I think a better way to think about this might not be that this chatbot isn't dangerous, but the fact that this was developed under capitalism, an an organization that's ultimate goal is profitability, means that the incentives of the folks who built it (hella $) are baked into the underlying model, and there's a glut of evidence that profit-aligned entities (like businesses) are not necessarily (nor, I would argue, /can they be/) human-aligned.
This is the same as the facial-recognition models that mis-identify folks of color more frequently than white folks or the prediction model that recommended longer jail/prison sentences for black folks than for white folks who committed the same crime.
> but the fact that this was developed under capitalism
I think you're ascribing something to a particular ideology that's actually much more aligned with the fundamentals of the human condition.
We've tried various political and economic systems and managed to corrupt all of them. Living under the communist governments behind the iron curtain was no picnic, and we didn't need AI to build deeply sinister and oppressive systems that weren't aligned with human interest (e.g., the Stasi). Profit, in the capitalist sense, didn't come into it.
The only way to avoid such problems completely is to not be human, or to be better than human.
I'm not saying its the perfect form of government (and I'm not even American), but the separation of power into executive, legislative, and judicial in the US was motivated by a recognition that humans are human and that concentration of too much power in one place is dangerous.
I do think, therefore, that we perhaps need to find ways to limit the power wielded by (particularly) large corporations. What I unfortunately don't have is any great suggestions about how to do that. In theory laws that prevent monopolies and anticompetitive behaviour should help here but they're evidently not working well enough.
I think about this a lot. Of course, on paper it's a terrible idea to pay off a mortgage early (assuming a reasonably low interest rate). On the other hand, my mortgage is my only really significant monthly expense and not having that monthly expense would reduce my dependence on a moderately high developer salary and I'd feel more capable of either changing careers or being self-employed.
It depends on your mortgage rate and opportunity costs of other investments.
If you have a mortgage below the rate of inflation, that’s almost free money. Your fiat could potentially do better invested in assets with greater return potential. Paying your mortgage down is like a bond with a guaranteed rate of return, and the piece of mind you have from owning the house unencumbered might be worth the opportunity cost of missed returns depending on your risk tolerance, how well you sleep at night, and your desire to have a lower burn rate to enable more daily freedom (versus working a job you don’t care for to pay for bondholder returns on your note).
Less risk = pay the mortgage down or off. More risk = invest spare cash in investments.
Except my stock portfolio is down 30% and if I’d paid my mortgage off instead, I’d have several thousand dollars a month I could use to buy stock while the market is down, potentially realizing an even better return.
But the big thing we miss about these calculations is that if you’re well off enough to be thinking about the difference we’re already doing a lot better than the people who really get hurt in a recession so the biggest lesson is probably to be grateful for what you’ve got and do your best to look out for people who are less fortunate.
I am not a registered church person and this is not spiritual advice.
That’d be timing the market, which is hard to do. Your ongoing allocation strategy should be based on your overall financial goals, and if your goals or the macro changes, that’s when you pull the sails and adjust your tack.
Being financially independent allows you to do good from a position of power. “Fuck you money” is for the pre enlightened, you want “Do good money”, which means enough wealth to support yourself and then pouring the rest into those in need (if that’s your thing). The wealth, most regrettably, is a necessary evil in the current socioeconomic construct.
> Of course, on paper it's a terrible idea to pay off a mortgage early (assuming a reasonably low interest rate).
Why? The longer my mortgage lasts, the more interests I'm paying (no matter how low they are). If I could pay the entirely of my mortgage now, I would because it will be cheaper.
I don't think rich people (the really rich ones) pay their houses valued in 1 million, via mortgages. They pay them upfront (because they have the money). Why on earth would they apply for a mortage that lasts 10-20 years? They would end up paying 1 million + interests.
My mortgage is at 2.625%. If I have the cash, even 1 month T-Bills are paying a higher rate than that (about 3.6%). Assume I have the cash to pay it off -- I'm strictly worse off if I pay off the mortgage vs. even investing in 1-month t-Bills.
Close. Depends on your marginal tax rate and returns post tax compared to the debt rate of interest. At higher tax rates, it gets closer to being a wash with the spread still low. If risk free rates continue to rise, the investment vs pay down benefit becomes more clear.
Wealthy people have access to lines of credit, secured against their wealth, at low interest rates unheard of to us common folk. This further widens the spread between a very cheap mortgage, and the average 6-7% expected returns from investments (which in turn are taxed cheaply at cap gain rates).
There's still better options. You can get a low interest loan against your portfolio. That way, your portfolio is accumulating interest faster than the loan rate. At Merrill Lynch, this is called a LMA, loan management account[1].
I'm not rich, so I'm not sure what other options the wealthy have.
Yes and no. They're "interesting lines of research" except when they're in your field, then they're foundations or anchor points for your work, past, present, and future.
I'm not going to disagree that a lot gets lost in translation between academic article and the lay-person who hears a story on the nightly news, but I don't think gatekeeping academic research is the answer, but rather more emphasis on critical thinking and critical reading.
I guess it depend on the area, but (for me, in my area) published results are just a stating point.
When reading a paper the first question are: Does it even makes sense? (mostly yes, it depends on the journal) Is it overhyped? (definitively yes) Is it interesting after removing the overhype? (sometimes yes) Can we reproduce the result with our tools? (I hope so) Can we combine the result with our previous results? (I hope so) Is the combination interesting? (I hope so) Interesting enough to assign it to a graduate student, to drop whatever we are doing or something in between? (mostly something in between)
If we try to reproduce the result and fail miserably or if the methods are too unclear, we will jut forget about the paper and work in another topic. Perhaps contact the authors if we know them or the result very promising.
I think we never take a result at face value, except perhaps for the list of citations that appear in the introduction about recent related work.
> I don't think gatekeeping academic research is the answer
Not sure what you mean by this? The journals are inherently gatekeeping academic research via peer review. But the suggestion isn't that the journals be locked away, merely that journals are not a great way for the public to interact with academia. Many academicians do write for the public and are eager to do so, but in different forms than journal articles.
Interview had been made by a founder, who wasn't present to interview me. I'm not sure they even existed.
Interview was conducted by a recently-hired, recently-graduated (and very fresh-out-of-school) developer.
The business prop just didn't make sense.
After about 15--20 minutes, I was just trying to make sense of the situation / why they were even at the firm.
I watched for further developments from the company for a few years, I'm not aware that anything ever came of it, so at least this one time my sense that this could never pan out was in fact correct.
(Stupid ideas often have a much longer runway than seems remotely possible, especially when money also gets stupid.)
I don't recall the name of the company any more.
They were in search space, and are neither alphabetic or waterfowl-inclined.
Facetious. Everyone knows your feature flags can be determined based on user properties so you can have each user having a custom experience in a single version of the monolith.
A couple years ago my previous company cut the standard yearly raise from 3% to 2%. When inflation went crazy during the pandemic I started casually dropping the quoted line into every conversation with coworkers I could. I even threw out some feelers around organizing but I was always laughed off by someone or other.
This is the same as the facial-recognition models that mis-identify folks of color more frequently than white folks or the prediction model that recommended longer jail/prison sentences for black folks than for white folks who committed the same crime.