ZuckZuck is not a robot that lacks humanity. ZuckZuck is capable of emotions. ZuckZuck did not knowingly facilitate the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. ZuckZuck.
Progress is definitely happening. One area that I am somewhat knowledgeable about is image/video upscaling. Neural net enhanced upscaling has been around for a while, but we are increasingly getting to a point where SD (DVD source, older videos from the 90s/2000s) to HD upscaling is working almost like in the science fiction movies. There are still issues of course, but the results are drastically better than simply scaling the source media by x2.
The framing of LLMs as some sort of techno-utopian "AI oracle" is indeed a damning reflection of our society. Although I think this topic is outside the scope of current "AI" discussions and would likely involve a fundamental reform of our broader social, economic, political and educational models.
Even the term "AI" (and its framing) is extremely misleading. There is no "artificial intelligence" involved in a LLM.
I am increasingly starting to believe that all these rumors and "hush hush" PR initiatives about "reasoning AI" is an attempt to keep the hype going (and VC investments) till the vesting period for their stock closes out.
I wouldn't be surprised if all these "AI" companies have come to a point where they're basically at the limits of LLM capabilities (due to problems with its fundamental architecture) while not being able to solve its core drawbacks (hallucinations, ridiculously high capex and opex cost).
That seems like a fair assumption. I would argue we are at the peak of the bubble and only recently we've seen the suits (Goldman Sachs and more broadly analysts at banks) start asking questions about ROI and real use cases.
An argument can be made that the vast majority of "free speech" polemics from US oligarchs are a ruse.
They couldn't care less. They see it as a tool to manipulate plebs and promote their financial interests as well as leveraging such polemics as a cover for corruption.
With respect to Musk, it is likely a republican administration will cancel any legal proceedings against him and give him a formal "get out of jail free" card. Although some of Musk's posturing is likely tied to his degenerate tendencies.
Eventually I was able to boot into Windows 10 and everything seems to be working fine (ran a system file check, some files were found to be corrupted).
This is on an ancient Haswell laptop from 2014; my initial thoughts were this was definitely tied to my hardware, the laptop is really outdated and I use it heavily (have a modern desktop, but I am away from home), but perhaps something was wrong with the update.
Apologies for bringing that up, it was indeed uncalled for. You were being tactful and respectful.
I strongly disagree with the notion that hate is not inherently inside russia's population. I would even go as far saying russia, as conceptualized by the overwhelming majority of the population, cannot exist without imperialism, chauvinism and genocide (i.e. extermination of local culture/language in any occupied territory as well as physically killing and torturing those who disagree).
Earlier in our thread you brought up a sociological report on a small town (on the eastern side of the Urals?), I read a preview article (in russian) about this report. The findings in the preview are damning for russian society. Even those who are not committed supporters of the invasion still believe the invasion should continue and they support "their boys" as a matter of patriotism and national pride. They also don't think the full scale invasion was a mistake (let alone the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas - although this my speculation). Furthermore, they also support making the war effort more efficient.
And this is supposed to be the more moderate wing of russians society. Something like 1.1 million russian men have directly taken part in the invasion of Ukraine (since 2014). Maybe 1.5-1.7 million civilians have personally taken part in the occupation of Ukrainian territories (I am excluding say "tourists" visiting occupied Crimea for the sake of argument). You also have 10s of million of russians who hold openly genocidal views (I believe 30% of russian think Ukraine should be nuked).
Russians will be hated in Ukraine for at least two generations (if not for far longer) because russian society as it is today is largely supportive of their government's imperialist and genocidal aims. More so, there is no reason to believe this will change (even on the basis of a conceptual model).
How exactly would there be any political change in "five to twenty years"? What specifically can happen (on a purely theoretical level)? Why would it happen? What are the roots of this change?
And why do you say no longer than putin's lifetime? What would stop someone similar (or worse) from taking over after putin dies? The russian people aren't going to do anything and they show no interest in changing anything. You might say this is because of threats to their livelihood (fair, but who is responsible for this state of affairs?) or propaganda. I would say it's because fundamentally the overwhelming majority of the russian population are aligned with imperialist and openly genocidal goals of the government.
What of the russian opposition? Have they started a campaign to develop a military strike force consisting of russian nationals? Sabotage programs? Assassination campaigns against senior enablers and admin of the regime? Of course not, instead they make stupid youtube videos trying to scapegoat the current situation on some people in the 90s. Why would the average russian choose what is essentially "putinism lite" (I will note that the "liberal" opposition largely supported the annexation of Crimea, even if they tried to put a spin on it for western audiences) when they can choose the real thing?
I will go back to my original OP. The qualitative and quantitative evidence very much supports the notion that the overwhelming majority of russians are authoritarian, chauvinistic and support imperialism and to some degree genocide too. This is not because of historical essentialism or some of "bad gene"; these are bunk theories best left for crude jokes (fully justified considering the situation). It is because as things stand now (and I will speculate this won't change in the next ~50 years), the vast majority of russians have a made a choice; they believe invading neighbouring countries and genociding the local population (both direct violence and to turn them into "russians") is a good thing.
Image/video upscaling via neural net is something I would pay for.
I currently use freeware/open source alternatives, but I am planning to get a copy of Topaz Video AI in the future.
Even the freeware/open source algorithms are incredible in terms of quality. You do get artifacts and it doesn't handle certain things very well (I get problems with watermarks); but that might be my lack of knowledge.
When I first did a successful SD upscale (x2 resolution), it almost felt like magic.
Individuals engaged in volunteer PR for Qualcomm (due the belief that WoA is a silver bullet?) have used Linux support as a (minor) arguement.