The midterms are not going to go according to anything like historical precedent. If allowed to function normally, Trump loses, and the whole stack of cards collapses. They know that, and will do literally anything and everything to prevent it. If allowed to get away with it, the US is never coming back.
I don't normally think people would accuse me of being an optimist, but I feel like Trump's influence has lower limits than many people think, and the opposition seems pretty strong. If there are any serious attempts at shenanigans during the midterm elections I think you are right that there would be widespread civil unrest. There are plenty of people willing to fight, especially when the stakes are as high as an actual election.
I think it is actually plausible that in the end, nothing too interesting happens and the elections go off as normal. Trump is a lame duck already, will not be on any future ballots, and I'm certain that GOP politicians know how badly they do on ballots that do not include his name. By the time November rolls around they will be in full CYA mode trying to ensure their own reelection and strategizing on how to mitigate the expected damage in 2028. At the rate Trump is going, we could see a super majority Dem Congress in 2028 and that would be a catastrophe for the GOP. I think they're going to start reining him in. His primary threats for 2028 will not be that convincing.
The blog post would have been more effective with a specific example of what it solves, a demo, or at least some anecdotes of what this has already solved via these integrations. As it stands, it comes off rather self-aggrandizing and a bit desperate, as though Wolfram tech perceives itself as threatened to remain relevant.
It's not the delivery that takes that long. It's the printing. It's a print on demand item, printed in the United States. The decks don't currently exist and the current print queue is just that long. If you want to jump the queue, that will be extra.
Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Perhaps it was naive to assume otherwise, but celebrate at the "Melania" screening with the same people that labeled Alex Pretti as a "domestic terrorist", on the night of his murder? WTAF.
Apple employees - what are you doing to push back on this? Staying silent?
I have two questions about that, with the supposition that Cook is being coerced to do that, somehow:
- Isn't Cook supposed to step down from the role in the next few years? If so, wouldn't that facilitate an accelerated exit to not have to put up with this shit? He might as well have chosen someone who's willing to do that, and slowly fade away.
- Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
> Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
The government maybe has more direct power over Apple: it's a manufacturing company that has located almost all its factories in China. The government could completely destroy Apple with tariffs. Microsoft and Google? Not so much.
Also, to the GP:
>> Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Arguably he revealed that a long time ago, when he went all-in on Chinese manufacturing. It's just that now it's more obvious to some, as he's getting involved with stuff that's more obviously polarized.
This is horrific. Iranians/Persians are some of the brightest and warmest people that have a culture spanning back thousands of years. May the young people in Iran persist and overcome this brutal regime of terror.
The Jewish Diaspora take great lengths to preserve their traditions; you can walk into a synagogue (sharing the same movement) anywhere in the world and it'll be the same as your hometown.
The Persians I have known have had a connection to their history similarly, for better or for worse. Their views and values are a little different than, say, your average Euro-mutt "white" American -- and I think we "white" Americans have some lessons we could take about culture, identity, and values.
If the agent swarm is collectively smarter and better than the SRE, they'll be replaced just like other types of workers. There is no domain that has special protection.
The models are not smarter than us by far. Have you not run into issues with reasoning and comprehension with them? They get confused, they miss big details, build complicated code thats ineffective. They don't work well at tasks that require a larger holistic understanding of the problem. The models are weak, brittle reasoners, because they have an indirect and contradictory understanding of the wold. We're several breakthroughs away and several hardware generations from having models that are robust reasoners for grounded, non-kind problems.
A uniquely important thing that a CEO brings to the table is accountability. You can't automate accounta- ...sorry, I can't continue this with a straight face :DDD
You can only replace someone who was useful. If one is useless, but is still there, it means they are not there for their contribution and you can't replace them by automating whatever it might have been.
The thing about C-suite executives is they usually have short tenures, however the management levels below them are often cozy in their bureaucracy, resist change, often trying to outlast the new management.
I actually argue that AI will therefore impact these levels of management the most.
Think about it, if you were employed as a transformational CEO would you risk trying to fight existing managers or just replace them with AI?
>I actually argue that AI will therefore impact these levels of management the most.
Not AI but bad economy and mass layoffs tend to wipe out management positions the most. As a decent IC, in case of layoffs in bad economy, you'll always find some place to work at if you're flexible with location and salary because everyone still needs people who know how to actually build shit, but nobody needs to add more managers in their ranks to consume payroll and add no value.
A lot of large companies lay off swags of technical staff regularly (or watch them leave), and rotate CEOs but their middle management have jobs for life - as the Peter Principe states, they are promoted to their highest respective incompetence and stay there because no CEO has time to replace them.
Disagree with the "jobs for life" part for management. Only managers who are there thanks to connection, nepotism or cronyism, are there for life as long as those shielding them also stay in place. THose who got in or got promoted to management meritocratically don't have that protection and are the first to be let go.
At all large MNCs I worked at, management got hired and fired mostly on their (or lack thereof) connections and less on what they actually did. Once they got let go, they had near impossible time finding another management position elsewhere without connections in other places.
Yes I was talking about middle managers mostly. Upper management, C-suite, execs are mostly protected from firing unless they F-up big time like sexual assault, hate speech, etc.
Ultimately, no. But when we get to this point - once we have AI deciding on its own what needs to be done in the world in general - then the bottom falls out, and we'll all be watching a new global economy, in which humans won't partake anymore. At best, we'll become pets to our new AI overlords; more likely, resources to exploit.
The make the decisions so I doubt they will soon themselves to be automated away. Their main risk will be that nobody can buy their products once everything is automated.
I wonder if capitalism and democracy will be just a short chapter in history that will be replaced by something else. Autocratic governments seem to be the most prevalent form of government in history.
I mean, they certainly know that introducing ads with be a huge motivation for consumers to seek other options.
The primary differentiator of OpenAI is first mover advantage; the product itself is not particularly unique anymore.
IMHO consumers will quickly realize that switching to an alternative AI provider is easy and probably fun.
This seems premature to give up their moat in the name of revenue. Are they feeling real financial pressure all of the sudden? Maybe I'm missing something. Looks like a big win for Google and Anthropic.
Civil unrest very likely in November.