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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I will admit this isn't an effortpost:

As is common knowledge and more deeply discussed elsewhere in this very comment section (e.g. https://www.themotte.org/post/349/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/62270?context=8#context), Google got "scooped" by ChatGPT not because they were beat on the technology side, but because they were beat on the productization side. Some are comparing this to Xerox PARC, where Xerox invented or incubated many elements of modern computer technology -- the GUI, the mouse, etc. -- but, being blind to their actual utility, got "scooped" by Apple and others and subsequently lost out on trillions of dollars of market value.

What's deeply, deeply hilarious to me is: during this entire time, Google management were so busy posturing, and their internal A.I. safety teams were so busy noisily complaining sexism / racism / phobias of various sorts (not so much human extinction), and they developed such a reputation for being a place to coast, that despite 130,000 elite-educated, overpaid people sitting around ostensibly unleash their brilliance, they're now in a position where Microsoft has a puncher's chance (realistically, maybe 5 - 10%) of catching up and even surpassing Google's decades-long search dominance. Even better, competing with Microsoft now means that Google might have to cannibalize a $100B / yr line of business, whereas Microsoft cannibalizing Bing means it sacrifices maybe a ham sandwich / year line of business.

As much as I'd like to have fun you-could-have-prevented-this- and why-didn't-you-listen?-posting, that's spilt milk on the Titanic in the grand scheme of things. The prophesized AI development wars have begun.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine Ava locking Caleb out the elevator, forever.

deleted

I can't find it now but somebody wrote a reasoned defence of the film at the old subreddit. It's fine for popcorn viewing but while the premise is based around artifical intelligence the plot pivots on crushing organic stupidity.

I'd recommend almost any other AI/cyborg film first other than maybe Her, which funnily is increasingly looking like the more believable future.

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