Thing is, it depends on whether llms + reinforcement can self-improve in principle. Learned recently that cognitive scientists, before the transformer & llms, were studying the possibility that thinking and learning might be based on some kind of prediction, i.e. something similar to token prediction, and I quite suddenly became less skeptical about the possibilities of llms. (Some will say I’m late to the party of course.) But if knowledge to date has been accumulated in a process quite like “chain of thought” in llms, then I don’t see any reason that computers won’t self-improve in the near future.
At a high level, we're still at the stage of AI development where we're taking cues from nature.
Take the most recent qwen and deepseek models with offloadable n-grams, which function (both in name and vaguely in capability) like human memory "engrams".
I long for the days when voting for outsiders was a fun way to fill out a ballot, back when election outcomes didn’t matter very much because the probable winners were all qualified to hold office.
Unpopular opinion: I’m fine with cameras if they can be shown to solve crimes and lower the crime rate. No, I’m not ok with ICE surveillance, or secret police punishing free thinkers, but the extreme anti position simply cedes the technology to the authoritarians. So basically, if you’re promising London safety and the freedom and safeguards of the UK, I’m all for it!
It means that there is a spectrum of outcomes, and there is a band left of center which is anti-crime enough to support cameras with laws to govern them.
>So basically, if you’re promising London safety and the freedom and safeguards of the UK, I’m all for it!
Is this sarcasm? A good friend is a criminal defense barrister and his opinion does not match yours on the justice perspective. Meanwhile two good friends were hospitalized in two separate incidents in London. Just random violence. "Nothing we can do" said coppers. Daily you tube videos of pickpockets targeting tourists. etc.
Unless you are very rich, London's surveillance state isn't helping you.
Bonus: the Mayor of London and the Mayor of the City of London are different people, because the City of London is a semi-independent state with different police force. IIRC the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and St Pauls are within the "square mile".
Uh, I guess you haven't compared my town's crime rate to London's. I'm for curtailing people's gun rights as well, for essentially the same reason as I'm for more cameras. There was an apparently random shooting at an intersection not far from me, and the shooter escaped in a car. The police pieced together some footage from the two private cameras that showed the car first getting some gas, and then parking before the shooting. They found the driver and he confessed to the shooting.
Perfect dystopia. Make sure all criminals have guns, then tell citizens "Look! We used the surveillance state to catch this one criminal!" Not all criminals. Certainly not rich criminals. Just enough of the "wrong kind" to make the news now and again, keep you scared and voting the right way.
Like, did you know that more money is stolen via wage theft, than all of shoplifting and burglary combined?
You think that's unrelated? The solution to gun violence is not surveillance state - because the state benefits from gun violence. The solution to gun violence is ending poverty and inequality.
Organize underground punk shows. Make a deal with bands to split the door in exchange for hustling a crowd. May require some fun conversations with the police later, but hey.
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