Rov_Scam
4hr ago
I used to have my own firm, so yes, I've hired accountants and yes, I've had them screw up. Not major, but screwups nonetheless. Luckily, they were of the nature that I ended up paying more tax than necessary and not of the kind that would get the IRS up my ass, and the amount I overpaid was low enough that if the accountant said his fee was that much higher I would have paid the difference without batting an eye. I don't know what your taxes look like, but when you own a business things get real complicated real fast, and there's a lot to navigate.
Rov_Scam
9hr ago
Why would I ever hire a tax accountant or financial planner when AI can do these things far better for far less money?
Because if the AI fucks up your taxes, Sam Altman and Dario Amoedi aren't going to assume responsibility.
Rov_Scam
9hr ago
In this situation, yes. It's my opinion that while intangibles may have an effect at the margins, they can't compensate for lack of talent. You see this a lot in the college game where teams without talent will often develop an unusual scheme to make the best of what they have. Look at a team like Navy. They compete in the top division but can't recruit like the rest of the college cesspool can. For years they ran the triple option under coaches Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatalolo, long after the triple option went out of style. If you're not familiar, the triple-option is a descendant of the wishbone, which was developed in the 1960s and reached its zenith in the 1970s and early 1980s. It's a 3-back attack where the quarterback reads what the defense is doing post-snap and either keeps it, hands it off to RB 1, or pitches it to RB2, depending on where the hole is going to be. Teams like Texas and Oklahoma won national championships using this approach, but it had since been superseded by any number of other schemes. When Johnson took over in 2002, most of the good college programs were running pro-style offenses, which required skilled players of sufficient size and speed. The advantage of the triple option is that it didn't require any of that, just players who were good athletes capable of executing a simple system. And the fact that few teams ran the system meant that their opponents had to make special preparation when they played against them, which was tougher than normal since it was so different from what teams were typically running.
The result was that Navy had much more success than service academies typically have. Between 2002 and 2015, Navy only had two losing seasons, one of which came in Johnson's first year running the scheme. By contrast, rival Army only had a single winning season across the same period, and most of those seasons they only managed 2 or 3 wins. I use these dates because Army hired Jeff Monken in 2014 and started running the triple option. Though the team struggled his first two years, they've only had a single losing season since. The thing is, neither team is going to compete for a national championship (though Army came close a couple years ago). Both teams play in the AAC, a conference that isn't the most competitive. Navy plays Notre Dame every year, and hasn't won since 1963. And the teams Notre Dame was fielding during the Charlie Weis era weren't exactly gangbusters. Scheme was able to turn below-average mid-major teams into above-average ones, but it wasn't able to turn them into mediocre major teams.
In a broader sense, though, it's funny that you mention coaching, because this experience played out in real life. In 2021, Urban Meyer, who coached the Florida Gators in 2008 in the middle of an illustrious career that included stints at Utah and Ohio State, was named head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This was a bad team, but it nonetheless had players who were 100% NFL talent, and Trevor Lawrence, the hottest QB prospect. The results speak for themselves. Meyer's tenure in Jacksonville was an unmitigated disaster, and he was let go before the season even ended. He thought the team had potential, but he seems not to have realized the level of talent in the NFL; I recall reading a quote from him where he said in an exasperated tone that it was "like playing Alabama every week". Now put this in the context of the offense Meyer actually ran in 20088: The Spread. Like the triple option, spread offenses were developed as a way to take advantage of lesser talent. The first time I recall seeing it was when Pitt played South Florida in 2001. USF was a mid-major that had just started a football program a few years prior and couldn't land top recruits, even compared with mediocre programs like Pitt. Instead they got fast receivers and a mobile quarterback, and used a 4 wideout set with no tight end and only one running back. They passed constantly and kept the tempo up, and a pro-style team like Pitt had trouble keeping up. USF ended up winning the game by 9 points, even they had no business doing so.
Florida actually ran a run-first variation of the spread called a spread option which incorporated aspects of—you guessed it—the triple option. Elements of spread offenses have worked their way into the NFL over the years, particularly following 2010 rule changes prohibiting hits on defenseless players, but the implementation is much different than in college. If there's been a trend in NFL draft busts over the past decade, it's taking guys similar to Tebow who are great atheletes but who come from offenses similar to what Florida ran in 2008. The weakness is that these offenses rely on the QB making one read and then running, and that doesn't work in the NFL. We've seen the careers of Colin Kaepernick, Justin Fields, Malik Willis, and, well, Tim Tebow all struggle due to an inability to hang in the pocket long enough to find the open man. In the NFL, the open windows are tight, and they aren't open for long. Meyer's passing approach relied on Tebow looking to see if one guy was open (by NCAA standards) and taking off with the ball if he wasn't. It also relied on Tebow looking at what the defensive end was doing and making the decision whether to hand the ball off or keep it. NFL quarterbacks do a little of this, but generally speaking, NFL defensive linemen are fast enough that a college running back isn't going to get a jump on them based on what they do immediately after the snap. And with no NFL-caliber tackles, Tebow is likely on his ass before he can even figure out what the defensive end is doing. Anyway, I could get more into this but I think that's enough for now.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
Right, but if the AI gave an individual controller bad advice, it would only affect that controller's decisions, it wouldn't cause the communication system between airports to stop working entirely.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
I heard a radio interview on the way home from work where the guy said that all the AI system does is give suggestions to the controllers about weather, traffic conditions, etc. It's added on top of the system and doesn't have any control over it. I think the second possibility is more likely.
If you're paying $5,000 for someone to do your taxes, then your taxes are involved enough that the risk of fines isn't rare anymore.
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