does palantir have oompa loompas

A simple line graph with a white background. The horizontal axis is labeled “Difficulty” and runs from 1 to 5. The vertical axis is labeled “Danger” and also runs from 1 to 5. A dark blue line labeled “AI” starts at the top left at Danger 5, Difficulty 1, and slopes downward to Danger 1, Difficulty 5. An orange line labeled “Excel” starts at the bottom left at Danger 1, Difficulty 1, and slopes upward to Danger 5, Difficulty 5. The two lines cross at approximately Difficulty 3 and Danger 3. Alt-text provided by Microsoft Copilot

Here's my argument in chart form. (General purpose LLM-driven models with web search) AI gets you into the most trouble when you are at the most naive, while Excel just makes entering dates very annoying. We need to make it more like Excel.

a minor irony is that widespread AI adoption is also a plausible way to defrag an overly complex welfare state, or I guess enable potential recipients to navigate a fragmented one

I think Masley is also overstating his confidence a bit fwiw but that he generally has the better of the argument

yes, you should read Andy Masley’s debunking of it that is prompting this conversation

however the person who is confidently saying that we shouldn’t build data centers because of infrasound is not actually making an argument about infrasound, they are doing a different thing that is a lot like the boils-lakes thing

yes. it is possible that future research will uncover something about infrasound that would make us go, huh yeah that actually is a problem. the state of our current understanding is that it probably isn’t, but the state of our current understanding is imperfect

ok to treat as fake for now, might turn out to be real

he’s lived essentially his entire life in the US, no?

just give them senior status somewhere imo

a movie is more than its stars, and besides both Fraser and Weisz are Americans now

thicc

yeah Temple is the tough call

than all but two, I think?

at that scene precisely

you get me

watching THE MUMMY (1999), as one does. we used to be a proper country

well, sure

you’ve got to play the percentages when an advantage presents itself, and also you might line drive a goose

there’s just so goddam much of it that almost anything that can happen has

baseball is the only American sport that would react this way to a goose, which speaks to both the best and worst about baseball

if life gives you haters, make haterade

Wow that was a journey. This is my favorite part I think:

I am not real confident that we are going to be good at fighting the machines straight up although perhaps we will find ways to attack them slantwise

you hauled in a marlin here, kid!

maybe. the reason humanoid robots are useful generally, insofar as they are useful, is that human shape is useful for doing human shaped things

im so sorry

definitely!

that just stomps out the minority party mostly, no?