cougarmeat

With Microsoft leading the AI advance, I no longer fear AI taking over the world. I think of all the programs MS has "acquired" and made worse while driving better-designed programs out of the market.

And remember, $2,000 in the 70's was much more than $2,000 today.

But while more cores are nice, I'd prefer more time spent on "smart" utilization of those cores. For example, over the decades there have been many development languages for Mac, Current examples would be Xojo, X, and Swift. But trying to take advantage of those multiple cores is a major challenge with them and often the overhead - especially when development time and maintenance are factored in - exceeds the benefit.

A simple answer is, "Well that application is not one fit for parallel processing." But is that always the case? I'd like the compiler to say, "Well, well, well, looks like I have 8 (or more) CPU cores. How can I segment this code so it executes in the shortest possible time?"

In other words, it seems like the field where it's beneficial to have multiple cores is pretty narrow. Sure, it makes great marketing copy. But it seems that unless one is actively involved in video editing, multiple cores, CPU or GPU, will hardly make any difference.

Ref: one of the first posts - Somehow I am able to understand things without, "having a meeting about it." How do I do that? I would also not implement a policy about something before I understood the issues. Unfortunately, many political gestures (jesters) are all about theater. They want to look like they are doing something.

A great example is the USA's TSA policies. You can't bring more than 3 oz of some liquid or toothpaste tube with you, but nothing stops two or more people from combining their items once on the plane. Or, the TSA wouldn't let me bring nail clippers across but I could buy them in the gift shop on the other side. It's just theater. It looks, to the unsuspecting public, like something useful is being done.

The downside is the time and resources that are being spent creating and maintaining ineffective processes - taking time and resources away from finding actual, effective solutions.

I predict, that when it comes out, the power plug will be incompatible with everyone else's power plug.

When we read about systems like this, there's a tendency to imagine a perfect operation - even though our life experience gives us many contrary examples. For example, I'm not sure those always advocating for capital punishment would be so enthusiastic if they were more aware of incorrect incorrect verdicts (people proved innocent later by DNA testing or confusion by the real criminal) often because of fraudulent or incompetent representation.

There have been stories of families being contacted about possible sexual crimes because they posted facebook photos of their very young children innocently playing naked in a home swimming pool. My personal experience in the work environment - a medical clinic - was once the IT Dept implemented a "sexual content" filter/reporting system, when I or my colleagues were doing work research we'd trigger an alert that required a visit to HR. When looking up information about a dermatologist, the website might feature cosmetic surgery with an example of breast adjustments. The image would trigger the filter/alert.

Years ago, a local childcare facility had to close down because of accusations of sexual abuse. Turned out, one child was upset they didn't get their way about something and made up the story to "get back" at the care center. Once one report was made, parents of the other kids started questioning them - I'm guessing there was a bit of a FOMO frenzy. Soon there were many reports.  But then, once there was time to do an actual investigation, one by one the accusations were withdrawn. Eventually, the facility was cleared of all wrongdoing. By then it was too late. Newspapers print "leading news" in big bold print. They print "oops - sorry" in small print where space will allow.

So if you are going to have a system, especially an "automatic" system for detecting bad action, you should have a system just as robust - or more so - for corrections when the "evil detector" gets it wrong. Because that can ruin lives.