He's onto something. I've had a Mac Mini connected to my living room television for the past fifteen years, with a bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. No cable. Can't imagine it any other way.
Microsoft really put this notion under a spotlight with how they deal with LLMs in VSCode Copilot. The LLMs are just a drop-down menu that you can switch between at any moment, on a whim. They all plug into the same toolchains and are essentially generic commodities. They have slightly different prices for usage but that's about it, their outputs aren't wildly different. On topic for this post: it's very telling that Grok models aren't available in Copilot and nobody cares.
I think this arrangement is probably the future of LLM usage, and it does not bode well for everyone betting the farm that their model will be special.
Search engine are as well. At least in the eu they literally are the first thing a browser asks you when you launch it for the first time.
On a dropdown you have 2 clicks to do to change. For search engine you are prompted to using Google is one click; using something else costs the same click.
Google is still managing an outrageous domination.
Being percieved as the best is still a huge headstart. 99% of the population is not using “last weeks llm that topped AIME and ARC-AGI“. They are using “ChatGPT” with the default model selected.
People are going to switch when “their tech friend tells them to switch”. The same way they switched from internet explorer to chrome.
Once you reach that position you can afford being “not the best but good enough” for a long time.
xAI needs to convince investors that: OpenAI is struggling so there is an opening to take the crown and be popular enough to get people to switch. They have twitter to help make that happen.
And they need to convince that no one else is going so much better than they are anytime soon; they just need to be good enough
> They are using “ChatGPT” with the default model selected.
Funny, because the OpenAI models are not the first or even second choice for anyone I know who uses Copilot for coding agents. Anthropic and Google are absolutely stomping them in this space.
Search engines are pretty different from LLMs, in any case: they all have different UX right in your face, different functionality, etc. The LLMs simply generate text, that's all they do, and the differences are far more subtle.
Your sample are tech people using Copilot, which is very small population sample. Hundreds of millions of casual users around the world default to ChatGPT, and for example in my country, it's basically household name at this point. They haven't even heard about Claude or Gemini. For Google, it looks like like Google+ vs Facebook situation all over again.
It's the same with DuckDuckGo's search and Cursor, the models are interchangeable and there's no "walled garden", none of them can assert any control or restrictions on others, it's a strict meritocracy.
> But instead of automating the entire setup, local governments review potential infractions before any citations are issued, ensuring a human is always in the loop.
IIRC, California abandoned automated traffic enforcement systems like these in the past because at the end of the day they were revenue negative. Having a human in the loop reduces the false positive rate, but drives up operating expenses to the point that it isn't sustainable.
Public services arent supposed to generate a profit, they are supposed to serve the public. If the system prevents people from being run over then its well worth the money
I think there's also the problem that the non-fiscal outcomes of red light cameras are mixed. There's this DOT research showing that red light cameras likely decreased right-angle collisions, but increased rear end collisions[1]. Studies weren't conclusive, but they seem to point to red light cameras not being a slam dunk that makes their deployment a no-brainer.
Today it's age gating porn, but the next move will be age gating sites that talk about LGBTQ issues by moving the 'obscenity' definition to be anyone they don't like. Left to their own devices and unopposed, they'll declare discussion of birth control and interracial marriage to be adults-only.
This stuff is a performance. Trump is essentially turning the political system into a professional wrestling show, and these dramatic shows with Musk are what they call kayfabe[1].
These things are distractions from the fact that the federal budget that will soon pass will knock millions of the poorest citizens off the meager medicaid healthcare plans they have. Vast numbers of health care providers will close. The poorest people will see a tax hike, the richest will get a tax break.
But hey, enjoy the show everyone! Watch them fight!
Don't agree here - that's indeed what Trump does very often, but here Musk survival is at stake and how knows that.
He repeated the lie so many times that people may start to believe that Tesla will be better off without subsides, but reality is, with this bill signed, Tesla starts loosing big money very soon. And when you're in the automotive business, employing 100k people, it's pretty hard to stop the bleeding.
PS. I would really love those 2 to mutually destroy each other.
Ehh. The thing about Trump is I don’t think he’s acting, this is who he actually is. Is it still Kayfabe if Trump actually cuts Tesla and SpaceX support? It looks impossible until it happens and then everyone will say it’s inevitable.
It’s not that I think it’s definetly real, I just don’t think that line is particularly thick for Trump.
Most of the world looks at the collapse of the Soviet Union, particularly the looting of state institutions by the oligarchs in Russia, as a cautionary tale.
I'd actually feel safer if Iran just got it over with and developed/tested their own nuclear weapons. Then SA would get theirs, along with Egypt and Turkey, and all this low-grade (and brutal, primarily to civilians) nonstop warfare in the middle east would come grinding to a halt as everyone is forced to treat their neighbors with respect.
That’s a strange take. Pakistan and India are both nukes and continue to have border wars. Israel has nukes and has had a perpetual war. The UK and Egypt had conflict when UK has had nukes.
China had battles with Vietnam, Laos, and the Soviet Union. It’s amazing the restraint these nations have shown. Adding more nations to the pot adds more risk, especially when in the hands of unstable, immature, and emotionally irrational leaders. Russia and NK are threatening nuclear attacks annually. Let’s pray it never comes to that
Of all the conflicts you listed, only India and Pakistan are at nuclear parity, and their body count in all their conflicts is a rounding error compared to the others.
You’re forgetting that the US and Soviets /Russians fought multiple proxy wars with high body counts, even most recently in Syria. It doesn’t have to be direct confrontation
You actually want a theocracy whose religion considers non-muslims to go sub-humam to have nukes and would even feel safer?
The only thing that would make this constant war stop would be to cut all nations participating in these wars entirely off from the modern world. Revoke any travel permits, and stop any and all goods traveling to/from their borders, including to any nations ignoring such a ban.
The only reason why that's not am option is because of the vested interests of billionaires which procure oil from that area
But if we did, that would actually stop the wars, within a very short period of time.
It just can't be done passively like with NK, because China likes to ignore such initiatives
> theocracy whose religion considers non-muslims to go sub-humam to have nukes and would even feel safer?
we already support and BACK a theocracy, that considers (palestinian) non jews to be subhuman , to have nukes. You can argue all you want about Israel being a theocracy but their constitution mandates a jewish state. Your religion is on your passport and strongly impacts your quality of life when you're in the regime.
Even if what you're saying is true (theocracy, subhuman etc etc), the reality is we have almost 60 years of experience saying Israel isn't irresponsible with nukes. We can't say that about any of the other countries in the region like Iran, Turkey, Syria, Yemen etc etc. It would be one giant experiment to have everyone armed with nukes.
> We can't say that about any of the other countries in the region like Iran, Turkey, Syria, Yemen etc etc.
Can we for a second, step back and acknowledge who CAUSED the instability in those countries? Iran, off the top of my head, had a secular democratic government until the CIA orchestrated a coup.
Meanwhile, I certainly don't trust a country with nukes that has single handedly spearheaded a genocide that has resulted in the death of over 20 thousand children. Its literally a magnitude order more deaths per year than any other armed conflict. If you want to argue that religious zelots should not be trusted with nukes, I fully agree with you. but lets apply that logic to all countries. not just the ones that "ally" with us.
> step back and acknowledge who CAUSED the instability in those countries
Even if what you're saying is true, which is a reach imo, that's still not really a good justification to be pro nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
The US and Russia up until recently were committed to nuclear disarmament. Reagan even pledged to work towards "a world free of nuclear weapons," a goal that many on both sides of the political spectrum shared. Bizarrely, now I see plenty of leftists (tankies specifically) not just resigned to a world beset by nuclear proliferation, but even enthusiastic about it.
You seem to be confused about the definition of the word theocracy if you unironically consider Israel one. No, you don't seem to be - you unquestionably are considering how you argued the point.
theocracy
/θɪˈɒkrəsi/
noun
a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god.
you're absolutely correct. it would be more accurate to call Israel an ethnosupremacist state. For all intents and purposes, I consider the alternative terminology a reasonable substitute when looking at outcomes.
It was true in some cases, but it was more "thank you, now please leave." Almost a direct quote from one report from an embedded reporter I'd cite directly if it weren't near impossible to find things online from that far back.
The problem is the timeline... MIC takes over and it becomes about building, selling, and dropping bombs instead of rebuilding and GTFO.
During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...
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