You can understand it but you can’t interpret the value. How many movies is a CD? Or a DVD? Or a 1TB SSD? Or even Avatar in 3D (presumably not 1)? How many movies have even been released in total/last year?

The number awes non-tech savvy folk but it doesn’t really inform them of anything. You could just as well write “more movies than you will ever need”.

And besides that, I personally think that news should try to educate folk. I’m completely fine with a comparison in the article. But why in the headline?

Fair point. I personally think that AI lives up to enough parts of the hype so that there won’t be another AI winter but who knows. Some will obviously get disillusioned but not enough.

There are quite a lot of AI-sceptics in this thread. If you compare the situation to 10 years ago, isn’t it insane how far we’ve come since then?

Image generation, video generation, self-driving cars (Level 4 so the driver doesn’t need to pay attention at all times), capable text comprehension and generation. Whether it is used for translation, help with writing reports or coding. And to top it all off, we have open source models that are at least in a similar ballpark as the closed ones and those models can be run on consumer hardware.

Obviously AI is not a solved problem yet and there are lots of shortcomings (especially with LLMs and logic where they completely fail for even simple problems) but the progress is astonishing.

Why do you think that? Dive bombing hits generally within a few meters, even during WW2 where it was used against tanks. Why would a guided rocket be that much better? Where would it get the target data from if it doesn’t have a human to guide it?

Obviously, there exist guided munitions with higher accuracy (<1m) but that’s not the majority.

Absolutely! Unfortunately, we are talking about the US. The article even says explicitly:

“Various U.S. presidents considered and approved billions of dollars in arms sales to controversial nations during his tenure — for instance, to Saudi Arabia in its ongoing war in Yemen.”

So it’s not the first time he’s about to make a very questionable choice. Though I guess he knows some details that blur the lines.

It does sound a bit weird. On the other hand, if he can influence the choices positively, he does have a point. If not him, someone else would take the job. I would have drawn the line somewhere else but I can understand where he is coming from.

And the fact that he resigned means that he has and likely had some moral compass guiding him.

I meant what actually happened is illogical to me. So I’m simply a bit confused and understand that there might be some nuance that I’m missing.

And I think an accidental leak is absolutely possible, it’s only that a conscious effort by China and the USA is unrealistic.

Just so you know, not only them are reading your response. I appreciate your response.

And as someone that isn’t working in the field, I have to admit that it is very illogical that they would conduct gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in a country previously hit by a coronavirus outbreak while violating safety standards. Obviously that’s hindsight but shouldn’t this be very obviously a bad idea? It’s not like the existence of a virus like COVID-19/sarscov-2 was completely unexpected.

Totally agree, though I haven’t really participated that much on Reddit. Seems like any disagreement is quickly framed as trolling over there.

Sure, no worries! I haven’t been disappointed yet by responding to downvoted comments so I will keep doing it :)

Just another similar metaphor: Power hungry. Not the stove kind but the dictator kind. To be honest, there are quite a lot of body related metaphors, e.g. drowning in trouble, blinded by ambition. I guess it comes down to evoking some strong emotion.

Consider another association with thirst: Desperation. In the mind of the author porn consumption is negative so anyone consuming porn is doing this out of desperation, despite knowing better. It essentially describes people being controlled by their base instincts. And thus this site is a trap, luring people against their will.

That is how I would interpret the word thirst in this context anyway. It’s not about a critical need, it’s about thirst being irrational and highly compulsive.

Sure, that’s certainly a valid point. But at the very least it shows that they don’t expect the sanctions to stop anytime soon. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that a war with Taiwan is coming.

Country builds up industry to not rely on opposing country in preparation for war.

Maybe we should be slightly concerned about that? IMHO it shows that Chinas ambition for Taiwan are quite serious.