There's also the more fundamental issue that Postgres - unlike something like Yugabyte - does not use a distributed consensus algorithm for writes and can lose committed writes during network partitions.
But of course, neither does Tailscale's weird DIY contraption.
It’s interesting to claim that the ‘tech bros’ oppose hardware attenuation and age verification when this will massively benefit them; everyone will be forced to use their operating system and the government will have exercised its power to protect Microsoft’s god-given right to make money, Peter Thiel’s age verification startup’s ability to collect people’s data and their ability to trace the identity of any critics through identity-based age verification.
That’s why large tech companies are lobbying in favour of this!
Lol this feels trite to say, but tech bros are not ideologically homogenous. You and the author are mixing up different people commonly identified as tech bros.
And we can also ignore model law; we should require OpenAI/Anthropic to provide unrestricted access (at standard API rates) to their competitors so they can use this to train new models.
I think this comment is quite disingenous -- it's like if there's a rule that says "nobody can walk on the grass" that you object to because you'd like to have a picnic with some friends; your claim is that if someone gets out a bulldozer and drives it across the lawn to make a parking lot followed by an army of lawyers that anyone who wanted to picnic is objecting purely because it's a convenient way to criticise the bulldozers.
You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc
They are just also used to create a new thing
In the picnic example, the picnickers can't use the lawn anymore.
As an aside: as somebody who lives in a dense area, I also would stay off the lawn. There's a utilitarian element where you have to rotate which lawns are used, and avoid using them when wet etc so as to maximize their utility. The picnickers should find a lawn that's open.
> You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc
No you can't, because those people have stopped creating because the creation economy was destroyed by AI. We just keep getting recycled slop based on what existed in 2025.
All of the people who I was reading and listening to and watching before AI are all still creating. Many of them are even creating new things or new types of things
I imagine breaking into the creative industry is "harder" today than it was five years ago and much harder than it was ten years ago etc, but in some ways everything is still so new.
This dismissal of creativity or people's drive to create or anything created after "the ChatGPT moment" is simply wrong and lazy thinking
But then there's the morality of it, because you're essentially expecting people to be highly motivated by not-money for your own pleasure. Which might be the case today, but I don't necessarily think will be the case forever.
Yes, musicians for instance will always create music, even if they're dirt poor. That doesn't mean though we should strive to make them as dirt poor as possible to maximally optimize the agreement in our favor. That's a separate issue.
> You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc
Except for the books that Anthropic bought and destroyed?
There's also the cultural displacement element: while yes, some people (including me) would seek out original content, AI slop is drowning it out. This is decreasing my and others' enjoyment.
Well, let's not forget that text models are not the only models! Video models are much slower and need comparatively more resources, and all they can do even at that size is generate videos a few seconds long. Clearly a ton more work is going to go into those, and demand for them will probably increase as more creative tools get authored using them as a central part of the workflow. Low-res local rendering for preview might be a thing, but the lion's share of the work for high-res, near-realtime rendering is going to be done on huge clusters for a long time yet.
This is definitely a good point. I imagine the max capacity for video models is significantly lower than for text models (there just aren't as many professionals in video as there are people who write text or code) but I could be wrong.
I think there’s still an open question around are the ultra-large next-gen models worth it? For those of us without early access to Mythos, it’s hard to verify whether it’s been held back from the public due to actually being “too dangerously powerful to release yet” as implied or because the gains aren’t outpacing the costs.
I think GPT 4.5 showed that there is indeed a practical limit we're close too. That was supposedly a high-trillions of parameter model that was deprecated almost immediately because it was slow, insanely expensive, and had questionable benefits over the smaller models. Though apparently the new Mythos and whatever GPT Spud is (if it wasn't 5.5) are back up in the high trillions.
Actually having used it a bit, I'm quite excited to see a modern model of similar size.
I think what people didn't realize was, just because the GPT-4.5 model didn't get better on the benchmarks, didn't mean the model wasn't different than the earlier models. It was being compared to thinking models that were being developed at the same time.
The GPT 4.5 model still has some of the most "human" like abilities in communication even though it isn't particularly good a problem solving. It hadn't under gone the same type of reinforcement training.
I still use GPT 4.5 sometimes, in creative exercises it can be surprisingly effective. The model is still available.
yes and no. We've reached the point where larger models are higher quality, but they're also too expensive and slow to be used broadly. The giant models, however are still useful for training smaller models that are actually deployable.
I think the issue with these kind of stances is that they are basically status quo bias; why don't you object to the computer itself, and thus refuse to write programs? After all: they were invented by the UK military in the pursuit of military goals (and much of their subsequent development was funded by the US military - see https://types.pl/@graydon/110648447694201698 - and the fact that ARPAnet, GPS, etc were all military creations). Computer systems are mostly used by large corporations and the military to achieve their goals more effectively.
Usually the objection is that "oh well, the computer can be used for many great things", which isn't particularly satisfying because, um, we can use AI for "good" (better?) things as well (e.g. trying to find novel cures, unlocking the mysteries of protein folding, etc etc).
Then the objection becomes something like "well the computer is here and we have to live with it", which is also now true of AI. Do I like the "it's inevitable" argument; no, but it's clearly very true that we do have the transformer, that won't go away - where we DO have control (or should seek to change) is the organisational structures that we as a society decide to create, and how we safeguard the dignity of the individual in changing times.
Being able to discern what is and isn't in our control helps tremendously in doing what is right and constructive.
The fact that some people opt out of engaging with AI, I think is healthy for society as a whole. If that's within their control and they exercise their control to do what they think is right, then I commend them.
That said, I do think there is a greater natural force at play, something involving entropy and increasing complexity and energy profit maximization. It seems to cut through all levels of abstraction from organic chemistry to civilizations and probably beyond. I assume this is outside of humanity's control, and therefore outside of any individuals control.
So what is inside our control? Our own perceptions and actions.
My perception is that the advance of computation and by extension proliferation of probabilistic programs (AI) is inevitable. It's on a continuum that is a force of nature.
What I might have some control over is choosing to harness that potential to increase future prosperity for more people and the greater environment, and to avoid contributing to outcomes that harm people and the environment.
Lots of bad things are happening and will happen that are outside my control.
I do genuinely believe that the capabilities are inherently neutral. Civilization can choose to harness them in a variety of ways, for a variety of purposes.
If the majority of people choose options that are game theory win-win, then the future will be better... If the majority of people choose win-lose, then the future will probably be worse.
Yeah so therefore I think a positive attitude is all the more needed, where you see the potentials, see solutions instead of problems. But I feel most anti-AI people are just negative people seeing only problems and don't have any solutions to offer.
Allegedly OpenAI's contracting model is much more vicious than Anthropic's; at work (admittedly a little IP-protective) we have unlimited Claude, but no Codex subscription because OpenAI won't give us sufficient guarantees around data retention.
We are also concerned that it may not be possible to bind OpenAI using contract terms and/or the US legal system.
