For most of the global south USAID was the arm of America they were most likely to interact with. It was food and schools and medicine and disaster relief. It was soft power and goodwill.
Not only has the longest charm campaign in history ended, but a door to China and others been opened.
The University of Iowa has a Social Sciences department that has professors in for Political Science, Anthropology, Public Policy, and other fields. It’s an accredited institution.
Can anyone check its knowledge base for me? I’m honestly not able to run it and the Qwen models I can run censor information critical towards the Chinese government.
I think people underestimate the loss of physical media in general and video stores in particular.
Physical media use to account for half of a films eventual gross. Some films even did better. See every cult classic (Office Space comes to mind easily).
When you’re making films that have to be produced for second run distribution on physical media they had to fit on VHS cassette.
Studio VHS production ended in 2006. Netflix VOD began in 2007. At that point the length of your film stopped mattering. It took a few more years for studios and directors to realize it, but that was the actual end of economic constraints.
SpaceX is profitable. Merging with xAI hides the absolute dumpster fire P&L xAI is bringing to the table. He can continue to fund his ego projects to the detriment of both orgs.
Frequently I’m told “A.I. will solve global warming.” Without remembering that we know how to solve global warming, we just choose not to.
There are so many more concerns around LLM use that for a lot of people the goals haven’t moved at all and that it remains there is no ethical use of A.I. not the least of which are:
There is no argument for A.I. that doesn’t amount to providing capital access to labor without providing labor a reciprocal access to capital.
The source material was ingested without permission or license of the copyright holder. No residuals are being paid. If your industry relies on crimes to exist it probably shouldn’t.
Hyperscalers are adding data centers to under developed and rural communities dramatically raising the cost of electricity while consuming water and providing few jobs.
A tragedy of the commons as the internet balkanizes into more and more walled gardens specifically to prevent the ingestion of intellectual property.
You’ll notice their specific example, the Cybertruck, is easy to identify on any road. And, as far as I can tell, not being mandated by any government for purchase.