I’m guessing you weren’t around in the 90s then? Because the amount of money set on fire on stupid dotcom startups was also staggering.

The scale is very different. OpenAI needs to raise capital at a valuation far higher than any other startup in history just to keep the doors open another 18-24 months. And then continue to do so.

There’s also a very large difference between far ranging bad investments and extremely concentrated ones. The current bubble is distinctly the latter. There hasn’t really been a bubble completely dependent on massive capital investments by a handful of major players like this before.

There’s OpenAI and Anthropic (and by proxy MS/Google/Amazon). Meta is a lesser player. Musk-backed companies are pretty much teetering at the edge of also rans and there’s a huge cliff for everything after that.

It’s hard for me to imagine investors that don’t understand the technology now but getting burned by it being enthusiastic about investing in a new technology they don’t understand that promises the same things, but is totally different this time, trust me. Institutional and systemic trauma is real.

(took about 15 years because 2008 happened).

I mean, that’s kind of exactly what I’m saying? Not that it’s irrecoverable, but that losing a decade plus of progress is significant. I think the disconnect is that you don’t seem to think that’s a big deal as long as things eventually bounce back. I see that as potentially losing out on a generation worth of researchers and one of the largest opportunity costs associated with the LLM craze.

Sure, but those are largely the big tech companies you’re talking about, and research tends to come from universities and private orgs.

Well, that’s because the hyperscalers are the only ones who can afford it at this point. Altman has said ChatGPT 4 training cost in the neighborhood of $100M (largely subsidized by Microsoft). The scale of capital being set on fire in the pursuit of LLMs is just staggering. That’s why I think the failure of LLMs will have serious knock-on effects with AI research generally.

To be clear: I don’t disagree with you re: the fact that AI research will continue and will eventually recover. I just think that if the LLM bubble pops, it’s going to set things back for years because it will be much more difficult for researchers to get funded for a long time going forward. It won’t be “LLMs fail and everyone else continues on as normal,” it’s going to be “LLMs fail and have significant collateral damage on the research community.”

There is real risk that the hype cycle around LLMs will smother other research in the cradle when the bubble pops.

The hyperscalers are dumping tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure investment every single quarter right now on the promise of LLMs. If LLMs don’t turn into something with a tangible ROI, the term AI will become every bit as radioactive to investors in the future as it is lucrative right now.

Viable paths of research will become much harder to fund if investors get burned because the business model they’re funding right now doesn’t solidify beyond “trust us bro.”

This is yet another example of our system fundamentally being incapable of dealing with someone like Trump willing to deviate from all established norms.

Legally, POTUS is the classifying authority. They can give clearance to whomever they want.

That’s worked mostly fine since the classification system was established in the early 1950s because the assumption has always been that POTUS isn’t wildly compromised and completely surrounded by compromised individuals.

Oops.

Some decent comics pop up on Kill Tony on occasion, but, every time I’ve watched it, Tony himself has been deeply unfunny.

I didn’t know much about him beyond that other than the association with Rogan, but this… does not surprise me in the least.

Because Google holds a monopoly position and Epic doesn’t.

That said, the irony didn’t escape me either.

I don’t like him at all, but he was articulate and not at all unhinged.

I get what you mean here, but it’s also what makes Vance and whatever else comes after Trump so dangerous: the bar has been lowered so far that people now view “able to form coherent sentences” as “not at all unhinged.”

The man stood there and repeated the bald faced lie about Haitian migrants’ legal status and then had a temper tantrum that the rules said he wasn’t supposed to be fact-checked.

The substance of what he was saying was absolutely unhinged. But the Overton window has shifted so far that, because his delivery was neatly packaged, it doesn’t look that bad compared to what we’ve gotten used to.

I’ve honestly ran out of ways to keep saying the two very basic points here

Repeating yourself does seem to be your priority here.

If you had actually read through the piece I linked instead of looking for something to immediately disagree with in the snippet I quoted, you’d see she linked to this story. The entire reason we’re hearing about this now is because Trump was briefed on the threat by US intelligence and Trump is literally incapable of not immediately repeating what he’s been told.

And if you took 20 seconds to Google after that, you’d find that the DNI has publicly confirmed that the briefing with Trump happened. Additionally, the same story has Anthony Blinken confirming that the US has been tracking Iranian threats against Trump as well as other past and current officials. It even links to multiple previous reports discussing an increased threat profile dating back months just like I said was the case.

My point is that Trump is not the only source and that there’s been corroboration from parties who really don’t care about making Trump look good. I’m not inclined to believe the story because Trump said it and, yes, Trump is absolutely a liar; I’m inclined to believe it because it’s been fairly widely reported well before Trump said anything at all.

My “misunderstanding” is having followed this story for more than a single headline.

Marcy Wheeler has written extensively about it for months now. She’s been at the center of the story to the extent that she was one of the journalists that (presumably Iran) attempted to leak hacked Trump campaign documents through. She’s very adamantly of the stance that there is a real threat because it’s been corroborated by multiple sources who don’t have any interest in propping up Trump.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/25/dont-make-the-same-mistake-with-iran-that-denialists-made-with-russia/

I fear that, because of the polarization Trump has deliberately stoked, many lefties are doing the same thing that Trump’s MAGAts did with Russia: treat credible allegations that Iran is targeting him, both for hacking and assassination, as a hoax.

Regarding the hacking, as happened in 2016, it is not just the Intelligence Community (one, two) attributing the hack in real time. Both Microsoft and Google have described the operation. As I explained repeatedly regarding the 2016 Russian attack, big American tech companies have a similar kind of global reach as the NSA, and when someone uses their infrastructure to target someone, they have both the tools and an independent incentive to get the attribution right. There’s really no reason to doubt the attribution, from three of the entities with the best global reach in the world, that Iran targeted Trump’s campaign.

Regarding Iran’s attempt to assassinate Trump, there’s also no reason to doubt that. While the case against Asif Merchant, whom DOJ accused of trying to solicit a variety of operations targeting Trump, does rely on undercover FBI employees posing as wannabe hitmen, the underlying tip — from the guy Merchant allegedly asked for help recruiting a hit team — appears to be organic, just someone calling the cops. Plus, the effort bears certain resemblance to the effort to solicit assassins for John Bolton, arising from the same motive of revenge for the Qassem Soleimani killing.

Trump’s a blowhard. He’s absolutely going to use the story as a wedge. Don’t do his work for him by dismissing the possibility of what appear to be real threats out of hand.

I’m not saying we know the exact nature of what’s going on or that any threat is particularly immediate; what I am saying is that there’s enough information available from sources that aren’t affiliated with Trump that the possibility should be taken seriously.

Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets. But U.S. officials acknowledged in July that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally in which Trump was injured by a shooter’s bullet. That July 13 shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat and Merchant’s arrest has no connection to the Trump assassination attempt, a law enforcement official said.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-pakistan-murderforhire-trump-justice-department-5a3abe0895ae7c2be14f89fc4e49bc53

This is a story that has been building for a few months. While I’m not particularly convinced that this specific threat was particularly credible, there’s been plenty of reporting that the Biden DOJ is taking this seriously.

It’s not really surprising to me that Iran would want Trump dead. I don’t think they were anywhere close to actually accomplishing that, but I can certainly believe they’d try.

Yes, Trump and the rest of the rightwing are going to blow it up into something bigger than what actually happened, but it’s important to understand the truth in the lie because the story is potentially consequential in the wider relationship between the US and Iran.

The DOJ announced the arrest of a man working on behalf of Iran attempting to recruit assassins a couple of weeks ago:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pakistani-national-ties-iran-charged-connection-foiled-plot-assassinate-politician-or-us-0

The interesting thing is that it’s actually Gen X where Trump has disproportionately high support among women.

Oh, I don’t disagree at all.

Like I said, Nate’s definitely increasingly treaded into questionable territory in the past few years and I don’t have a sense for whether it’s impacted the model since I’ve honestly not been paying close attention to the horse race this cycle.

I was mostly pointing out that while the dude has almost always been a bad take generator, the 2016 model very arguably outperformed its contemporaries despite the popular view that they blew it. I wouldn’t be shocked if Nate’s sponsors and general ideological drift has impacted the model this cycle (*especially given Peter Thiel’s involvement), but I don’t have a strong sense for whether that’s the case either. I also wouldn’t be particularly surprised if he sufficiently separated the stats from the dumb ideas to produce a reasonable model either. I just don’t have enough info to have formed an opinion there.

That’s what makes this exceptionally stupid: ballots in Georgia are fully electronic.

You make your selections on a touchscreen voting machine. The machine records your selections. “Counting” is literally a matter of taking the output from the machine and telling a server to add up the totals.

The paper ballot is literally just a laser printer next to the machine that spits out a sheet of paper showing what the voter selected. The paper ballots are supposed to just be a backup in case there are problems with the machines.

A lot of other models were saying something ridiculous like Clinton had 95% chance to win or something. Nate Silver’s model seems better than others based on this, if anything.

The constant attacks on how 538’s model performed in 2016 says more about statistics literacy than it does about the model.

There is plenty to criticize Nate Silver for. Take your pick. Personally, the political nihilism that’s increasingly flirted with “anti-woke” sentiment is good enough for me. Some people might prefer taking issue with the degenerate gambling. The guy has pumped out plenty of really dumb hot takes over the years, so you have your options.

But his models, historically, have performed relatively well if you understand that they’re models and not absolute predictors.

She leads in every demo but 51-64, where she’s slightly behind. Interestingly enough, she’s got the 64+ demo by a good margin.

So the very last of the boomers and early Gen X. Definitely interesting.

The Fairness Doctrine is a red herring in the conversation either way. Even if it hadn’t been rescinded, it would have eventually become irrelevant.

The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to radio and TV broadcasters, i.e., broadcasters operating using the limited, publicly owned radio spectrum. It was only Constitutionally enforceable because it was intended to ensure equal access to what was essentially a public space.

Cable TV and the Internet turned that completely on its head. Attempting to regulate speech over a privately owned medium is a very, very different legal hill to climb. The most problematic sources of misinformation and bias today tend not to be AM radio but things like NewsMax or Libsoftiktok.

It’s a huge problem, but it’s not one the Fairness Doctrine would solve.

why is that move considered political?

Political lobbying is kind of inherently political, no? They weren’t passive observers or commentators; they hired lobbyists to influence the legislative outcome.

Actively working to shape the legal structure of the country to better suit their company is politics. It’s different from culture war politics, but it’s still politics.

If anything, economic politics are what traditionally drove a lot of the political divide in this country. That’s taken a back seat to a degree, but it hasn’t made it not political.

they didn’t want their non-political national brand associated with extremely politically decisive right wing media

Worth noting: Dunkin is owned by Inspire Brands, who went out of their way to toot their own horn about how they were successful in lobbying to kill inclusion of a minimum wage hike as part of COVID relief:

https://www.newsweek.com/this-fast-food-giant-bragged-about-killing-15-minimum-wage-1579273

So they’re perfectly happy to take political positions; they just recognize these platforms are even more radioactive than bragging about opposing living wages for their workers.

Further, Inspire is owned by Roark Capital – a company literally named after an Ayn Rand character. That’s how far out in the loonie bin these folks are. And the MAGAs are too far over the line even for them, lol.

So Kamala was also invited to speak, but she had to be at a funeral and couldn’t come. She offered to do it on Zoom, but the NABJ declined. To me this is more an indictment of them

I’m willing to give them a pass on this because Trump complained that he had wanted to do the interview remotely and they had also declined for him.

It sounds like the ground rules for both included “it has to be in person” and the NABJ stuck to their guns on that.