Darth Fluffy

Mmm, the tea sounds yummy.

Short answer, yes. Have you never read those 'the kids graduating this year never experienced XYZ' lists? Three Mile Island incident happened in the late 70's. The Vietnam conflict is further behind us than WW II was when I was a kid. No, wait, it's further behind us than WW I was when I was a kid. (Trivial side note, stegosaurus is further back from T-Rex than T-Rex is from us.)

Oops. Fixed it.

I was wondering if you were close to New Braunfels, but you are hours away. Cancel suggestion.

I will repeat my last stance; "It's a good idea, I'm sure it is benign, for now, but is is situated on a slippery slope. Eventual fratricide when your tanks overrun their current zone for instance is a thing that is going to happen. Or your scout vehicle. Or a family fleeing the conflict. Even human beans have this issue, how much more so a clueless idiot savant that 'knows where to blow up' but can't discern the subtleties and edge cases? Are they necessary? Uhm, probably, especially if you are the Ukraine, for instance, up against Goliath. Is it safe? In the short run, it's safe enough. It will probably save net lives, at least 'good guy' lives, even if it occasionally screws up. But consider the narrowly avoided WW III scenario. It isn't hypothetical. It's already happened. Multiple times. Fail Safe (or Dr. Strangelove, if you prefer) came close to being our reality. Where do we draw the line? Do we even know there is a line to draw? I deal with software every day. It does way more than it used to. It has not gotten fundamentally any better over time, quite the opposite actually. Being spied upon and (poorly) advertised to is now a thing I have to be concerned about. AI is not good nor evil, it is a tool. Like any tool, it can be misapplied (hence, the crappy mis-targeted ads). Even AI has fundamentally changed over the years. In the 1980s, 'Expert Systems' were the bees knees. They were rule based, readable, could be analyzed, required significant manpower to create, and had fairly good results. The modern trend is trained neural networks, which are much more quickly and easily created, have been demonstrated to have training biases (which can be exploited to defeat them; make your tanks not look like an tank to the munition's AI), and defy analysis. AI isn't going away any time soon, but I'll refrain from waving a flag for it and throwing a party.

Three Mile Island

In math, it can be difficult to prove a thing many believe to be true, for which investigation shows many examples, but that confirmation remains elusive. A few took centuries to resolve, some are still TBD. In the case of the Four Color Map Theorem, the reliance on computer search with has yet to be directly humanly verified makes its status controversial. Yet, to prove a conjecture false, it only takes one counterexample. You might suspect, from random observation, that "All prime numbers are odd." If you could repeatedly select a prime number at random from all that exist, you would almost certainly never select an even one. Yet we know the conjecture is not true, two is the counterexample, and in fact because of the definition of prime numbers, there has to be an even one to invalidate ll of the other even numbers. I have long believed in democracy; the alternatives seem to be much worse, but Donald Trump, who does not believe in democracy, with his cultish followers, is the most convincing counterexample I've seen. He's thrown a bag of wrenches into the internal workings of our democratic republic, and we seem near helpless to clean up the mess. If he is not locked up within a year, we have fundamentally failed. If Aileen Cannon is not indicted for obstruction of justice, we have failed. If Clarence Thomas is allowed to remain on the Supreme Court, we have failed. It will be interesting to see how this hand plays out. I'm on the edge of my seat.

Added irony, the bear thought he needed fiber in his diet, and viewed the running shoes as an extra treat.

Ooo, once again showing that Susan and Jay have an affinity for each other, nether like to be touched. She's always been a blond, hasn't she? It's always been light. What color did you expect? Brightly dyed, based on her personality? I can see that, never occurred to me, though.

Sweet. I wanted to travel, was unable to find an overseas slot.

The name is not the thing we need to be concerned about. Consider, if there were not a human in the loop, WW III would have already happened, decades ago, actually, initiated by machine failures on both sides (not at the same time). The scenario played out in Crimson Tide has played out in real life, although I'm not aware of any that have involved a submarine. AI is a crap shoot. Consider the anomalies you've undoubtedly seen in AI generated stuff, extra arms on people in images, stilted wordings and cadence on AI generated speech. Do we really want to give the village idiot a gun? I'm sure the anti-drone doggie is a good idea and is benign, for now, but it is a step down a path that is on a slippery slope.

I've had Jägerschnitzel, some place in the Dayton are around 1983-1984. I didn't ask if it was veal, I assumed it was. Eh, was good, might have been pork. Were you stationed in Germany?

She will be missed.

The Terminators are being fielded.

Two men were out hiking in the woods, when a bear spotted them and started running toward him. One of the men began to run, but his friend reached into his gear and pulled out a pair of running shoes. "What are you doing, you can't outrun a bear!" While this was going on, The Dumpster Fire told his followers, "I don't have to be smart, I just have to be more clever than you." (The bear eat the running shoes guy, reaching him before he had them tied. His former friend got away while the bear was occupied.)