[-] Lugh@futurology.today 7 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Submission Statement

Lots of people in the world of SEO, marketing, and copywriting are excited about the possibility of creating vast quantities of AI-generated text. They have a problem. Human waking hours are finite, and many of us may be near our upper limit for absorbing new content.

OP examines the other side of this. How new AI's advances allow us to examine text. It seems obvious to me this will have more profound effects than the ability to generate text. Consider one aspect of this.

AI should allow us to analyze the logic in politicians' speeches in real-time. There are over a hundred logical fallacies, and they are a standard part of political debate. So much so, if you took all the logical fallacies out of political debate - what would you have left? Soon people may have the ability to easily find out.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 day ago

a lot more to writing than a prompt

This particular tech seems a lot more than merely providing a prompt. The users also write the story and dialogue. The AI just produces the visuals.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 16 points 1 day ago

Palantir's panel at a recent military conference where they joked and patted themselves on the back about the work their AI tools are doing in Gaza was like a scene with human ghouls in the darkest of horror movies.

Estimates vary as to how many of the 30,000-40,000 dead in Gaza are military combatants, but they seem to average about 20%. This seems like a terrible record of failure for an AI tool that touts its precision.

Why does the US government want to reward and endorse this tech? Why aren't people more alarmed? By any measure, surely Palantir's demonstrated track record is one of failure. The Israel-Hammas war is the first time the world has seen AI used in significant warfare. It's a grim indication for the future.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 4 points 1 day ago

I think Youtube shows what a world is like when everyone can make video content. Most is bad, but some is good, and a small amount is very good. Like any human endeavor.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 20 points 2 days ago

A particularly aggressive form of colorectal cancer runs in my family. My grandmother, an aunt, and other relatives have all died of it in their fifties.

This is still at the clinical trial stage, but the approach could work for many other types of cancer too. Fingers crossed it's as successful as possible, and available as a treatment very soon.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 43 points 1 week ago

It's still early days for this tech. Right now its maximum output is 800W, which is not a lot. OP mentions this delivering 3kWh on a typical day, about 10% of a typical US household's consumption.

But it's the direction of travel that is interesting here. This will get better, and cheaper. Then systems like it will be able to deliver 25% of daily consumption, then half. All with affordable systems you can install and set up yourself.

Many people have nightmares about dystopian and apocalyptic futures. I would feel safer in a world where electricity production was decentralized and could survive major disasters.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 1 points 1 week ago

Thanks Everett. We'll be in touch soon.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 31 points 1 week ago

The US has imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, and the EU is considering increasing its tariffs. I'm sympathetic to the worker/industry protection argument, but many people will look at decent EVs being sold in China for $15,000 & feel they are being cheated.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Unitree G1 base model is priced at $16,000. It doesn't often get talked about in discussions of robots, but I think Chinese manufacturing capability is very important. They will likely be the first to make affordable humanoid robots that take off at the consumer level and sell in the millions.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 2 points 1 week ago

Thanks Philofuel. Like I said above. We'll get back to people in a couple of weeks or so.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 week ago

Thanks threelonmusketeers. We haven't thought about how to organize contributions yet. We'll leave this up for a couple of weeks and sort it out when we see how many people want to help.

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Lugh@futurology.today to c/futurology@futurology.today

UPDATE

Thank you for the offers of help. We looked at Open Collective for the payments, but it seemed a bit over-complicated for our needs now. We went with something simpler. You can contribute any amount, starting at a £1 minimum. It can be recurring or one-off, up to you.

We'd like to give recognition in the sidebar to our supporters. Your contributions are anonymous by default. So if you would like to be mentioned, please include your fediverse handle when making your contribution.

https://ko-fi.com/futurologytoday

Original Message

Our server costs aren't huge. We are projecting them to be about $150 for the whole of the next year. However it's all being paid by just one of the moderators (Espiritdescali) right now, and that doesn't seem fair in the long run.

Any amount of help is appreciated, no matter how small. Leave a comment here, or message me or Espiritdescali if you want to help. If anyone helps we're going to thank them with a prominent 'Supporter's Roll Call' in the sidebar. They are also welcome to have other input into the site or take on a moderator role if they wish.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 6 points 1 week ago

There are surprising edge-cases for life on Earth. Microbes that live off the energy from undersea vents for example. Tidally locked planets may have day-night border zones that are habitable. I think it's worth spreading the net wide. We don't know for sure what's impossible, and we're only starting to understand all the myriad ways other solar systems & planetary systems might function.

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Lugh

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