xyzzy

No one likes AI in movies, period. I'm just saying this reel sucked and that would actually be impressive. Anyway, SAG negotiated rules around this that require consent from family estates and compensation, so if the estate wanted to block it, they could.

I wasn't the one who down voted you, but I do think you're painting an overly optimistic picture.

I was referencing 4, which was released over two years ago and was a significant improvement over 3.5. I was genuinely impressed with 4, but I haven't been very impressed with anything since then. Probably the most substantive change was pulling chain of thought into the model itself, but everyone was already doing it anyway.

Maybe we just have different views on what counts as a game changer.

I'm not coming at this from a place of ignorance: I have AI patents to my name as both first inventor and supporting, and I've worked with these teams directly (although, crucially, not in video). I'm saying that the rate of improvement in critical (i.e., non-toy) areas is slowing down, and I believe it's a significant possibility that AI will start to hit the same walls it did many times before. That was before it entered the consciousness of execs and the general public, and because they aren't as familiar with the long stop-start history of AI, they don't think that wall exists.

AI companies definitely know that wall exists, and in at least one case they're getting increasingly nervous about it.

In other words, why don't we fix literally everything about this country instead of looking at guns?

Machine gun sales are illegal at the federal level except for guns manufactured before Reagan's second term, and they must comply with the 1934 NFA. That law was originally put in place because mobsters were having gang fights with tommy guns in the streets. Evading the law is evading the law.

Look man, I like going to the range, and home defense is fine. But saying we should do nothing on guns specifically and just give up is nuts. Firearms are the single leading cause of death for children and teens in this country: homicide, suicide, accident.

Here's one thing you didn't list: properly funding the ATF and FBI to go after FFL dealers who illegally sell guns to criminals and then claim they were stolen. Those guns are one of the biggest sources of street crime, and I'm sure they wind up in sales to Mexican cartels too, since they're all supplied by America.

Guns are a problem. They're not the only problem, but they're still a problem.

I had covid for the first time this winter and it took three months to fully recover. I experienced every possible symptom, including having such a high fever the first night that I slept under four wool blankets with multiple layers of thick sweaters and other clothing and the thermostat at 85°F / 30°C. I was still so cold I was shaking.

The next day I spent about six hours sitting upright with my eyes closed and just focused on physically inhaling and exhaling air into and out of my lungs so I wouldn't suffocate. Six hours.

I have high pain tolerance, since pain killers of any kind don't work well on me for genetic reasons, but over the next days and weeks I pulled the muscles in my torso so badly from violent coughing that I would involuntarily cry out when getting up or lying down. They gave me an x-ray to confirm I didn't crack any ribs. It took months for the cough to go away and my muscles to heal completely.

I'm regularly vaccinated against both covid and flu, but I got sick before the two-week period for immune system ramp-up was done. I'm sure it would have been even worse without the shot.

I'm physically fit and in my early 40s. I run and lift weights. I wasn't sure if I would survive those first two days.

this is currently the worst it's going to be

Yes, this is a favorite line from the industry, who assume the trend line continues uninterrupted into the future. But how about this as a counter future: what if AI plateaus?

What if it doesn't get much better than it already is except around the edges, and the next breakthrough is two decades away? Companies have exhausted training data and exhausted data center capacity in the quest to keep the trend line at the previous vector. Yes, they're building new capacity, but no one is making any money on this except Nvidia.

LLMs haven't seen any significant improvement in a couple years. Image generation has improved, but at a much slower pace. Video is no longer Will Smith eating spaghetti, but there's a long, long valley between where we are today and convincing, photorealistic, extended scenes that can be controlled at a fine level. Hence the challenge I posed.

When I read this it occurred to me once again that there's nothing really in it for groups like this to want to crush Gaza. I wanted to take a moment to finally reflect on it.

The easy answer is AIPAC or real estate or some other opportunity for personal gain. I think that's part of an answer for some of them, but I don't think it's even the largest part of the answer.

Another possibility is anti-terrorism. Hamas is certainly a terrorist organization and has committed horrific atrocities. But I feel like Republicans have always used terrorism as an excuse, not a primary driver.

Palestinians are brown. Is it simple racism? There are lots of brown people involved in conflicts we don't get involved in, though.

For some evangelicals, or those with lots of evangelical supporters, supporting Israel to bring about the end times and the second coming of Christ is probably a small piece of the answer. But I don't even really think most evangelicals think about supporting Israel from that perspective, but more from an emotional perspective. They simply equate Israel with the Holy Land.

Of course it's mostly leftists who are protesting in support of Palestinians. Is it as simple as wanting to hurt leftists? Maybe domestically, but would they execute on this plan with such urgency and persistence?

These all seem like pieces.

Then I zoomed out a bit and thought about the ideological conflict. Israel, a far-right government, is willing and evidently able to crush an enemy population (I think it's fair at this point to say Israel considers all of Gaza their enemy), destroy all infrastructure, and then starve every single person to death. The very definition of genocide. And they can do so completely and with impunity. No one can tell them what to do.

And I realized that while the other factors contribute to their support, Republicans support this primarily because this is Israel doing whatever it wants and crushing its enemies into dust. Republicans love it. They love the strength, they love the control, they love the cruelty, they love hating an Other, and they love simple solutions to complex problems. How many times have I heard a Republican say the US should turn the entire Middle East into glass? Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

And they would love to be able to do the same thing within the US.

From Wikipedia:

The name is derived from Cheivy Chace, the name of the land patented to Colonel Joseph Belt from Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, on July 10, 1725. It has historic associations with a 1388 chevauchée, a French word describing a border raid, fought by Lord Percy of England and Earl Douglas of Scotland over hunting grounds, or a "chace", in the Cheviot Hills of Northumberland and Otterburn. The battle was memorialized in "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".

Chevy Chase [the actor] was named for his adoptive grandfather, Cornelius, while the nickname "Chevy" was bestowed by his grandmother from the medieval English ballad "The Ballad of Chevy Chase". As a descendant of the Scottish Clan Douglas, she thought the name appropriate.

I watched the video. It's all 1-3 second shots of either recolored animals or two animals combined. In other words, exactly the kind of video AI can deliver at a consumer level. Not impressive. The TED audience politely clapped, but aside from one or two folks the audience didn't seem particularly impressed either.

It's all C-suite executives pushing this onto executives below them, who push it onto their organizations as mandates. The C-suite execs don't care about creativity; they only care about cutting costs. At first this means shortening development times. Soon this will mean cutting staff, and not 10 years from now, but way before this technology can actually replace a human.

You know what would've been a good showcase? Show Rogue One but with the film shots digitally composited with an AI Tarkin or an AI Leia, and have it be better than what was originally released in 2016. And have it be lip-synced. It shouldn't be too hard to improve upon those shots; they weren't very good.

But AI can't do that.

The Italian opposition party thinks that the ruling far-right party is doing this because they have a deal with the warlord: he can have a free hand so long as he controls emigration from Libya. He has a coast guard that turns back migrants and he keeps people in detention camps. He also tortures people.

Clearly this hasn't escaped the attention of the Trump administration.

That's the Declaration of Independence.

It's thought terminating. Unless you yourself are chambering a bullet and getting in your car in response, it says there's nothing you can do because fascism has already won. Defeatism demotivates others as well.

The Trump administration seems pretty confident these won't be used against them personally.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ekYplstlikU