>As long as the value created is more than the cost of the treatment, then it's a net-gain for the economy even if it's a net loss for that singular business.
Specifically on this - this is pretty much how pharma companies negotiate prices with governments - using quality adjusted years of life or saving from alternative costs.
> If all you're judging is the first-order impacts on a single business,
However you do have to pay the companies involved otherwise the activity doesn't happen ( as the companies will go bust and cease to exist ) - cf lack of significant research into new antibiotics.
There are also higher order effects in terms of business model - if you look at the broader business model of health care.
A concrete examples abound in the infectious disease space - many antibiotics are curative of something that would otherwise be fatal - and while there isn't a huge amount of money in antibiotics it has in effect contributed to the larger market of older people's diseases like cancer.
Every intervention simply delays death - and the older you get the more health care you need.
Isn't it amazing that all our jobs are being gutted or retooled for relying on this tech and it has this level of unreliability. To date, with every LLM, if I actually know the domain in depth, the interactions are always with me pushing back with facts at hand and the LLM doing the "You are right! Thanks for correcting me!"
> Isn't it amazing that all our jobs are being gutted or retooled for relying on this tech
No not really, if you examine what it's replacing. Humans have a lot of flaws too and often make the same mistakes repeatedly. And compared to a machine they're incredibly expensive and slow.
Part of it may be that with LLMs you get the mistake back in an instant, where with the human it might take a week. So ironically the efficiency of the LLM makes it look worse because you see more mistakes.
Sorry, your comparative analysis (beyond its rather strange disconnect with your fellow Human beings) ignores the fact that a "stellar" model will fail in this way whereas with us humans, we do get generationally exceptional specimens that push the envelope for the rest of us.
To make this crystal clear: Human geniuses were flawed beings but generally you would expect highly reliable utility from their minds. Einstein would not unexpetedly let you down when discussing physics. Gauss would kick ass reliably in terms of mathematics. etc. etc. (This analysis is still useful when we lower the expectations to graduated levels, from genius to brilliant to highly capable to the lower performance tiers, so we can apply it to society as a whole.)
> your comparative analysis (beyond its rather strange disconnect with your fellow Human beings)
You seem to be having a different conversataion here. I'm comparing work output by two sources and saying this is why people are choosing to use on over the other for day to day tasks. I'm not waxing poetic about the greater impact to society at large when a new productivity source is introduced.
> ignores the fact that a "stellar" model will fail in this way whereas with us humans, we do get generationally exceptional specimens that push the envelope for the rest of us.
Sure, but you're ignoring the fact most work does not require a "generationally exceptional specimen". Most of us are not Einstein.
The very fact that you merely see this as "a new productivity source" support my sense of the disconnect I mentioned.
Human beings have patterns of behavior that varies from person to person. This is such an established fact that the concept of personal character is a universal and not culturally centered.
(Deterministic) machines and men fail in regular patterns. This is the "human flaws" that you mentioned. It is true that you do not have to be Einstein but the point was missed or not clearly stated. Whether an Einstein or a Joe Random, a person can be observed and we can gauge the capacity of the individual for various tasks. Einstein can be relied upon if we need input on Physics. Random Joe may be an excellent carpenter. Jill writes clearly. Jack is good at organizing people, etc.
So while it is certainly true that human beings are flawed and capabilities are not evenly distributed, they are fairly deterministic components of a production system. Even 'dumb' machines fail in certain characteristic manner, after certain lifetime of service. We know how to make reliable production systems using parts that fail according to patterns.
None of this is true for langauge models and the "AI" built around them. One prompt and your model is "brilliant" and yet entirely possibly it will completely drop the ball in the next sequence. The failure patterns are not deterministic. There is no model, as of now, that would permit the same confidence that we have in building 'fault tolerant systems' using deterministically unreliable/failing parts. None.
Yet every aspect of (cognitive components of) human society is being forcibly affected to incorporate this half-baked technology.
Sport is entirely defined by the rules of participation.
You can't bring your motorcycle to the 100 meters, nor can you even wear certain sort of fabrics in swimming competitions.
It's not cricket if you throw rather than bowl the ball, you can't run with the ball in basket ball.
So what you are talking about is enforcement - cheating in online games is nothing new.
On the wider point - I do think good AI might open up a whole class of strategy games where some of the grind is taken out of the game, and the player ends up being much more of a strategic general type.
The documentary went out about a year ago with no direct airing in the US ( and to watch via iplayer you'd need to circumvent geographic controls ). I don't believe the documentary was an issue in the US at the time and I note Trump still won.
I note that the complaint about clips taken out of context is supported by a clip taken out of context ( ie a very short segment of the entire programmme ).
Now I'm quite willing to accept that that particular Panaroma episode had a slant - they are not 'news' per se but an in depth perspective type programme - and so they reflect the views of the authors.
But that's just one episode by one set of programme makers - it's not such evidence of clear and consistent bias - it's just evidence that some programmes take a view - whether that balances out over time requires you to look at the output at a whole, not just a single clip of a single programme.
For US people who think Tim Davie is some sort of leftie. When he was younger he ran for political office for the conservative party and before the BBC he was a VP marketing and finance for Pepsi.
Sadly over recent years the BBC has become a political football in the UK and wider, with pretty much all sides complaining about bias. This is just the latest chapter.
I'd argue that most of this complaining is done by people who are frustrated that they can't buy or commercially bully the BBC to take their side.
The way I read this episode is that the US poltical pressure over the Trump speech editing, created the required pressure for the current government to get rid of Davie. Now all sides are trying to use this crisis to further their ends.
For what's it's worth, my view is that the BBC is made up of a range of people with a range of views - some of which I agree with and some of which I don't, and the only bias is a tendency for a pro-establishment lens ( whatever that is at the time ).
When I see vendors complain about workflow and integration issues, it's because the vendors software is written around an expectation of a certain workflow and integration points and they find out in reality every customer does it slightly differently.
Some key challenges around workflow are that while the fundamental white-board task flow is the same, different companies may distribute those tasks between people and over time in different ways.
Workflow is about flowing the task and associated information between people - not just doing the tasks.
Same goes for integration - the timing of when certain necessary information might be available again not uniform and timing concerns are often missed on the high level whiteboard.
Here's a classic example of ignoring timing issues.
It compounds. If you have a lighter more efficient motor you need a smaller battery for the same range, that combined weight loss means you meed lighter brakes etc etc, and because the car is now lighter you size of your motor you need is less.....
They claim, this compounding effect works out to basically double the effective weight saving from battery and motor.
ie if you start with saving 50kg on motor, and 50kg on battery, you end up saving 200kg over all. Still only about 10% of a typical electric car.
> If you have a lighter more efficient motor you need a smaller battery for the same range
Nitpick: You can have a lighter motor, but you're never going to have a significantly more efficient motor because existing EV motor systems are already 95% efficient or better. The electric motor is an old and refined technology.
I'm not an expert - but the axial flux design while old is been largely ignored due to manufacturing problems that have now been overcome ( so most of the dev has been on the radial flux variety ).
And apparently axial flux motors have shorter magnetic flux paths which reduces losses.
ie the efficiency gain is due to the switch from radial to axial flux - not some incremental gain on radial flux.
Having said that the efficiency gains are relatively small - 1-2%.
However again there is a compounding effect, in that the reduction of loss of energy as heat, leads to requiring less cooling - and/or the motor is able to operate a full efficiency over a wider power output range ( as heating the copper increases the electrical resistance ).
Suppose you go from a 95% efficient electric motor to a 99% efficient motor. How much more efficient is it? You might say 1.04x (or actually 99/95 efficient). Except, that's not the whole story - electric motors need cooling, and you've just dropped the heat output five-fold (going from 5% heat to 1% heat). Lower heat output means less venting needed and thus better aerodynamics.
What's a bit of a shame is they are no longer an independent company ( ie wholly owned owned by Mercedes ) - so that might mean we are less likely to see these motors combined with solid state batteries any time soon.
Specifically on this - this is pretty much how pharma companies negotiate prices with governments - using quality adjusted years of life or saving from alternative costs.
> If all you're judging is the first-order impacts on a single business,
However you do have to pay the companies involved otherwise the activity doesn't happen ( as the companies will go bust and cease to exist ) - cf lack of significant research into new antibiotics.
That's why the above happens.
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