You can already run a large LLM (like sonnet 3.5) locally on CPU with 128GB of ram which is <300 USD, but can be offset by swap space. Obviously, response speed is going to be slower, but I can't imagine people will pay much more than 20 USD for waiting 30-60 seconds longer for a response.
And obviously consumer hardware is already being more optimized for running models locally.
But most of the time, we as engineers don't pick the winners. Some C-Suite executive or middle manager, who isn't very technically inclined, picks the winners, and we as engineers are forced to make it work.
As I don't think a engineer has ever had the chance to choose a company's CRM, the CRM with better marketing would always win over the CRM with better engineering.
Content is being banned because the governments don't think the citizens collectively can handle that content. This is the government thinking for the people. I wouldn't have an issue if it was really argued and debated, but I don't really see that happening. It is mostly just the government unilaterally deciding that said content is bad and banning it with no really possibility for debate. It isn't too hard to imagine a situation where content would help citizens but harm the government, and who is really deciding what to ban in such a case.
Countries are seeing how much banning content helps governments in places like China, and want that easy "solution" to their problems instead of doing the difficult thing of properly educating citizens and cultivating free and open discourse.
I guess my analogy is bad because it is debatable if fast food, in itself, is bad for you. My issue with your analogy is that the use of violence is abused by governments so much more than it is every used correctly (if that is even possible) and that all citizens would benefit from governments condemning violence. The reason governments don't condemn violence isn't because their use of violence helps citizens, it is because their use of violence helps themselves. And the same thing goes for banning content. So I guess your analogy is actually pretty good,
just counterproductive to your point.
There are two things wrong with this argument. One, it implies that there isn't a better way to deal with an such a malicious organization. And two, it doesn't acknowledge how such a ban creates an obvious opening for abuse.
Holding up the classic Western ideals of Democracy and Freedom is hard because it is much deeper than simply giving people the freedom to access all information so they can form their own opinions. It also requires that these people are educated and trained to be competent critical thinkers and be able to intelligently form their own opinions. It holds its citizens and the government to high standards and will collapse if these standards aren't met. Accordingly, better education and trust in citizens is the better solution, not banning.
As for the obvious opening for abuse, it doesn't have to be said that every system will eventually be maximally exploited, and creating this opening for exploitation will eventually be exploited as well. It is just a matter of time...
Another poor but useful analogy is fast food. Banning bad media is like consuming fast food. It is quick and easy, and "satisfies" the goal within some basic parameters, but it really does more harm than good in the long term.
How? They could declare everything and anything as antidemocratic. There is legitimately no oversight to the Secretary of Commerce, which is an appointed position.
If the act is passed, the only thing stopping the government from taking it to such an extreme is the self-control of the government itself. That isn't very reassuring.
Banning TikTok wouldn't take your free speech away, but the Restrict Act doesn't even directly ban Tiktok. It gives the government broad rights to censor any content it deems "undermining the democratic process" among other things, and gives it the power to enforce large fines and long prison time against people who help get around the ban (like providing a VPN).
The Restrict Act basically allows the US to impose Chinese-level censorship across the "Western" internet and persecute any one in the US who helps circumvent the censorship.
Sure it may be used to ban Tiktok, but what do you think will happen when the next whistleblower posts content online? What happens when the US finds cryptography for us normal people a threat to US democratic process? Ect ect...
Calling it the TikTok ban is just clever marketing sugar to make the censorship go down...
Websites that are critical to the governments message are blocked in the West too. Either blocking sites isn't only a symptom of a closed country or the West is more closed then you care to admit.
The amount of AI startups that are being restricted by this are minimal. Hugging Face isn't going to have to shut down because of this. University research into the best ways to stabilize GAN training isn't going to grind to a standstill. Companies developing weeding robots aren't going to have to turn to symbolic AI for image recognition. Scientists are still going to be able to model landslide risk caused by receding glaciers.
Maybe only 1% of AI start ups will be negatively effected by this to the point they would be better off leaving Europe.
I am not in a EU country and I would never ever vote to join the EU, but this is one of the better EU legislations. Saying this would "kill all startups" is like saying GDPR will kill all internet business in Europe. Its both alarmist and false.
The patriot act clearly compromises every 5-eyes nation. China and Russia have their own equivalents of a Patriot act, so hosting there is no good either. Mid tier and neutral countries can be compromised as in your example above. This is all truly depressing, but why does it have to be hosted on a central server.
I hate web3 hype as much as the rest of HN, but this seems like a genuinely useful application for it.
It played Stockfish 8, which was already a year old when they played, and the match was under arguably unbalanced circumstances.
The current version of Stockfish is Stockfish 15, and although it hasn't played AlphaZero (because AlphaZero doesn't compete), it has played clones of AlphaZero such as Leela Chess Zero in TCEC which it won against consistently for the past 5 seasons.
AlphaZero beating Stockfish was more a propaganda attempt from Google to appear as a world leader in AI then an actually attempt to find the superior engine.
I have been daily driving FreeBSD as a desktop since the last time this article was posted and I love it. It is super consistent and reliable, and after I got it set up, I don't have to worry about anything breaking. I can easily use it daily for coding and web browsing, and it feels as smooth and fast as a Linux setup on the same hardware.
That said, I still have a Linux system for things like gaming, Cuda, and containers. Though, as I never have time to game anyways, I could just use the Linux system as a server.
But, I've used Linux for 10+ years and it only started annoying me recently so I may also get frustrated with freeBSD eventually.
Unfortunately, the OP's mindset is that of many Westerners.
Currently, the average Indian citizen emits half the greenhouse gas of the global per capita average. To argue that they deserve less than their share is blatent discrimination.
Meanwhile, China has invested more than double what the US invested into renewable energy sources over the past decade, and more than all of Europe combined. And this is all while the average Chinese citizen emits 10 metric tons less of greenhouse gasses than the average American.
But all you hear in the west is how the bad coal plants in India and China are causing global warming when China already has 1 million more GWh
of renewable energy than the US.
The fact is western lifestyles are not sustainable, especially American lifestyles.
I have talked to somebody in the SBB R&D department recently about this and the problem is actually that there has to be at least one person on the train.
Imagine a door gets jammed or there are some problematic passengers. If there is someone on board they can fix the problem in a couple minutes. But on a completely automated train there is no one on board to fix the problem. One solution would be that you send out crews to arrive at smaller stations and fix the issue, and larger stations could have dedicated people, but that is already more investment and less efficient than just having someone on board.
Retrofitting automation for a train network in a wealthy country like Switzerland wouldn’t be a big problem, but it just makes more sense to leave the driver in there. Accordingly, SBB is investing much more into driver augmentation to help the drivers drive as efficiently, safely, and consistently as possible.
The US has always been fascist when it comes to international politics. First its reach was mostly limited to the Americas, but after World War 2 and the start of the Cold War, its fascist control spread across the globe.
It would be more of a surprise if the fascism they display internationally would never make it back to the US. After all, it is the same people making the decisions internationally and domestically, and the disappearance of the call logs from January 6th show that there are parts of the military open to negotiations.
And obviously consumer hardware is already being more optimized for running models locally.