97 replies to this topic

[Mind]

We have to be on the alert for killer robots sneaking up on us. Did you hear a sound in the night? Bots. Do you have the feeling something is following you? Its bots. They are waiting for a moment of inattention and they will get you. They have the ability now to look like someone you know changing appearance through cgi. If your neighbor starts acting a little strange there is a good chance a bot took over and your neighbor is long gone while a bot took his place. Do not take any chances. As a matter of fact, how do we know you are not a bot now? Why should we trust you? You never warned us against shape shifting bots. The sudden change in avatar is a dead give away. Your posts against AI are obviously to throw us off the track so we won't suspect you are the one who infiltrated. If you deny any of it that, it is absolute proof so fess up

 

Perhaps we should make lists of who is a definite bot, who is a maybe and who is safe? We need a test to weed out the shape shifting robots among us. Make a list and check it twice

 

 

 

 

Indeed

 

I appreciate your sense of humor. Humor is often used to make it through uncertain and/or dangerous times.

Edited by Mind, 17 February 2026 - 06:16 PM.

[adamh]

The doom and gloom was getting a little deep.

 

 uncertain and/or dangerous times.

 

Thats certainly true. I feel a lot of it is due to international tensions moving toward war. Idiot trump says he is going to attack iran because isreal told him to do it. When he was cutting govt waste and fraud, eliminating entire agencies, I was happy. When he no longer kept his promises, lied and stonewalled, he lost a lot of support. Watching him try to bully entire nations and sometimes succeeding is nerve wracking when the warships sail and things happen. He doesn't like what someone said so he slaps 100% tariffs on them. This is nuts

 

It was supposed to be make america great, now its support isreal whatever it wants and anti semitism is the worst crime. Those you are not allowed to criticize are your rulers. Nuke war could break out at any time, several nations have said they will give iran a nuke to use on its enemies. They now have upgraded radar, and missiles that can get past the iron dome. And trump wants to attack again. I never voted for that. WW3 could be any day now

 

Compared to that, killer robots are a minor concern

 

 

[Mind]

Some interesting opinions about recent AI developments/economics

 

Who exactly is going to be earning more money when AI/robots take all of the jobs?

 

What aspects of humanity are we losing during the rush to develop artificial superintelligence.

 

Several former executives and engineers from the leading AI companies are sounding the alarm about the fast development of AI. It isn't just Yudkowsky, but also Nobel laureates, leading philosophers, and CEOs that are getting freaked out about the seemingly unstoppable/rash AI development. I am willing to listen to them, especially considering the utopian scenario has no signs of happening yet.

[Mind]

You are a starving young entrepreneur and coder. You come up with a great idea for a new APP. You slave away for a couple of weeks and put it up on the APP Store and Gooogle Play. You stand to make millions of dollars. Do you give it away for free? Because of "prosperity for all".

 

You are a major shareholder of a large AI/robotics company. The company is doing well, but then the CEO decides "AI/robotics prosperity for everyone" and starts giving away the product/services for pennies. You stock will soon be worth zero. What do you do? Shareholder revolt, of course. The Board fires the CEO and hires someone who will increase profit margins.

 

Look at what happened to OpenAI. They were supposed to create prosperity for all as a non-profit. Just the opposite happened.

 

I am unsure how we get to "prosperous" UBI/UHI when economic forces will all be aligned against the concept. If anything, you will be given unlimited digital entertainment/porn to keep you distracted from your pitiful place in life, at the bottom of the totem pole, collecting welfare scraps from the government.

Edited by Mind, 12 March 2026 - 05:48 PM.

[Mind]

Another year and another round of price hikes for the streaming TV services. In addition, there are increasingly more ads on these services.

 

Just a reminder, TV used to be free with ads. Traditional TV had sports, movies, weekly series with top actors, educational content, etc...

 

Did I mention traditional TV is free.

 

For all of the people who continue to say that things will be radically abundant/cheaper, why are we paying so much more for "good" entertainment? (not counting voluminous low quality online digital slop). Everything about making TV/movies has gotten more efficient over the last couple of decades - yet the price keeps going up and up and up.

[Mind]

As I detailed earlier, what we will likely see is ever more sophisticated methods to raise prices and manipulate people into paying way MORE for products. AI will make this even easier. By the way,. the easiest way to avoid this is to never buy anything online.

 

Amazon accused of price fixing.

 

Jet Blue caught using surveillance pricing.

 

Instacart caught in a price-fixing scandal.

 

Hopefully they are all sued out of existence - lol, not a chance of that happening considering they own the Federal government - for the most part.

 

Because these companies are - for all practical purposes - monopolies, they no longer compete on price and service (even though they claim to). The evidence is clear. In order to juice profits, they need to find ways to charge more for the same product, even though the cost to produce the products is declining (relative to inflation). Prices are not going down anytime soon. The evidence shows just the opposite is happening. The only abundance you will see in the future is digital media/porn.

[Mind]

There will be no "abundance" in travel.

 

Consider the robo taxis.

 

Let us say I wanted to take a road trip to Flagstaff, just on a whim some weekend. The trip is 1,750 miles. If I used a Waymo, it would cost anywhere from $4 to $40 per mile (the price varies wildly, depending on place and time). So the cost of the road trip using the Waymo would be anywhere from $7,000 to $70,000 dollars - and that is just one way!!!

 

If I drove my small sedan, which gets 35 mpg on the highway, it would cost me $150 in gas (at $3 per gallon).

 

In addition, I can leave at anytime I want, stop anywhere I want, arrive faster, than with a Waymo.

 

So far, robo-taxis are a rip-off. No abundance at all.

Edited by Mind, 24 April 2026 - 09:27 PM.

[Mind]

Has anyone heard about Calico discovering new ways to reverse aging? Cure cancer? Anything actionable or translatable for human health?

 

Of course not. Instead Google/Alphabet is now going to scan everything you store with them to turn more of your life into profit - to train their AI - to do everything except create abundance for the rest of the world.

 

I am still amazed that many people believe that some of the most unethical corporations on the planet, are going give away everything for free, so we can all live in abundance.

Edited by Mind, 25 April 2026 - 05:06 PM.