Category: Me Myself&I

It just hit me: AI makes heavy specialization mostly irrelevant.

I don’t need years and years of making 3D models to build something sound in 3D now. I need 3D understanding and the rest will be taken care of. I can just type and go at it.

Same with everything ChatGPT can help with, which seems currently limitless.

So you want to be good at understanding a vast array of things rather than being hyper knowledgeable about one thing.

Holistic ways are always better anyway, so that’s good. But man, that’s a lot of experts out there who are (or will be soon) seething right now.

Yes, the digital world has always been democratizing things more and more. Sound engineers don’t really exist as a profession because software does the engineering now.

But the acceleration of democratization that ChatGPT unlocks, is batshit insane.

So I want to 3D print my future house, right?

The other day I was looking at CNC machines, Computer Aided Manufacturing and so forth. The way it works is that our computers have the 3D model and translate it to a language that the machine cutting real world 3D, understands. The language is called G-Code.

Well, who has G-Code built-in in its internal software features? ChatGPT.

Yes, as of today, you can type in a ChatGPT box something like “please build a square structure with a length of 5.609 feet, with a side made of glass, the rest being concrete, and make this entire structure earthquake-resistant, thanks!”. And the CNC machine will create that. Probably still buggy in March 2023, but probably quite perfect next year.

I can’t.

I keep thinking about and using GPT-4. The implications. Mane.

• You know how we all mostly start our careers by being someone’s assistant? AI just took that job that allows us to get a foot in the door. What now? Only sleazy bosses will do everything to have a cute blonde to assist them? Good thing is they starve to death, there’s that.
• My mom was an independent accountant for 40 years with the help of one assistant (yeah) and 2 computers. Accounting is mostly about applying latest laws/rules to businesses and crunching numbers. AI can do that basically now. My mom wouldn’t have a sustainable income if she had started in 2023 instead of 1983.
• My ex-wife wrote press releases for a living. A good career in 2009. 95% AI’d and auto-generated now.
• You know how visual art is a huge asset requiring dozens of artists to draw and design constantly in game development? Cool. Have you seen the quality of output from MidJourney? Yeah. Way, way better than even 12 months ago.
• Sound design and music? You still need a “prompt engineer” and it’s still rough, but for how long?
• Therapists and counselors? No one can compete with 24/7, wonderful assistance. No one.

It’s moving so freaking fast, TECH people don’t even have the time to grasp progress, let alone non-tech folks.

Y’all are not ready. And of course, AI is getting better every single day. Sundays too. At night. Yeah!

It’s not the end of the world scenarios that interest me. It’s the fact that due to this rapid acceleration in the continuous shift that we’re experiencing in how we live, we have the very real possibility to turn everything around and create a healthy world for all. That is such a rare opportunity and occurrence in history.

I’m almost losing sleep over this.

I bought myself a $25 80s lamp and it works fine. Turn a switch on, turn a switch off, nice normal light, great.

Meanwhile I realized that yes, that LED multicolor lamp that I always leave on the same 2200K because I’m not fidgety like that, is controlled by a remote that ate about 6 AAA batteries in 18 months.

Before 2000, you used to pop one battery in a remote and be done for 50 years. Not anymore!

So instead of replacing an incandescent bulb every 3/5 years, I replace batteries (no way to turn it on/off without the remote) every year.

The opposite of efficiency, right here. Oh, and also:

LEDs mostly suck. The end.

Yes Bill, it has begun.

The Age of AI has begun | Bill Gates (gatesnotes.com)

In the United States, the best opportunity for reducing inequity is to improve education, particularly making sure that students succeed at math. The evidence shows that having basic math skills sets students up for success, no matter what career they choose. But achievement in math is going down across the country, especially for Black, Latino, and low-income students. AI can help turn that trend around.

Bill, I know that you know better than that. Education barely changes anything around inequality. We have generations upon generations who did better scholarly and are still struggling financially. Here is the most recent example:

5 years ago we were telling students “do CS, you’ll be fine”. Today, they are or have graduated, AI is a reality, and we need ten times less programmers in 2023 than we thought we needed in 2018.

(for those who don’t know, AI is very good at programming)

That means, all those 2018 students are now competing with no end in sight. One will get a job, the next 199 will not. They all did what they were supposed to. They’re all probably good enough to get a job, it’s just that AI exists now but didn’t five years ago. And you know how companies love their employees, right?

BILL, WAKE THE FUCK UP

It is just the beginning and it is already massively disruptive. AI literally doesn’t help the way things used to be, today.

First, we should try to balance fears about the downsides of AI—which are understandable and valid—with its ability to improve people’s lives. To make the most of this remarkable new technology, we’ll need to both guard against the risks and spread the benefits to as many people as possible.

Second, market forces won’t naturally produce AI products and services that help the poorest. The opposite is more likely. With reliable funding and the right policies, governments and philanthropy can ensure that AIs are used to reduce inequity. Just as the world needs its brightest people focused on its biggest problems, we will need to focus the world’s best AIs on its biggest problems.

The solution is called Universal Basic Income. For all who do not own property. Society living on top of jobs that pay for everything, is over. It’s been gradually over with technological achievements decade after decade since the end of WWII, if we want to be honest. And that’s fine. Wealth just needs to be redistributed equally.

AI —that I’m toying with everyday and everyday I’m thinking holy fucking shit— is the nail in the coffin of society propelled by jobs. There’s so much of what’s the point with this tool next to me? Yes, paradigm shift. It’s real.

What’s the next step?

I’d like GPT10 to control and manage the federal banks around the world, balancing interest rates and money in a rational way, providing enough for all, which is totally doable without AI but yup, greedy little bags of meat.

But before that UBI now, y’all.

I’m not watching TV much. But I think I was hit with that as well.

From a creative and entertainment production point of view, I think it’s hard to end a show well. I loved Breaking Bad and it was great, but I can’t remember how it ends because the end is meh. And it is not the point really, it is the journey through the five seasons.

The end of shows is rarely great. But I think it’s far worse now. It gets bad and plot-less out of nowhere. Directors hide themselves behind the “that was my vision; I’m an artist” while I look at long ass shots that mean nothing and maybe everything? Ugh.

The last episodes of Atlanta gave me that vibe and I couldn’t care less about the characters then. Just lame semi-open endings. No resolution, just emptiness and stereotypes.

The incentive is to make people talk about shows, make them obsessed by starvation. It might have worked for a minute, but I think it’s killing the relationship between creator and viewer. It is abusive.

Stay safe y’all.

So I’m all over incandescent, long-lasting bulbs and candle lights like

A few dimmers and I’ll be set.

It is a wonderful article about why LED lights suck and are slowly making us lose it.

I’m probably pretty light-sensitive, always have been. When I get headlights the strength of high-security prison floodlights in my face, I get stabby. It infuriates my retina to the point of wanting to immediately shut down this light now and forever.

All those cheap LED bulbs on porches, desks, in bedroom strips, in every single piece of electronic even when it’s completely unnecessary (I have a guitar pedal with a blue LED light more powerful than a thousand suns), are messing with me.

The article provides the answer as to why: that blue, 450-480nm light. It totally makes sense now. I knew it. I knew something was off with those LED lights, even when broadcasting 2700K warm light.

The answer to why LED lights invaded our lives the way they did is not so much their efficiency, it’s the fact that every single business out there in the world was like “we need to replace [item] for better lighting” which probably created an insane amount of transactions.

We already know that LED lights die rather quickly. All the supposed gains from having low power lights are offset by the costs of replacing all the bulbs, transformers and replacing all the LED lights that will die. It’s fake efficiency.

Once again, they disguise technological advance as a Quality of Life improvement when it’s essentially only a business agreement probably detrimental to said Quality of Life.

In 2023, now that we’ve put LEDs in everything, the answer, once the sun goes down, seems a blindingly clear “No!” Throughout the studies I’ve been digging into, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing about “Well, yes, blue light from LEDs is nasty to humans, but we can’t question the 24/7 productivity that lighting offers, so… I suppose we might file off some edges with future research…” – without ever asking the questions about “Is 24/7 productivity actually good for humans?” 

It is not in any way.

Do you know why we have cities? Because people created neighborhoods with and for their families, also creating businesses to sustain said folks.

Then cities competed against each other, involving businesses and government. Who would get the city hall build next to them, who would get the pretty church, the general store, etc.

Then cities competed with high-rises. Who is going to get the tallest building, expressing how progressive those cities were by building structures that offered everything in them. Hotels, restaurants, stores, apartments. Living in houses meant chores, maintenance, the old world. Bigger buildings (steel and concrete making them fireproof, a giant technological advance at that time), services, meant progress.

Los Angeles built up skyscrapers in downtown almost exclusively to say “hey, we’re not New York or Chicago big, but we’re trying!”.

It’s 2023. For a decade now the zeitgeist is remote work, delivery for everything, internet shopping. How many downtown buildings in America are still needed-needed? Probably less than half of them. They never really recovered from the move to the malls and suburbs since the 60s, anyway.

The way we live today completely destroys the need for the classical city.

No need for high density that was needed to get multiple stores on one block, once. That is pointless today because people order from their couches. We just need lockers, storage and stores that are a few blocks away because otherwise we wouldn’t walk ever (and we need to).

I keep thinking about the wild inertia between the ways we live and how we shape our worlds. Crazy, 50-year lag.

The counter-argument to UBI is always “and how do you finance such a big expenditure, misterr?”

Oh, you just do. Just like we do when we save banks.

See the Silicon Valley Bank thing? You are in the red? Minus $15B?

*changes number in database*

No you’re not! That’s how it’s done. Money is a number in databases. It’s always hard to comprehend considering how we’re all doing, I know.

We change the number for the bank and the credit runs up to 2095 or whatever, when it’s supposedly due. When the date will be changed again. There’s no accountability.

Ask SV, it’s all bullshit

(the best way to make the government change the number of $ in your bank account database instead of the bank account database, is to ask and vote for UBI, please do so thank you)