Weekend Edition 44: AI Actually Stupid?
Weekend Edition 44
Apple Troubles
Microsoft and Activision
XRP News
AI News
WE 1 – Apple Troubles
WE 1.1 – TSMC to Postpone Chip Fab in AZ
This plant, which was one of the big stories with the CHIPS act here in the US, now will not be in production for 5-NM process chips until 2025, because we do not have enough skilled labor to make it real sooner than that. How sad is that, y’all? We, who started the silicon revolution, don’t have the skilled technical personnel to staff TSMC’s plant for its most advanced chips. They have to import workers from Taiwan to train us how to make their designs. Ouch. So much for the STEM emphasis, with a large side of wokeness which is more concerned with training people to be offended than it is with giving them real world skills, huh? This is pitiful. I realize that this is the height of tech manufacturing right now, but come on, America. We need to fix this problem, and clearly, throwing more money at it hasn’t worked (hello, corruption, my old friend…). Big shock that more money hasn’t really helped the education sector in the US… It gets eaten by bureaucrats and their corporate partners, rarely affecting the individual students in the classroom. Similar to the homelessness crisis in many parts of America… Whenever an industry evolves around an issue, you can about guarantee that issue will not go away anytime soon. In fact, the issue that these orgs allegedly exist to solve usually gets worse as they pad their own pockets at the expense of the human beings they were supposed to be helping. This goes for education just as much. Individual teachers are usually good people (minus the brainwashed groomers in the younger generations) who really care about their students, but when you funnel huge money into teachers associations and unions, as well as districts and departments of education, it rarely trickles down, and almost never creates better outcomes. This is what led us to where we are today, with a shortage of technicians and engineers who are capable of this kind of work. I do not have a good short-term solution for this, but the best I can do in the medium to long term is to offer that the system needs a drastic overhaul.
How does all this relate to Apple? They are still slated to fabricate their bionic A-series, and M-series silicon there. This pushes back production for their devices for future generations, in terms of that plant, which is key for Apple trying to make more US devices in the US vs China.
WE 1-2 – UK Bill Has Tech Firms On Edge
Apple claims that it will disable FaceTime and iMessage support for UK users if the bill is not changed, and this is only the most recent firm to threaten to remove services from the country if the Online Safety Bill is not amended to remove the requirement to negate encryption for users’ accounts. Others included in this are WhatsApp and Signal, which are each e2e encrypted communication apps, if you are unaware. You may be wondering what e2e encryption is, so here’s a simple explanation: end to end (e2e) encryption is a set of protocols by which one can encrypt, or scramble the contents of a message. This is a useful feature for apps like WhatsApp and Signal, as well as FaceTime and iMessage because it enhances the privacy of the parties involved by not simply sending plain text information back and forth. Really good end to end encryption will not store messages on servers anywhere, and only allows parties with the correct encryption keys to access, or decipher the encoded information. This bill in the UK threatens to undo that privacy by seeking to force these companies and apps to install back doors so that things like child sexual abuse materials can’t be hidden via encryption. On one hand, I see the need to end those destructive things, but is more power for the government a good solution? If you have been around the channel for a while, you’ll know how I feel about that. If not, here’s my answer to that question: “Hell No!”
Apple is protesting (as are the others) and threatening to pull their products from the UK rather than make changes to them which would affect users in other countries as well. The UK probably has a big fight on its hands here, since so many people love their i-devices. I sense much smoke and not as much fire, but we’ll see how things go, here.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66256081
WE 2 – Merger Deal Extended for MS and Activision-Blizzard
Remember how I said that time was running out on this deal? That time has been extended by three months (so that MSFT would not be on the hook for a $3 billion fee for breaking the deal), to give them time to restructure and resubmit the deal to the UK’s CMA. May not have all the time in the world to work with, but both parties are so willing to make this happen that they easily pushed the deadline out so that they’d have a chance to finish the deal. What do you guys think? Should regulators have the power to stop deals like this? Are monopolies bad? Aren’t there ways for Joe & Jane Public to handle monopoly or near monopoly power without resorting to big government? Let me remind you of something… That word, government, when you etymologically break it down, means mind control. Govern = control, ment = mind. So yeah, do you want to give someone you can’t even see more control over your mind when they have not done anything to deserve it? What was the last positive thing the government did for you? Can you remember? I didn’t think so. It has all been geared to make you accept their control, buy more crap, and punch the clock to be “productive”. I digress, though. Get me straight, I don’t like Microsoft or Activision-Blizzard, either. I think that everyone should get as far away from the control structure that is Microsoft as you can, as soon as you can. Activision-Blizzard is a hot mess as well, their whole reason for being is to addict you to entertainment, which is an amusement for your mind. I have no problem with playing a game here and there, but they profit off of people more or less selling their souls to PLAY A GAME. People whose whole lives revolve around gaming… That is unhealthy on a personal and at a societal level as well. So, do you want a company who seeks to control everything in the digital world to pair up with one whose business it is to addict people to meaningless entertainment? Come at me. Again, I do not have a problem with playing games from time to time, but when it becomes your life, that is not good for you or for our country. Same thing goes for youtube, Rumble, Twitch, Prime Video, netflix, EA, Epic Games, etc. All are designed to catch and distract you from things that are better uses of your time, such as bettering yourself, whether by getting in shape, working on your spiritual life, learning a new skill, or any other number of productive things which can benefit you and potentially society as a whole. Wow. That was pretty strongly worded. My point is that we all need balance in our lives, and if they are out of balance, whether too much work, too much play, or too much of any other thing, it is not good for us.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/19/microsoft-activision-agree-to-extend-deal-deadline-to-oct-18.html
WE 3 – Ripple Expects Use By US Banks to Pick up in Q3
After the ruling from Judge Torres last week, Counsel stated that they expect banks to start approaching Ripple about their On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product for cross-border money transfers (the original purpose for XRP, if you recall). This would replace the aging and allegedly corrupt SWIFT system which has been in place for 50 years now. SWIFT, from what I understand, is slower than would be ideal, and allows certain actors to swipe fractions of pennies on every transaction. XRP, from what I recall, is almost instantaneous, so no need for clearinghouses and the like, because transactions are essentially instantaneous. This makes doing business among other countries much more frictionless. The purpose is to make more or less foreign exchange transactions simpler and faster. Those are, at least, the talking points I’ve heard. I am not a financial expert, nor a crypto/blockchain expert, but if we can grease the wheels and make sure money gets where it is going faster, then that seems like a good thing to me. Does that sound like a good thing in your world as well? Ripple will reevaluate its situation and whether it really needs to register as a US security based on its demand with domestic banks. The only thing that this is likely to change in the short term is price, which for those of us with diamond hands, is a beautiful thing. In the longer term, it may transform the crypto token into something less accessible to the unwashed masses, but who knows.
WE 4 – AI News This Week
WE 4-1 – Nick Clegg Thinks that AI, “Is quite stupid”
Nick, who is the head of global affairs at Meta, threw out this gem while being interviewed on the BBC’s Today Programme. I’ve been saying this all year, guys. These “generative AI’s” are more idiot than savant. They can do some pattern recognition, and copy similar things in novel ways, but do not understand what they are being asked to do when you ask them to “create” something for you, whether an email, an essay, a research paper, or a Bar exam. Current generation AIs are based on huge datasets called Large Language Models (LLMs). Think of them as T9 predictive texting on a massive steroid overdose. These “AIs” are nowhere near being able to take your job, much less take over the world. They cannot think. Meta has decided to officially open source their Llama 2 LLM, which powers all of their AI across their products. One thing to note, though, is that Meta has now partnered with Microsoft to host the open source part of Llama 2. Of course, the writer of the article is concerned about regulation and how it is harder to regulate open source software. Duh. Open Source kind of defies regulation because anyone with the skills can take the source code for a project and run with it to create whatever they want. Ok, so Llama 2 is now open source, but it is still mostly Meta’s work, and now being hosted on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. What does that mean for privacy when two of the most egregious privacy rights ignoring tech firms are partnered on something? I still wouldn’t touch it with a 39.5’ pole, Mr. Grinch.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66238004
WE 4-2 – Investing In AI
The CEO of StabilityAI believes that this opportunity will balloon to $1 trillion in valuation between all of the AI development companies, foundations, and the regular tech companies on the periphery. He also warns that it could wind up being the biggest investment bubble of all time. StabilityAI makes Stable Diffusion, the AI image generator. I can believe that this is the beginning phase of a huge bubble with as much hype as there is around it. Honestly, it kind of reminds me of the hype I saw as a kid around the dot com bubble. I’m not convinced that this is that revolutionary. It is a cool thing, don’t get me wrong, but I do not see the hype of it being so earth shattering. Let me repeat my constant refrain: If you choose to use one of these tools, remember that it is just that, a tool. Do not depend on it to do anything mission-critical. Always check whatever it generates for you. Be aware of the privacy concerns inherent in most of these systems because most of them are closed source and operated by Big Tech companies, all except for Llama 2, which has now been open sourced. I’m struggling with that one as well, though, because Meta is still mining data from it, and now Microsoft can, too. That gives me the willies.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/17/ai-will-be-the-biggest-bubble-of-all-time-stability-ai-ceo.html
WE 4-3 – As Counterweight, Another New Group Sings Praises of AI
The British Computer Society has pulled together a group of over 1300 experts to sign an open letter calling AI a “force for good”. They see that it can be very useful tool to enhance human flourishing, and that the dangers of “super-intelligent AI” are far-fetched and not worth worrying so much about right now. That is not to say that they are unconcerned about the very real issues with privacy and intellectual property, among other things which present themselves in the current iterations of the technology. One of the signatories, Richard Carter, has founded an AI-powered cybersecurity company. He thinks that AI is more likely to enhance productivity rather than displace human workers. I think this is overly rosy of him, yet understandable, with the endeavor he just embarked upon. AI as it is now is not really a threat, as, as he says, “It (ChatGPT) is like a very knowledgeable and a very excitable 12 year old”. The doom and gloom, as I have also said, is overkill. There is much work to be done before it can really think at anything like a human level, and we have much to do to curb its abilities through ethical and moral training. We are nowhere near any of this. Do we need to be careful to not become complacent, either? Yes. Does that mean that we need to run around with our hair on fire because the AI-induced end of the world is upon us? No. What do you guys think? How much do you use these tools? How much do you trust them? What stock to YOU put into the hype? Let me know down below.