I hate that every known company has to suddenly exploit their “brand recognition” and expand into unrelated areas. It’s completely logical from a short-term-profits-from-uninterested-in-anything-besides-profits shareholders but destroys the value people ascribe to a certain brand in the long run. My favourite example: Marshall. They’ve been known for loud and DISTORTED guitar amplifiers for decades. They shaped the sound of so many famous bands. Their amps would last a lifetime and sound great! So someone thought "Hey let’s make shitty headphones and Bluetooth speakers that will - by nature - not be durable, will have to excell in an area that Marshall never was interested in: amplifiers that do not distort the source material and that sound neutral. They had to rely on completely new technology like Bluetooth (which changes it’s standard over time) or be dependent on shitty Internet companies like Spotify (who decide suddenly to brick devices by not supporting them anymore). It’s almost the complete opposite of everything Marshall stood for IMHO. The only thing they have in common is that they make sound. The effect is that people buy products that break, decay or deteriorate on timescales much much shorter than the original brand would be expected. The thing that Marshal will be known for in the future is these speakers or breaking headphones with OK-sound quality. But a few management people will have made a lot of money of course.

The big difference that I see is that they investes in people for a long while now. They did what they can so people can get a decent education. That’s also the reason why they don’t allow kids to use tiktok and so on - it’s hindering the next generation’s ability to think. They know that you need many intelligent people to drive whatever other innovation you want to have later. That’s why they’re pulling ahead so fast while we are collapsing. I am not even living in the US, but even here the education system is crumbling.

The west has trapped itself in the thought of technology without people. The idea that few clever people can design perfect systems that drive everything for us. That we just need to support those few individuals to get maximum return. China is supporting the broad masses. It’s like creating a fertile soil.

Who knows what all the asterisks are causing in the future. But at the moment it’s just no comparison. We’ve gone backwards, while they’re so far ahead we barely see them.

Captain Obvious would like to chime in: (sorry 😅)

Every color that we see is created by different types of receptors being stimulated together. A linear combination of three of these types. Arguably there isn’t really a wavelength that only stimulates one type of receptor exclusively as their absorbtion areas overlap - so it isn’t even that precise to call one receptor the “green” receptor as it sees a continuum of wavelength (of which a lot are also detected by the (so-called) “red” receptor.

It’s a little egg-and-hen-problem with the naming here.a way out of it would be to only speak about spectra if it’s in the physical realm and color of its in the percetral realm.

There’s even the next iteration already happening: Cerebras is maling wafer-scale chipa with integrated SRAM. If you want to have the highest memory-bandwith to your cpu core it has to lay exactly next to it ON the chip.

Ultimately RAM and processor will probably be indistinguishable with the human eye.

How big are your hands???

I agree, but as long as we still have capitalism I support measures that at least slow down the destructiveness of capitalism. AI is like a new powertool in capitalism’s arsenal to dismantle our humanity. Sure we can use it for cool things as well. But right now it’s used mostly to automate stuff that makes us human - art, music and so on. Not useful stuff like loading the dishwasher for me. More like writing a letter for me to invite my friends to my birthday. Very cool. But maybe the work I put in doing this myself is making my friends feel appreciated?

Edit: It’s also nice to at least have an app that takes this maximalist approach. Then people can choose. If they’re half-assing it there will be more and more ai-features creeping in over time. One compromise after the next until it’s like all the other apps. It’s also important to have such a maximalist stand in order to gauge the scale in a way.