OP actually did write 0.10, but I think it’s pretty clear from context that they meant it with one sigfig.

Why does even-ness matter?

Because significant figures.

0.1 means you have a margin of error of ±0.05 (i.e. the true value is between 0.05 and 0.15).

0.08 means the margin of error is ±0.005 (i.e. the true value is between 0.075 and 0.085).

OP’s question can be rephrased as “how did we obtain a value to this level of precision?”

Real and honest in that they accurately reflect what’s going on in his own mind.

Things I can’t look up:

• The person’s name
• Their interests
• How their day is going
• Their opinions on various local matters
• Whether they can help me move next weekend
• Gossip from the dinner party they recently attended

100 failures + temporarily borrowing someone else’s success also looks like 1 success from the outside.

They essentially sell raw material. This seems like the least specific business you can possibly have.

I feel the same. The only times I (intentionally) down vote are for things like spam or people throwing insults around with zero substance. It’s basically a button for increasing/decreasing visibility, and you get much more interesting discussions when it involves views you disagree with.

Well, that explains a lot about why everyone gets all up in arms when you judge others by the same standards you use for yourself. Surely, I’m the only victim of the system, right? It was specifically designed to hold me down.

Same price or cheaper? Then sure. Variety is good.

Ah, yes, I’m sure AI is going to defy the first law of thermodynamics any day now.

Humans as a whole already produce more than we consume. Why should it not be possible for robots to do the same?

Sure in a couple hundred years

And you know that it only happens because people put the work in to make it happen, right?

Regarding the rest of your post, I choose to believe that we can change the world for the better. I’m very aware that the current system has problems. I don’t know if you’re just looking to complain or if you have solutions to propose. I was kind of hoping for the latter because I don’t have any ideas so far.

If it works out, the AI would produce more than it consumes. Requiring anyone to pay for that would be a choice, not a necessity.

We already have committees to decide what we should be working on. In Canada, one of the major ones of NSERC. I don’t think they adequately capture what everyday people struggle with though, and you can get just about anything approve. The whole process of writing papers and grants can be summarized as game of framing your work in different ways to convince different people that your work is relevant to their goals.

It seems we are in agreement on most of this. These generative models aren’t going to fill your pantry or do your chores. They can help through world models, but I’m hoping to get things working without that.

I think we should clarify what we mean by AI first. I’m under the impression that you’re talking about generative models. I don’t think it makes sense to ban all form of automation. But if you really do mean all automations, then I’d like to hear the reasoning for that.

Not for the questions that get asked repeatedly. You don’t tell people to just look it up unless you’ve already answered that same question at least ten times in the recent past. If you’ve already answered it multiple times, then the answer is out there.

Ah, the dentist cup

So the problem is everything moving to the cloud and that cloud being mostly controlled by a small number of big players, right? I still don’t know what the solution to that should be. In my mind, we can either assume that they’ll successfully take over and we give up (so why not make our lives easier while we’re here?), or we fight back while we still have access to the technology.

Speculation: If you tax them, then there’s an extra step to take that money and pass it on to billionaires. Make a mistake and some of it may get used to benefit the plebs. But if you make them illegal and threaten a much worse fate, then that lets the billionaires exploit them and directly benefit from their presence.

When it comes to LLMs and similar generative models, I agree. I’m talking about AI in general though, and reinforcement learning, which is the focus of my work. It’s still very resource intensive and doesn’t work very well, but what technology isn’t in the early stages?

That applies to any technological innovations that improve efficiency though. What’s the solution to making things actually benefit everyone? What worries me the most is if it all gets developed in closed labs where the wealthy maintain full control of it and reap all the benefits. I was thinking that if the tech was under our control, it would then at least be beneficial to more people. I don’t find it to be a satisfactory solution, but I haven’t been able to think of anything better in the last five years.