Posted on 08/08/2026 11:51:26 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
A decade ago, a computer did something that no human would have done. It was considered a breakthrough for AI. Now the world is full of them.
The first glimmer of our AI future revealed itself a decade ago in the form of a single black stone.
It happened during a historic match between one of the world’s best Go players and AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google’s DeepMind lab to conquer this ancient board game. The artificial-intelligence system stunned everyone by winning their opening showdown. In their next encounter, with millions of people watching online all over the world, Lee Sedol took a midgame smoke break to calm his nerves.
When he came back, he looked at the 37th move. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
Go, like chess, is a strategy game with black and white pieces that unfolds one move at a time. As he stared at the black stone that AlphaGo dropped on the board, Lee saw a move that no professional Go player would have made. In fact, the DeepMind team calculated the chances of a human playing it at one in 10,000.
The novel move was so unconventional and counterintuitive that nobody could be sure what to make of it. At first, commentators believed it was a strategic blunder. They soon realized it was a masterstroke.
“This move,” Lee said, “made me think about Go in a new light.”
Ten years after that illuminating Move 37, the entire world is suddenly beginning to feel like one massive Go board.
There have been so many recent AI breakthroughs that remind me of Move 37 that I called Google DeepMind co-founder...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
None. 2 marriages, 23 years and 34 years long.
AI is programmed to lie about big tech. It has pre-programmed word salads about:
1) H1B tech related worker immigration
2) Censorship
3) Tech Monopolies
It is a waste of time to bring up these topics.
You learned well about how they dressed when going out in public.
I have heard that real medicine is really all about diagnosis. Identifying the problem. Perhaps AI is not smart, not intelligent. Perhaps AI will never be able to diagnose as well as a human.
Fine.
How about surgery? How about dosing prescriptions? I think it is inarguable that machines will do these things better than humans. So, humans will retain a role in medicine (diagnosis, etc.) but machines will take some medical jobs away from humans.
My basic argument is never metaphysical (”AI will be smarter than humans” or however one wants to phrase it) my basic argument is always economic — “There are a lot of humans who will not have skills or knowledge that remains useful within the national economy in the 21st century. There are machines that will perform tasks which humans used to perform. Will we have to adjust to a reality where a big percentage of humans no longer contribute to the economy.”
Perhaps medicine is a good field for humans. But how about banking? Insurance? Architecture? Logistics? There are some jobs that will no longer be suitable for humans, and it has nothing to do with “machine sentience” or anything like that.
0005000
It’s a computer running a program. It’s just fast, really really fast. But still, GIGO is the rule.
I have read studies claiming AI makes the correct diagnosis 100% of the time, and when you add a human MD co-pilot the accuracy drops to 23%.
This represents diagnosis as a series of boxes to check or uncheck, according to an algorithm.
There is an old joke, “the operation was a success, but the patient died”.
Algorithmic medicine is fraught with problems. The post-1998 Quality movement started with the proposition that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
So, “measuring” diagnosis has mostly come down to “were all the steps followed, and do the steps, if all followed, point to a diagnosis?”
We did a study in 2018 where we evaluated the first 100 charts with a discharge diagnosis of “pneumonia”, and we confirmed the diagnosis in 38. Now, in that study setting, AI would have confirmed 100/100, because all the steps were followed.
This is starting to cause real problems.
“as well as gobble up all the DRAM and SSD chips, sending retail prices into the stratosphere. Even HDD prices are now being affected.”
How many years away is relief?
“You can’t handle the truth!”
;)
You’d be surprised at how my Tesla reacts to a bouncing ball into the street.
(Faster than I can.)
I asked AI how to change the headlight in my 02 f350. It came back with some convoluted crap I knew was wrong. So I opened the hood. Looked at the offending headlight. Saw a round plastic collar that had bulb wire protruding from it that I grabbed and turned counter clockwise about one third…and out the bad bulb popped.
I’m glad it got move 37 right but it was no damn help to me.
I’m shamelessly stealing that.
They build their own power sources.
Again, artificial intelligence (which is basically machine learning with better PR but that’s for a different thread) can do some cool things.
Maybe it is good at swerving to avoid little Mary.
And then there’s this: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4380862/posts
“Today I had the experience of driving for an extended period behind a Tesla…. the speed limit dropped to 45… Right at the sign, the Tesla slowed down to precisely 45. That’s when my daughter remarked that this car had to be operating in self-driving mode. Sure enough, right where the speed limit ended, the Tesla went back to exactly 55…
“Then, back at 55, we could see in the distance a school bus approaching from the opposite direction. Several hundred yards ahead, it stopped. Its red lights began flashing. A “STOP” sign swung out on its driver’s side toward our lane of traffic. Its door opened.…
“And then the Tesla blew by at full speed!”
Neither did Joe Biden!
I only have my own experience as fact.
I’m very impressed.
Have you tried it?
I just did google searches for articles on AI bias. There are many articles. A few articles are “Schumer/Thune centrist”. Most feel that the bias is against their side... including centrist is against their side.
Many “leftist” articles openly said that the right should be censored with logic such as “Racism should be censored. Capitalism is racist. Therefore Capitalism should be censored.” That is a real example. But it is just an example of a pattern that postulates an illogical connection between two things with no logical connection.
I used google, which chose not to answer with Gemini. One of the articles google returned was very clear that Gemini is the most “centrist only” and tries to censor what it thinks is extremism on all sides. Too many articles to link here.
i’m not interested in AI for issues that boil down, in the end, to political opinion.
No, I haven’t.
It’s also not on my bucket list.
In many ways, this is all about optimizing an individual’s utility curve.
FR has plenty of people who have EVs, use Gen AI, and like autonomous driving.
It also has Luddites.
Most are in the middle.
Again, machine learning has improved our lives. But it’ll never supplant the human soul.
I hope you’re right!
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