Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Yeah, I don't know what to think. The unknown is certainly prone to trigger anxiety. It isn't rational that so many people cheer the demise of steady white collar jobs. And, at the same time, no one wants the available blue collar jobs.
As evidence, I submit how pleased so many were at the cutting of 350,000 government jobs. And the difficulty companies have filling blue collar (skilled and unskilled) positions. What are all those who were "left behind" going to do now? If they were going to get training or education for what remains, they would have done that already. If they were going to move to "where the jobs are", they would have done that.
White collar remote work was their best chance at a better life, and that appears to be slipping away. Now, the whole AI thing is happening. A lot of people should be worried. How much of that would be justified, I have no idea.
One thing that I suspect is that AI knows nothing, except the zeitgeist. I.e. - what people like us, and many self-appointed experts, are posting on the internet.
And now SECDRUNK Petey Kegbreath is trying to really punish Anthropic for not letting DOD use its platform for whatever it wants --- ie, "no guardrails". (This is beyond potentially just nixing their contract, btw) Seeing Anthropic stick to its guns on this issue only makes me want to use / recommend their platform even more.
For what it's worth, Claude is by far the best of the consumer-facing LLMs and I suspect that Anthropic is the best of the AI companies. I also suspect that, as a business matter, whatever losses they suffer from Hegseth's temper tantrum and Musk's inexplicable denunciation of them as anti-white and anti-Asian (and of their staff philosopher for being childless) will be more than offset domestic and international firms that would prefer to avoid the headline risk entailed by some of the "we'll do anything for anybody" companies.
Foreseeing the end of the world is singularly seductive. I teach about communication and emerging technologies and we can document the destructive power of everything from writing to pencils to postcards to pencil erasers and certainly to the electric telegraph. At least in the past the central problem with the apocalypse is that it did not take into account the inherent craftiness of humans who manage to scaffold even newer technologies around the presumed agents of destruction. Plato denounced writing, but could not have anticipated the creation of glossaries, indexes, page numbering for that matter, concordances, book clubs or footnotes. Without the emergence of those innovations, he might well have been right that writing was doomed to making us shallow, clueless and arrogant.
I agree about Claude. I spent an hour yesterday and Claude summarized all 80 Randomized Controlled trials for Long COVID and CFS and divided them into free articles and ones behind a paywall.
"He" then produced an almost publication quality document about the usefulness of Hydrocortisone in CFS with references and review.
I know this literature pretty well and found a couple of articles "he' did not find, but he read one of the largest studies and found the answer I was looking for.
I was very impressed. This would have taken me at least an entire day
Yes. The quality of the output product is excellent. I did a lot of technical documentation for the San Francisco Public Safety Radio Group, and really appreciate good documentation work product.
Comments
As evidence, I submit how pleased so many were at the cutting of 350,000 government jobs. And the difficulty companies have filling blue collar (skilled and unskilled) positions. What are all those who were "left behind" going to do now? If they were going to get training or education for what remains, they would have done that already. If they were going to move to "where the jobs are", they would have done that.
White collar remote work was their best chance at a better life, and that appears to be slipping away. Now, the whole AI thing is happening. A lot of people should be worried. How much of that would be justified, I have no idea.
One thing that I suspect is that AI knows nothing, except the zeitgeist. I.e. - what people like us, and many self-appointed experts, are posting on the internet.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-plots-revenge-against-company-refusing-his-demands/
Foreseeing the end of the world is singularly seductive. I teach about communication and emerging technologies and we can document the destructive power of everything from writing to pencils to postcards to pencil erasers and certainly to the electric telegraph. At least in the past the central problem with the apocalypse is that it did not take into account the inherent craftiness of humans who manage to scaffold even newer technologies around the presumed agents of destruction. Plato denounced writing, but could not have anticipated the creation of glossaries, indexes, page numbering for that matter, concordances, book clubs or footnotes. Without the emergence of those innovations, he might well have been right that writing was doomed to making us shallow, clueless and arrogant.
Maybe not writing on paper, but writing on internet "social" sites has certainly accomplished that.
(MFO excepted, of course.)
Nice mini-essay! @David_Snowball I agree. Though, I am still unpacking the "scaffolding" imagery.
I think Michael Stipes said it best when he opined "It's the end of the world, as we know it" - emphasis on "as we know it".
Or maybe Mellencamp got it right, when he sang, "This may not be the end of the world, but you can see it from here".
I agree about Claude. I spent an hour yesterday and Claude summarized all 80 Randomized Controlled trials for Long COVID and CFS and divided them into free articles and ones behind a paywall.
"He" then produced an almost publication quality document about the usefulness of Hydrocortisone in CFS with references and review.
I know this literature pretty well and found a couple of articles "he' did not find, but he read one of the largest studies and found the answer I was looking for.
I was very impressed. This would have taken me at least an entire day