'. But am I correct in understanding that you view minutes 8 and 9 of the biometric data submitted to the court as characteristic of significant physical exertion that might be similar to that undergone by an assailant while commiting an assault?")
A couple of years ago Odeon turned our nearest theatre into a 'luxe' theatre (adult tickets £20), and the next nearest theatre was left as it was, but all tickets £5 each (tickets at both theatres where about £14 previously). I think it was an experiment to see which model was most economic: major investment in tech and comfort/£100+ for a family of four to watch a film with snacks and beverages/fewer tickets sold as a result OR minimal capex/far more affordable to attend/loads more tickets sold. The £5 tickets for all showings have stopped, but you can still get them a lot of the time (they have surge pricing for blockbuster releases,and some upgraded premium seating now). I think they've found a way to be affordable to the masses and fill seats, but still extract max revenue from better off families, by having half their theatres follow one model and half follow the other.
For all tickets is similarly insane. It needs to be demand driven - sold out show? Prices too low. Can’t get butts in seats? prices too high.
You want prices set such that it’s almost but not quite at capacity. This gives you slack to accept stragglers while optimizing your profit on the price demand curve.
The problem is that if you take this too far, nobody knows what it costs to go to the movies, so everyone will just stick the "high cost" in their mind, and not go.
This is why they always gravitate to "$5 before noon/4pm" or "$5 Tuesdays" or similar things that are easy to remember.
I'm waiting for them to have the best seats in the house be the large armchairs for $20, and the rest of the shitseats be normal stadium seating for $5.
Make it app driven to simplify like Uber does. And it should be closer to how large theatrical shows are - fridays at peak time most expensive, different seats have different pricing etc. anyway, movie theaters hit a local optimum decades ago and the people running them failed to evolve.
that is psychologically a really bad customer experience; no one wants to feel like they are being "value extracted" to the greatest extent the company can get away with. airlines do this sort of continuously varying pricing and people hate it, but they don't have much choice in the matter. if that sort of negative perception gets attached to going to the movies the public simply won't.
This is a bit off topic, but I occasionally used to sleep on the sofa in our first floor office in an old Georgian building in Fitzrovia. One occasion when I did that, I woke up at about 3.30 am with intense red light flooding through all the rear windows and the sound of loads of people chattering in the street out front, which seemed as busy as it normally would be in the daytime. I rushed to the front windows and looked down onto a street full of people, but all in 60s get up. I was still half asleep and panicked by the red light and it was totally disorientating to see a busy street of retro Londoners. I actually felt briefly nauseous but I went to the back windows and shaded my eyes, from the crazy glare from two arrays of red spotlights, which it turned out Edgar Wright was using to bounce light off our building, onto the cobbles below ...and began to understand what was going on. Was a relief to get a full explanation, for what had briefly felt like a weird time leap, when I went downstairs and chatted to the extras hanging around out front. The few seconds of woozy, confusion I spent in 1960s london seemed particularly appropriate when I saw Last Night in Soho a year or so later.
That is such a wonderful story! Thank you for sharing!
I was able to experience the movie in a very special way. In New York BAM Rose Cinemas was running a special 35mm press of the film one week before its official debut. Edgar Wright did a red eye run debuting the film in London and then getting on a plane to rush to New York where he arrived just in time for the credits. Having him walk down the steps and sitting right in front of me for Q&A was a amazing experience. Its really a shame the movie flopped even with the extra slack it was given due to debuting during COVID. His most recent film did pretty bad as well. I'm bummed as he is my favorite director. :/
No, it's not a bunch of instructions, it's a colossal array of vectors that are the outcome of many thousands of lifetimes' worth of stimuli and reinforcement - not dissimilar in (very) abstract terms to the neurons in our brains.
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