M. Fournier provides great insight into the perspective of Quebec's Francophone population. In the discussion of voter priorities he neglected the "environment". M. Guilbeault's beliefs are not an anomaly for Quebecers, his actions were. Off the top, 22% of Canadians want to see Alberta's O&G industry disappear. Alberta separatists have many faults, but wanting the destruction of another province's economy isn't on the list. Can only guess what those outside Quebec want (come on Gweenies, let us know). Please do not quote post-Trump polls, he is gone in two and a half years, and the faux patriotism will follow.
The bottom line, there are irreconcilable differences that make a country with both Quebec and Alberta unworkable.
The suggestion that the ChatGPT logs might reveal an AI that incited the Tumbler Ridge shooter is disturbing. It’s evident that they need to be investigated to find out if that was a possibility.
On the other hand, I still feel it’s far more likely that a lot of the talk about the role of OpenAI reflects politicians, government officials, and even the police deflecting blame towards a company after failing to act on multiple warning signs and incidents that did NOT involve an American AI company. Again, the chat logs would tell us a lot, and that may also indicate why officials aren’t eager to publicize them.
One of the “coincidental” omissions is the RCMP refusal to explain their return of firearms to the shooter’s family or the type of firearms used. Of course if they weren’t “assault(ish) rifles this would embarrass the Liberal party and their current civilian disarmament campaign.
I use AI regularly in my work, and the more that I do the more I start to think of it as having far reaching consequences, but not the ones people are worried about. Instead, I think of it the way word processors changed the practice of law, and spreadsheets changed the accounting and financial world.
Legal documents and financial data processing and modelling exploded in size and complexity. This in turn allowed for an enormous increase in the complexity of the things we do. Sometimes this was good, it enabled genuinely more sophisticated work in all sorts of ways. Other times this was bad, people didn't fully understand the consequences of what they were doing and especially how it interacted with what other people were doing. The work of being a lawyer or accountant changed, but it didn't go away. It actually got much more valuable - the things you can get out of a days work today are incredible compared to 50 years ago.
It's an incredibly useful tool, and it will disrupt a lot of things, but it seems to me that it will make a lot of people much more productive - but it doesn't make the job go away. It's still very much a tool that helps you do a job. When I see a big company saying they're laying off a lot of people "because of AI", I generally assume that's an excuse not an explanation.
The NY Times recently ran an article by one of their writers about using AI to sell his NYC property. With successful results $ 150k more than the human broker recommended and all the functions of a human broker including showing prepping managing multiple bids were letter perfect.
As a longtime resident of NYC, I am not surprised to hear that. Except for the showing and prepping to show part, I'm not sure how AI would do that. But it is a (very) longstanding complaint in NYC that brokers collect huge fees for basically no work, largely because the law forces everyone else to pay them. This has changed somewhat in recent years, but it's still a big problem.
Wonderful article. Puts the use of this new tool in perspective. And using it to avoid the effort involved in thinking problems through eventually makes you lose your ability to think critically and you become easy prey for demagogues, cultists, scan artists and others who prey on emotions. Same as an athlete or musician who stops practicing every day.
Hi Matt, enjoyed your guests on this episode, particularly David Shipley, he seems to be a very knowledgeable person in this AI field, to which I am not, but I have always had reservations about any technology that does your thinking for you and eliminates the need for your own critical thinking on any issue or topic that you are interested in . The human mind can recognize nuances and vibes ( I don’t care for that phrase), that AI Can’t, this is what makes us individual's that can offer a unique perspective and offer a out of the box point of view
More David Shipley, please. I would really like to hear more from him on issues like EVs and how much of an infrastructure and/or general public surveillance and/or espionage risks that EVs represent.
Is there a link to the testimony he was going to give that could be shared?
M. Fournier provides great insight into the perspective of Quebec's Francophone population. In the discussion of voter priorities he neglected the "environment". M. Guilbeault's beliefs are not an anomaly for Quebecers, his actions were. Off the top, 22% of Canadians want to see Alberta's O&G industry disappear. Alberta separatists have many faults, but wanting the destruction of another province's economy isn't on the list. Can only guess what those outside Quebec want (come on Gweenies, let us know). Please do not quote post-Trump polls, he is gone in two and a half years, and the faux patriotism will follow.
The bottom line, there are irreconcilable differences that make a country with both Quebec and Alberta unworkable.
The suggestion that the ChatGPT logs might reveal an AI that incited the Tumbler Ridge shooter is disturbing. It’s evident that they need to be investigated to find out if that was a possibility.
On the other hand, I still feel it’s far more likely that a lot of the talk about the role of OpenAI reflects politicians, government officials, and even the police deflecting blame towards a company after failing to act on multiple warning signs and incidents that did NOT involve an American AI company. Again, the chat logs would tell us a lot, and that may also indicate why officials aren’t eager to publicize them.
One of the “coincidental” omissions is the RCMP refusal to explain their return of firearms to the shooter’s family or the type of firearms used. Of course if they weren’t “assault(ish) rifles this would embarrass the Liberal party and their current civilian disarmament campaign.
I use AI regularly in my work, and the more that I do the more I start to think of it as having far reaching consequences, but not the ones people are worried about. Instead, I think of it the way word processors changed the practice of law, and spreadsheets changed the accounting and financial world.
Legal documents and financial data processing and modelling exploded in size and complexity. This in turn allowed for an enormous increase in the complexity of the things we do. Sometimes this was good, it enabled genuinely more sophisticated work in all sorts of ways. Other times this was bad, people didn't fully understand the consequences of what they were doing and especially how it interacted with what other people were doing. The work of being a lawyer or accountant changed, but it didn't go away. It actually got much more valuable - the things you can get out of a days work today are incredible compared to 50 years ago.
It's an incredibly useful tool, and it will disrupt a lot of things, but it seems to me that it will make a lot of people much more productive - but it doesn't make the job go away. It's still very much a tool that helps you do a job. When I see a big company saying they're laying off a lot of people "because of AI", I generally assume that's an excuse not an explanation.
The NY Times recently ran an article by one of their writers about using AI to sell his NYC property. With successful results $ 150k more than the human broker recommended and all the functions of a human broker including showing prepping managing multiple bids were letter perfect.
As a longtime resident of NYC, I am not surprised to hear that. Except for the showing and prepping to show part, I'm not sure how AI would do that. But it is a (very) longstanding complaint in NYC that brokers collect huge fees for basically no work, largely because the law forces everyone else to pay them. This has changed somewhat in recent years, but it's still a big problem.
Wonderful article. Puts the use of this new tool in perspective. And using it to avoid the effort involved in thinking problems through eventually makes you lose your ability to think critically and you become easy prey for demagogues, cultists, scan artists and others who prey on emotions. Same as an athlete or musician who stops practicing every day.
Hi Matt, enjoyed your guests on this episode, particularly David Shipley, he seems to be a very knowledgeable person in this AI field, to which I am not, but I have always had reservations about any technology that does your thinking for you and eliminates the need for your own critical thinking on any issue or topic that you are interested in . The human mind can recognize nuances and vibes ( I don’t care for that phrase), that AI Can’t, this is what makes us individual's that can offer a unique perspective and offer a out of the box point of view
More David Shipley, please. I would really like to hear more from him on issues like EVs and how much of an infrastructure and/or general public surveillance and/or espionage risks that EVs represent.
Is there a link to the testimony he was going to give that could be shared?