HN has a sizable contingent of commenters who reliably show up to defend billion and trillion dollar corporations and reprehensible corporate behavior. I honestly can't explain it without alleging astroturf.
I think Elite Dangerous had this same issue, at least the years after it was released when I played it. You have this whole to-scale galaxy to explore, but the vast majority of them contain no story, no life, no space stations, no other players, and are just similar rocks and noble gas bags over and over. Once you've seen about 100 systems, you've seen them all. Which is likely what our real galaxy is like, too.
The game is 2 million light years wide, but a meter deep.
I always find it interesting to read takes like this. I get it, I also bounced multiple times off Elite Dangerous due to boredom.
But in the end it was always intended to be Euro Truck Simulator in Space.
The main problem was that (just like ETS2 interestingly) there was no real satisfying end-game money sink.
For me the colonialisation update fixed that.
But I also find interesting that it seems to be very personal. For me it is motivating that eventually you will have one or multiple systems that you made "your own" (I loved playing X2 and X3 back in the day for the same reason). But lots of people played Elite for years and just hauling cargo and honking systems for the heck of it, and just watching the credit balance go up was motivating enough seemingly?
I just wanted to chime in that there is nothing wrong with your English. I'm a native English speaker and I, too, find using an LLM to accomplish something to be very gambling-like. You're wagering something of value (your allotted tokens, and your time) on an unpredictable outcome that you hope benefits you.
thanks, i really appreciate the kind words. it’s just such a precise language that i worry i might be accidentally adding (or not including) important subtext in discussions like this
I think the point is that when you're driving (at least in a combustion engine car), the 60-70dB noise floor is so high that it almost doesn't matter how good the speakers are in an ideal silent, soundproof chamber.
I believe the disconnect is that the goal isn't to be as good quality as a controlled indoor environment; it's that there are car setups that sound dramatically better than other car setups. There is merit to your interlocutors stances, even though cars are a challenging audio environment as you point out.
There's only so much you can do. A car is filled with funny angles, plastics, and a lot of glass. It's never going to be a particularly good acoustic environment even if you manage to shield 100% of the road noise.
You can't have a proper soundstage in a car no matter your setup, which kinda degrades a lot of music that wasn't designed for clubs. In a car it's basically background music when you're driving because you can't really give the music your full attention anyway (passive listening), where the lack of focus also masks a lot of details you'd hear on a proper stereo system (active listening).
Edit: to answer your question below, I like both, active and passive listening. But I wouldn't try to optimize for active criteria like details in a passive evironment like a car, so I'd spend more money on fun things like buttkickers instead of high end detail.
Obviously a car isn't a dedicated listening room. Music can be enjoyed by just listening to it and not focusing on all the nuances. Or are you one of those hardcore audiophiles who can't listen to music without a ultra high end sound system?
Also soundstage can be greatly improved by placing speakers on non factory locations because manufacturers usually prioritize packaging above all else. A tweeter placed at the bottom of the A-pillar near the windshield is the worst possible location and sounds like it was put in a tin can.
Background noise in a car also has a solution, turning up the volume. Plus getting quiet tires.
Sure is for bass. It's a sealed box that you're in, with shapes that stop anything from acting like a simple room shape, and surfaces that can soak up highs, and so small that this absorption is a huge percentage of surface area.
There's a reason mix engineers have always done 'check the mix in a car'. It might be way more revealing of what's happening in the bass, even when the speakers are relatively weak. Once you get anything decent, watch out. It's a bit like having your whole body inside headphones.
> I recommend ripping your car apart and putting sound insulation panels everywhere you can! Also replacing your sound system...
Ripping the car apart to install sound insulation might void your warranty.
I have a Bose sound system in my car with 11 or 13 speakers (they're everywhere), but the car is so poorly insulated that I have to turn up the volume quite a lot at highway speeds, or even after about ~ 35-40MPH.
That's the point, isn't it? You'd have to spend a lot of money on related stuff before audio upgrades, otherwise those audio upgrades are just money wasted.
The difference is that humans are at least supposed to be accountable for those 250,000 errors. Those humans can naturally care about doing a good job, or they can be motivated to care. They can fear consequences and take pride in avoiding mistakes.
AI can do none of this, and cannot be held accountable for mistakes.
I would take a human with a 10% mistake rate but who can be held accountable, over an AI with a 0.1% mistake rate that is totally unaccountable for its mistakes.
> I would take a human with a 10% mistake rate but who can be held accountable, over an AI with a 0.1% mistake rate that is totally unaccountable for its mistakes.
You would take those odds? 100x more deaths?
I agree that AI _companies_ should be accountable for the software they produce but I’m not convinced you would go for a 90% chance of survival if you can choose 99.9%.
I guess if you're dead, then it ultimately doesn't matter if someone can be held accountable, although it might matter to your next-of-kin.
But, yea, in general, it would take a huge (1000X or 10,000X) difference in expected outcome for me to trust something that is unaccountable. If the AI company was actually held accountable for its AI's mistakes, I'd definitely change my statement.
But what's the point of holding something accountable here? Creating an incentive for them to take your needs seriously? Why does an incentive matter if you already know that one has a superior expected outcome?
AI is a tool just like any other tool. Holding “AI” accountable is like holding JetBrains accountable for the bugs I wrote with their tool than endangered lives of people
There is simply too much money and too many interests vested in the narrative (which many people already believe) that LLMs are thinking, feeling, sapient beings already beyond the threshold of AGI that deserve some status of legal personhood and liability. It is impossible to create the future that these people want to create - one in which AI comprises the new legal class of nobility in an age of technofeudalism - if AI remains just a tool.
how will this manifest itself!? like you envision a future where there will be say a hospital, ran by anthropic which is AI powered fully, no company behind it, just plain Claude running everything from the moment you walk in till you walk out?
I am having a hard time imagining a future where “AI” isn’t just a tool that a given establishment decided to use much like anything else they use
> you envision a future where there will be say a hospital, ran by anthropic which is AI powered fully, no company behind it, just plain Claude running everything from the moment you walk in till you walk out
Everything as much as possible, yes, and the company behind it will be an AI driven autonomous corporation as well. Although I suspect that by then there will be some industry specific AI model being used by hospitals, not just plain Claude.
AI will handle patient data, diagnostics, prescriptions, everything that doesn't absolutely require a human and can't yet be done by a robot.
Somewhere, some human will be making money but they will be far from any legal liability, probably safely ensconced in a bunker on a private island when the gravy train really hits the fan.
>I am having a hard time imagining a future where “AI” isn’t just a tool that a given establishment decided to use much like anything else they use
The people making the decisions, investing the money and writing the laws imagine so much more, though. You assume the future of AI is governed by rational people making rational decisions but it isn't, it's governed by Musk and Thiel and sociopaths and grifters and cultists who want to immanentize the eschaton so they can stand at the right hand of God.
You can bet that every major company CEO on the planet is creaming his jeans at the thought of AI doing every task (except their own) that they currently pay humans to do. Their ideal end state is that the company is themself, thousands of AIs and thousands of robots, zero payroll. Every one of them is dreaming of this.
I do not disagree but I also do not see how, without liability for its action, would a business have customers. Surely there are idiots but if someone put up a sign in front of the hospital like "we are not liable for anything that happens inside these walls" I will venture a guess that business will suffer. This will also open up business opportunities for other businesses to jump in with "we stand by what we do, you'd be crazy to go to _____ for services we are offering."
I might be naive to the core but I think, in the long run, I am not very Doom&Gloom about AI like you are sounding, people have a way of (eventually) making their own decisions and won't put up with this world you are pitching (I hope lol)
I'm not pitching it per se, I'm just claiming that's what I think the endgame for AI is. Corporations (especially in the medical, pharmaceutical and insurance fields) are already masters at avoiding legal liability. What are you [royal] going to do, bleed to death in the streets? Not get your insulin or heart medication? What decisions are you going to make when every company does the same thing? Get your chemo from a shaman? People already put up with massive cruelty and corruption from the medical industry, they would roll over for this as well.
I can even see it being sold as part of healthcare reform. After all, we don't trust doctors anymore, we don't trust science, surely AI would be more fair, more rational and ethical. AI can't be paid off by big pharma to push pills you don't need. AI doesn't care what race or gender you are. AI doesn't get exhausted after a 24 hour rotation. Costs would go down, quality would go up. That would be the pitch anyway. The rest would be in the fine print, not a sign in front of the hospital.
I don't want to live in that world, but I can see a path to it from where we are now. I think some kind of legal personhood for AI as a pretense to apply legal liability to AI is inevitable.
Human doctors and nurses are not accountable for outcomes, and they can not be accountable or our medical system (and any other medical system) would cease to function.
A nurse and doctor have personal liability in the US.
Imagine having to do paperwork as a nurse after working a 12 hour physical job, overnight, 8pm to 8am.
The idea mistakes happen because the nurse doesn't "care" is utter bullshit.
I think of how if I am really tired I just don't do anything that risky at my job until the next day. A nurse doesn't really have that option and it is all the highest risk there is. Every day, all day. All with a chronic, massive work shortage for dogshit pay.
The most brutal thing I have read about nursing are nurses saying the lucky people are the ones who failed out of nursing school.
The gadgets would have to meet an impossibly low false-positive rate and they'd need to be mandatory and non-removable for this to be effective. Constantly impaired drivers won't voluntarily install the devices, and any non-impaired driver who is falsely prevented from using their car will get rid of the device and not care about the insurance discount.
Also, they really need to be able to detect the other really bad cause of impairment: mobile phone usage.
I know someone who's been at fault in at least 12+ car accidents, and she keeps driving (as someone else put it you almost have to drive in the USA). There are colossally bad drivers out there and we don't yet have a viable system for keeping them off the road.
Most US states have some sort of assigned risk pool which makes minimum coverage available to even the worst drivers, as long as they still have a valid license. (I'm not claiming that this is necessarily a good public policy, just pointing out that it exists.)
But, when the (sad) alternative is that person keeps driving without insurance and the unfortunate victims are left with the full bill, I think the absurd insurance may be better than not?
Surely this problem is mostly solvable with ALPRs now. Every plate is attached to an owner and the insurance status can be checked. There's the situation where an uninsured driver is using someone elses car, but that's at least most uninsured drivers taken off the road.
An estimated 1 in 6 drivers in Los Angeles don't have insurance. I know at least a dozen people who have been hit by uninsured drivers, and that's not counting hit and runs, who probably are also mostly uninsured.
The victim's own insurance will pay if they have uninsured motorist coverage (you'd be a fool not to have it, living in LA at least), but there is basically no punishment for the uninsured driver, assuming a fender-bender. The police won't do anything. The insurance companies don't think it's worth their time to try to squeeze out something from someone who probably has almost nothing anyway.
Unfortunately, if you make (or are born with) enough resources, you might skate for quite a while. Eventually you might get a lot of fines and even some jail time, but afterwards, some people just take their chances and drive anyway.
This happens too often these days. Company fucks up some little thing and now it's all of a sudden your problem and you need to spend an hour on the phone here, an hour writing a letter there, and so on. Our institutions have been obliterated and there's no longer any regulatory agency or framework to come down on the practices.
This is the truth! I've had to do more credit card chargebacks and chase down more companies that owed me money or otherwise failed to live up to their side of a transaction, in the past 24 months than the total of the past 24 years. I think companies have realized that the current regulatory environment allows them to simply do whatever they want, commit fraud, take people's money and disappear, fail to provide service, and they know the onus is on the already tired and busy Average Joe to hold them all accountable. There is no more government willingness to go after companies anymore.
This also tracks with my recent experiences. It's possible it's a coincidence but I'm currently trying to get big, dumb, expensive errors made by Ikea and Costco sorted. I've been dealing with both of these companies for decades and never had issues with either.
As the post mentioned, I suspect it's going to get worse and harder to recoup losses as these companies remove more humans from the loop on all sides of their operations.
My own abstract is: there's been a collective understanding that the only terms a dominant party needs to adhere to are the ones that can be enforced by the little guy. If a rule can't be enforced by the little guy, the big guy can and will violate it with impunity.
It defies all fiduciary sense as well. Rather than let me go and pay the severance I'm owed, I've caught (with hard evidence, lawfully obtained) three different managers pretexting or executing steps toward my constructive dismissal. The most insulting part is that they think I'm too stupid to notice, or too weak to fight back. Now they're inviting EEOC investigations, DoD audits and worse as I complain and share a decade's worth of unrelated dirt to everyone with a public reporting hotline.
They could just settle and make me go away, but I'd sooner expect they'd send a hitman after me than concede a single dollar. It feels almost personal.
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