But your analogy also breaks down because once an AI has written the code it’s very much concrete, right? The AI may choose to modify that concreteness into something differently concrete, but it’s not like you are in any doubt about what the AI comes out with (if you bother to check it, which you should).

I use to write asset systems during the AAA gaming part of my career and the elusive “[my] perfect file format” always eluded me.

Over the years I spent many a showers and long drives thinking about what the “perfect file format” needs and what kind of architecture would support this. I started formulating these into long text files and over time things crystallised into “yes this would work”.

I never had the time to write the code fully. A couple of false starts, coupled with “I should do this in rust even though I’ve been in C++ my whole life” meant it lingered and lingered.

The architecture felt right though.

Enter AI; feeding the spec text files to an AI made me resolve a couple of “ah, yes, but in practice this bit of information isn’t available yet” gotchas but the code worked. I worked in architectural layers, carefully checking input, internals and output of each before proceeding to higher layers. And tests and tests, that’s you would never have bothered to write yourself, kept each layer verifiable, even out in the far corners of reasonable.

It worked and it was real affirmation to see 20 years of pontification made real.

But then I started profiling it. And hot damn, an LLM knows nothing about cache, file systems nor does it think about ways memory allocators and virtual memory systems work.

There was 200-300% speed ups to gain from hand tuning it and iterating with a proper profiler.

And all of this happened at code level, with real concrete code.

So yeah, an AI can be a wonderful tool. And the code it produces and iterates on is concrete. It’s not like the AI starts from scratch every time you have a thought. So the very, very first pass is not deterministic. But the thing you deliver forwards very much is.

Of this I agree. It may very well be the end of us.

Having said that, LLMs produce far better code and architecture than most developers.

Flame on!

… then you win

I really do think we could neuter social media’s harm by requiring them to positively identify users as actual people or own the consequences of what gets posted - like how a newspaper has the legal accountability for what it says. This “neutral platform” is not healthy for our democracy.

I’m all for freedom of speech - but I don’t think those freedom of speech laws had anticipated how wide the damage of speech can flow and how stealthily things can be spoken. Is “freedom of speech” the same as “freedom to amplify anonymous voices to millions, with someone else choosing what voice to amplify”?

And it’s not hard to set up. The EU’s new identity network requires zero-knowledge-proofs - ie “this is a real person” is all that social media platforms would be able to verify. I’d obviously be deeply against the social media companies being able to positively identify users.

But I usually get downvoted to oblivion for making this point.

But do be mindful that he can only spend 90 days/year in the U.K. I guess the rest he’ll spend on his yacht. Oh no.

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

I wasn’t implying that LLMs are conscious. That’s literally how I started my comment out.

I am implying that I cannot, to myself, explain why I’m very bothered by someone pulling the legs of a fly, but not phased by torturing an LLMs.

You seem very clear on this, which is great, because then you can help me understand why. Please.

Right - I love how we are both downvoted for asking questions. I wasn’t even implying that LLMs are conscious, merely that any critical review of why I think that quickly falls short.

I agree that an LLM is not conscious.

But can I probe your argument.

It deeply unethical to capture a fly and pulling its legs off one by one. Would you agree? If so, you are not basing your argument on capability but on something else.

Now, is what is happening inside a brain metaphysical or physical? In other words, can a brain and its function be fully understood and - in some future - be fully measured? If so, you are not basing your argument on the concept of a soul, but on something else.

The distinction you seem to be making - if you’re in agreement with my first two points - is one of “the thing can replicate itself and therefore is alive”. If that’s the argument, it’s unethical to cut a tree down or to break a blade of grass.

I’m not asking to prove any point but to collectively explore why we - you and I - feel the way we do. Because I sure as shit struggle to explain why I feel uneasy about the fly torture but not as uneasy about LLM torture.

Porn has also become a lot harder and the exploitative nature of the business has become more apparent. It’s not just people’s opinions that have become more prudish (though sure, they have) it’s also that porn is now, broadly, much much harder.

People were shocked about deep throating in the 70s, for goodness sake. Today that’s light fayre.

That’s not how it is and not how they were designed. It was assumed from the beginning that they would live in “an ecosystem”, ie tied to secure storage and secure distribution by some system handled user side and indeed that is what phase 1 looked like: Google, Microsoft and Apple stored them on your device and replicated them across your devices. Phase 2 introduced a “interception” API so other providers could get involved easily - so providers like 1Password could rely less on browser hacks and also offer secure storage and secure distribution. Then finally, phase 3, now more or less locked down, described a portability system so that you can migrate to other ecosystems.

Passkeys don’t require physical storage at all. All of my passkeys are in the cloud, synced across platforms.

The AI said so

I know, a VPS is nothing and running wireguard in a docker container takes 3 minutes.

Fair, but costs of resets overall. This is not a factor in tech giant costs.

You think big tech did this to save… on … CPU costs of password resets?

This is actually really what you think?

Love them.

Using 1Password for sync.

Never ever failed to connect to QR code passkey request, even on weird corporate networks.

Portability has gotten so much better - there’s now a defined standard for portability that passkey providers are implementing.

Honestly I cannot understand the criticism at all.

I was deeeep in the OneNote eco-system. I forced myself out of it and spent a lot of time finding the best alternative so I can save you some time: The answer is Obsidian.

But to get to even 60% of what OneNote does, you need a fair amount of plugins, which lowers stability somewhat and, having tried the three biggest sync systems, you might as well go straight to paying for their sync. The self-hosted sync options do not work reliably.

Eventually we can reduce the human brain down to this. Is it ethical to use that blueprint for experiments? We’ve got to be better than this, I hope. And it has to start before we get there.

I find this deeply unethical.

If true (I mean, it’s GB News, so who knows?) the location where he was seized matters enormously. On the US embassy, driven in a blue license plate car, onto a US base with US jurisdiction? Entirely within the rights of the US, as per long standing diplomatic norms and U.K./US treaty.