my favorite part of that video is when he says (paraphrasing):

this is like a video call, and that’s cool… but we can do so much more… like, we can … have meetings

such vision :)

I spend my days in emacs and terminal emulators and I want this very badly in a laptop form factor so I can comfortably work outside.

I would argue that what’s going on is that they are compressing information. And it just so happens that the most compact way to represent a generative system (like mathematical relations for instance) is to model their generative structure. For instance, it’s much more efficient to represent addition by figuring out how to add two numbers, than by memorizing all possible combinations of numbers and their sum. So implicit in compression is the need to discover generalizations. But, the network has limited capacity and limited “looping power”, and it doesn’t really know what a number is, so it has to figure all this out by example and as a result will often come to approximate versions of these generalizations. Thus, it will often appear to be intelligent until it encounters something that doesn’t quite fit whatever approximation it came up with and will suddenly get something wrong that seems outside the pattern that you thought it understood, because it’s hard to predict what it’s captured at a very deep level and what it only has surface concepts of.

In other words, I think it is “kind of” thinking, if thinking can be considered a kind of computation, but it doesn’t always capture concepts completely because it’s not quite good enough at generalizing what it’s learned, but it’s just good enough to appear really smart within a certain distribution of inputs.

Which, in a way, isn’t so different from us, but is maybe not the same as how we learn and naturally integrate information.

Apparently if people are gullible enough you can even use video calls to commit crimes, no AI needed!

It was through a video call – where only the photograph of a man who was the same as Minister Jackson, with a cap and glasses – was seen where the imposter began to give orders to the two workers, who work at night. First, they removed 50 laptops from the different floors of the ministry. https://newsrnd.com/news/2023-07-22--negro-chico---the-prisoner-who-posed-as-a-chilean-minister-and-put-the-boric-government-on-the-ropes.r1-S2_TOcn.html

We use Notion at work and one thing that worries me is how the hell I’d make a local backup of all the data we’re putting on there. If there were a way to import my Notion data into something like this it would make a fantastic solution.

Literally had a meeting with someone yesterday who, after starting late because of trouble logging in and things crashing, started off the meeting by apologizing for using Teams but said it was just easier because it’s the default. Made me chuckle.

Anyone who chooses Teams because they actually think it’s better… I just… are we even using the same program?

How do you block people by region using a VPN? Just block the whole VPN?

Maybe. I’m interested in the specifics.

likely violate that data’s usage agreement.

It doesn’t seem to be too common for books to include specific clauses or EULAs that prohibit their use as data in machine learning systems. I’m curious if there are really any aspects that cover this without it being explicitly mentioned. I guess we’ll find out.