_Nobody_ has the right take. Believe it or not, being seemingly laissez-faire about something can be a well evaluated and rigorous position. I highly doubt that OP doesn't care about the potential negative ramifications of AI, and it's frankly disingenuous and confusing to see every clause interpreted in the worst way possible.
Each clause you've highlighted has a nugget of truth, but that nugget is not inherently negative, it's just a different perspective which you aren't picking up on.
I'm still trying to understand how I feel about this so this is a bit of a napkin ramble;
I can't help but feel like they've missed the mark a bit on some of the imagery from the mission that's been published so far.
One of the most compelling shots from the mission, to me, was Reid Wiseman's IPhone footage from within the capsule while Earth was being eclipsed[0].
At the start there's a moment you can see the window frame and the Moon all together. Seeing the moon in context of their vantage point within the the context of the capsule gave me the awe I had as a kid again, more than almost any shot that's come out this mission. I actually felt like I was in the capsule looking at a massive, sterile cold sphere.
I understand wanting to take a nice and centered DLSR picture of... _The Moon_ when you're floating by it, but frankly I've seen thousands of those. They're doing a flyby in a capsule in space, I want to have a taste of how the moon exists from _that_ context. What is it like being ~4,000 from the Moon's surface? Take a crappy 0.5x video from your phone showing the inside, then stick it front of the window. Let the Moon be contextualized from your vantage point. I wont be able to make out every crater and basin and the colors might be off from your eye's view, but I will be able to understand what they are seeing. Everyone has an intuitive understanding and feeling of an IPhone's optics and image pipeline, in some ways seeing the Moon through that is more real and relatable than any mirrorless DLSR + color correction.
This being said I don't want to take away from the accomplishment, I'm terribly excited about space exploration and it getting more light in the zeitgeist.
Agreed with the sentiment regarding that footage. This felt closer to something you could actually experience rather than another beautiful DSLR shot. Briefly seeing the inside of the capsule, the autofocus taking a long time, the iPhone image processing vibe... Felt 100x more real.
this is one of the great insights of photography and we can all apply it. no one gives a shit about another picture of the leaning tower of pisa in your photo album. its the weird, candid, accidental shots that are most interesting and enduring. but its easy to not grasp that in the moment - the tower is what you're there to see, and its stunning, so of course it's what you photograph. those spaces in between though, like that iphone video, are what secretly transcend
Slightly off topic, but when I read about these archeological discoveries being made thanks to custom software, ML or the like - Who is writing this code?
To me these projects would be so fun to work on, but this domain seems so far out of a tradition SWE track. Are the researchers just cobbling the code together themselves? Cross department collaboration within the university? I'd love to have a hand in things like this.
i rolled into tech because of archeology. started using GIS for site mapping and need for customization just got me going. ended up going to school again for compsci.
generally, students from other departments are writing the code, but current day most archaeologists can work with ready-made packages (model builders etc..) now too.
I think it's really useful for agent to agent communication, as long as context loading doesn't become a bottleneck. Right now there can be noticeable delays under the hood, but at these speeds we'll never have to worry about latency when chain calling hundreds or thousands of agents in a network (I'm presuming this is going to take off in the future). Correct me if I'm wrong though.
I’ll go ahead and say they’re wrong (source: building and maintaining llm client with llama.cpp integrated & 40+ 3p models via http)
I desperately want there to be differentiation. Reality has shown over and over again it doesn’t matter. Even if you do same query across X models and then some form of consensus, the improvements on benchmarks are marginal and UX is worse (more time, more expensive, final answer is muddied and bound by the quality of the best model)
There is the pre-training, where you passively read stuff from the web.
From there you go to RL training, where humans are grading model responses, or the AI is writing code to try to pass tests and learning how to get the tests to pass, etc. The RL phase is pretty important because it's not passive, and it can focus on the weaker areas of the model too, so you can actually train on a larger dataset than the sum of recorded human knowledge.
I'm a recent CS grad and have zero experience in anything physical or on the engineering side but I think I would enjoy it. I'm a bit intimidated by it, is there a path you'd recommend taking in learning?
3D printing is probably the easiest entry point in today's world. You can assemble already designed components into a structure and learn about how they work, tweak them for customization, design your own parts to produce, and "graduate" into designing custom printers and printer parts. The Voron and Annex communities have a ton of folks in this space designing everything from cosmetic accessories to novel mechanical components that bring meaningful improvements to functionality (Monolith, for example).
From there you can explore automation like pick n place machines, engraving, CNC plasma/routers, CNC subtractive machines (lathes/mills/etc). Or you can come back towards programming with PCB design and custom firmware.
If none of that sounds interesting, you can pick up an old project car from an MG to a Jeep XJ and everything in between.
The world is huge and getting your hands dirty is a really nice balance to time on the keyboard. The only downside is there's no ctrl+z or ^[u but sometimes that's where you learn the most.
I think self-driving targets a problem that doesn't really exist. The issue isn't that the act of driving is a laborious task, it's simply the amount of time spent in a car, which FSD doesn't address.
FSD isn't a complete product. Somehow they got away with selling an early beta for thousands of dollars. Zoox, despite an objectively odd priority on building a purpose built vehicle, became a generally available product ahead of FSD. That should be shameful.
Too much time spent inside may be a problem, but FSD turns car cabins into rooms. If we're inside already, a room with a destination is often better than a stationary one.
Now to start a tangent, what's the easier problem to solve: FSD, or a robust public transport system? Moving rooms have always been around in the form of trains, busses, streetcars etc...
Turns out, we have an answer to this: Self driving is easier. By a lot. It's not even close. No entrenched interests trying to block your infrastructure plans by claiming that your rail line passes through the territory of some flightless owl, no need to be called racist for cutting through the cheapeast land in the city to build out rails, no need to dig tunnels for subways. No need to overcome class prejudices where the middle class don't want to ride BART with the naked dude with a needle behind his ear.
To people outside the Bay, self driving might still seem like some far-off future tech. I can tell you that the future is already here. I haven't used an Uber in the last 3 years because I will always pick Waymo instead.
Fair enough. I will ask, how many billions have been spent in not only FSD but the car infrastructure that makes room for FSD investment?
I'm being slightly fanatical, but if our priorities were not car-centric in the 50's, do you think we would have spent more, or less money over the last 70 years on the transportation economy?
You're assigning decades of infrastructure costs to AVs, none of which was done with the intention of supporting them. They'd work fine on 1950s roads.
The global AV industry has taken roughly as much funding as California HSR has on its own, and less than what HSR will need to finish.
I've been doing public transit advocacy for my entire adult life. I've worked in the AV industry somewhat less than that. My advocacy has produced a couple of bike lanes and bus stops, contrasted against 3 AV launches.
I'd love to build more public transit, but experience tells me that the most effective thing I can do to support my community is AVs.
I do agree that it's not the panacea some people are hoping but true self-driving would change the experience for many people from a couple hours a day of not doing anything other than listen to music / podcasts / audiobooks to being able to do real work if they have things which can be done a laptop. Since multiple generations have been moving further out to car-only suburbs, I think that'd be very popular even if it's still not as nice as having a shorter commute.
It absolutely targets a problem that exists. Even in places with pretty great public transit, there is some demand for taxis/Uber/etc. Oftentimes even moreso, because if I don't need a car for 90% of trips, I might not have a car at all. So I use an Uber or a taxi when a certain trip demands it.
By far the worst part about said Ubers and Taxis is the driver. They're an unpredictable element in a situation where I greatly appreciate predictability. Unlike my parents, I didn't grow up with staff, so I'm not used to simply pretending this person I'm sharing a space with doesn't exist. Instead, I need to navigate the fuzzy line between courtesy and service.
Waymos have none of this shit. They're clean, show up when they say they will, I can play my own music, adjust the air conditioning, and have obnoxious conversations with my friends. They drive safely, and, as a cherry on top, they're cool as hell.
> It absolutely targets a problem that exists. Even in places with pretty great public transit, there is some demand for taxis/Uber/etc. Oftentimes even moreso, because if I don't need a car for 90% of trips, I might not have a car at all. So I use an Uber or a taxi when a certain trip demands it.
This says nothing about self driving cars
> So I'm not used to simply pretending this person I'm sharing a space with doesn't exist. Instead, I need to navigate the fuzzy line between courtesy and service.
I don't mean to be harsh, but, get over it? We live in a service economy. Do you feel the same way about the barista taking your coffee order?
> Waymos have none of this shit. They're clean, show up when they say they will, I can play my own music, adjust the air conditioning, and have obnoxious conversations with my friends. They drive safely, and, as a cherry on top, they're cool as hell.
I don't like the assumption you're making that Waymos are the only solution to ubers, taxis or driving yourself. Well designed and well working public transportation (Which is doable and exists in the world) is far cheaper and far more predictable than any form of car-based transportation.
Not only that, but you're not responding to my actual argument. The annoying part of driving is not the act of driving, it's the time spent in your commute.
> I don't like the assumption you're making that Waymos are the only solution to ubers, taxis or driving yourself. Well designed and well working public transportation (Which is doable and exists in the world) is far cheaper and far more predictable than any form of car-based transportation.
I very literally did not make that assumption. I pointed out, in a sentence you quoted yourself, that public transit can drastically reduce the amount of point-to-point personal transportation an individual wants or needs. However, sometimes, you really can't beat the convenience of "I am at point A, I want to be at point B, and I don't want to deal with a series of stops and transfers to get there". Maybe your starting or ending point is an unusual location. Maybe it's an unusual time of day. Maybe you're wearing a tuxedo or a cast and don't want to do the amount of walking public transit normally requires.
In any case, point-to-point transit is sometimes worth the expense. And when it is, self-driving taxis are fantastic. Compared to driving myself, I don't have to commit at least 75% of my attention to not killing myself or others. I can just read a book, or watch a movie, or do the morning crossword. Compared to taxis or Uber, I don't need to deal with a driver.
Point-to-point is also the only option when you get way out of the city and no form of public transportation is work-able. If you live in the actual middle of nowhere, with miles between homes' driveways, and dozens of miles between residential areas and the nearest store, you're never going to get trains or bus stops that cover everyone's home.
Each clause you've highlighted has a nugget of truth, but that nugget is not inherently negative, it's just a different perspective which you aren't picking up on.
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