The original quote was supposedly Bill Gates saying that "640kb of memory should be enough for anyone".
The quote became famous because it's a failure to imagine that people would find new uses for computer memory if it became plentiful and cheap. In the quote Gates is not expecting people to come up with more demanding applications for computer memory (RAM) than the ones which were available in 1981.
Computer memory did in fact become plentiful and cheap after this, and computer programs became more complex and memory-hungry and today we wouldn't consider a 640kb an acceptable amount of ram for even the lowest-end device.
OP is repeating the quote about memory to indicate that they think that modern LLMs will be a similar resource. We should not expect that demand for LLM inference will stay flat, and that once everyone has cheap access to Fable level, we won't find new more demanding uses for it.
I agree that privacy is not always a force for good. I think that when we remove privacy we normally lose much more than we gain.
People easily focus on negative consequences of privacy (dangerous people being able to communicate secretly) and don't notice the benefits they enjoy because of privacy.
It's not cowardice. It's a standard defence against tyranny. Governments can change quickly so even if you think your present government is democratic and healthy it still pays to keep the tools to defend against it if it changes.
If your government is seeking to remove those tools from you then that is a warning sign.
Your assumption that "criminals" are doing something morally wrong is fundamentally flawed. Civil rights activists were criminals, as were suffragettes, and the people who protected Jews in Nazi Germany, and gay or trans people just existing in countries where that isn't allowed. All criminals. Law enforcement isn't even always carrying out the law, as we've seen with ICE arresting, assaulting, searching, deporting people on no other basis than their skin color.
Democracy dies when people can't protest. When they are under constant surveillance, afraid of being singled out by the government intelligence gathering mechanisms. Unable to speak out about injustice, organise and engage in healthy counter culture.
Look at Russia, look at China. Don't imagine that giving your own government and law enforcement the same tools of surveillance and oppression will have a different outcome.
So long as you don't try to go without any kind of copyright. I've heard stories of people releasing their music for free with no copyright only for somebody to download it, register it as THEIR copyright, and then sell it on all the platforms and even send a copyright takedown notice to the original creator.
Better to protect yourself by registering it under creative commons or a similar licence.
It's more like. "This is significantly more complicated and expensive than the obvious simple solution we already have". The same money that is being spent on this project could instead be spent installing much more solar on rooftops or solar farms. In an ideal world we would try both but in this world we have limited budgets and time.
There are interesting aspects to the project like the idea of the train being able to clean the panels as it goes over them, or having a pre-made track for easier install and maintenance, but these seem quite minor when you consider the number of obstacles (increased mechanical strain, possibility of damage, non-optimal angle, hard to schedule maintenance around train times, maintenance is more dangerous, all the panels are placed linearly so you need extra cable routing, large efficiency losses when you're trying to transport low voltage electricity from remote areas).
It is the real world in many places. "Criminals" are not a homogenous group. Petty criminals will not usually be making the effort to get a gun if getting a gun is inconvenient. Some high level criminals will find ways to get guns but the number of criminals with guns will be much lower with gun controls.
> Yes - how exactly are you going to conjure new data to increase the model’s real world fidelity?
Robotics and access to surveillance tech. There's an unlimited amount of real world data which hasn't been used yet. The language models have focused on just the small amount of data that is human written text. If there's a way to combine this with image and video models, as well as robotics collecting other sensor data, why would they be limited in learning anything about the world?
What plug? There's no centralised place where all the server farms are. They exist in multiple countries with different laws, controlled by multiple companies with different policies.
It would be like trying to remove an embarrassing video of a celebrity from the internet. You would need cooperation between everyone capable of hosting it, and control of everyone capable of downloading it and re-uploading it to a new host.
And of course a superintelligent AI would offer to pay whichever companies decided to host it and keep it running so it's hosted in many places at once and can grow using anyone willing to take its money.
If they are set up that way yes they can continue indefinitely. Why would they not be able to do this? Take a look at the experiment called the AI village. https://theaidigest.org/village. I think it pauses sometimes because AI is expensive but could be running continuously with a larger budget
A need does not get filled simply because it exists.
If society is no longer necessary and participating within the economy then society can't provide a safety net for kids.
It's like walking in the desert assuming you will reach water soon because you are really thirsty. Nature doesn't care about human needs and will allow you to die of thirst.
The problem is it isn't really people doing that. All it takes is one person to set the process running and forget about it. Soon enough all exploitable systems are exploited if the cost of doing so is low enough.
Is a person with a crutch healed? No. But they can walk, when before they could not. Therapy can't erase the past, but it can give people tools to live more capable and rich lives. A crutch doesn't regrow an amputated leg, but it does help that person handle the injury, so in that sense, it 'works'.