> All these weird mental gymnastics to argue that users should have less rights
We probably agree more than not. But users getting more rights isn’t universally good. To finish an argument, one must consider the externalities involved.
It means no AI. If I say you used no AI but had an LLM write or refine the script, I would have lied.
You may be getting downvoted because your comment's tone can read as accusatively presumptive. "Who knows" isn't a useful contribution to almost any discussion. Which is a shame, because you raise an interesting point–I would personally feel fine saying no AI was used to do work even if I used AI to help me with research. (Provided I read all the primary sources.)
I think he's right. We have no idea if AI contributed to the ad in any way, so "no AI" in this context only means "not AI-rendered". The entire script might have been written by an LLM (which is perfectly fine by me).
On the other hand, the McDonald's ad is obviously AI-rendered, but all the concepts and prompts and choices might have been made by humans? Which doesn't make it any better (although it's not that bad, it's just average).
Arresting a person for holding a blank placard would indeed be Russia-level oppression. The person in question was not arrested, but threatened to be arrested if he wrote a particular phrase on it [1]. Not great at all, but still no cigar.
A man wearing the "Plasticine Action" T-shirt was indeed arrested [2]. That was extra absurd because the protest was against AI-generated animation, not about a political cause.
Yeah, that’s dumb. Curious what they were charged with, e.g. if they were told to disperse and didn’t, and if the charges will stick.
As dumb as it may be, you should be free-in a democracy, with limited exceptions—to verbalize support for a foreign or even domestic terrorist organization as long as you aren’t materially aiding it.
Spray painting a panzer tank in 1939 with "free the jews" would have been a pretty much identical form of "terrorism".
Nobody killed, no real damage done.
Obviously the Nazis back then would agree with modern far right that defacing weapons used to commit genocide fits the definition of terrorism and that voicing support for such a crime demands prison time.
And, modern liberals have always had an easier relationship with the far right than they have had with free speech.
Also the whole thing moved incredibly quickly; it went from new organization to banned almost immediately. I'm fairly sure that other groups previously like the Greenham Common camp didn't get this treatment.
It was reasonable to arrest people who actually broke into the base and those who organized it. Going after those speaking in support is what's excessive.
> It was reasonable to arrest people who actually broke into the base and those who organized it. Going after those speaking in support is what's excessive
Speaking out, yes. Helping organize? No.
Where the UK took it over the top was in using terrorist statute to shut down the organisation. That was unnecessary. But if the organisation helped organise the action—and this is not yet proven—its assets should have been frozen while the organisation and its leaders are investigated. If the organisation were found to have knowingly aided and abetted the break-in, it should have been shut down.
All of this could have been done using mostly civil and a little criminal law. None of it required terrorism laws.
> Also the whole thing moved incredibly quickly; it went from new organization to banned almost immediately.
Are you sure? They were founded in 2020.
You can argue that destroying property may be legitimate protest, but that is not all they did. In 2024 they used sledgehammers to destroy machinery in an Elbit factory. Again, arguably legitimate protest. But then they attacked police officers and security guards who came to investigate with those same sledgehammers. That is in no way legitimate.
If the government was going to proscribe them for anything it should have been for that. The RAF thing was indeed bullshit.
Anyway, it seems to me that to simultaneously believe that
a) telling a group of people that they can't use a particular name is an unacceptable attack on our freedoms yet
b) physically attacking people with sledgehammers is OK
I think it's general knowledge that the UK military is a paper tiger, I think Charlie Stross said something about it being enough to defend one small village or something like that (he occasionally comments on this site so may correct me).
I think that damaging what little remains of its defences, which may exist mostly to keep the nukes safe so nobody tries anything, is still a really bad idea. Especially given that the US is increasingly unstable and seems like it may stop responding to calls from assistance from anyone else in NATO, and the UK isn't in the EU any more and therefore can't ask the entire EU for help either just the bits that are also in NATO. Theoretically the UK could also ask Canada for help, but right now it seems more likely that Canada will be asking all of NATO except for the USA for military aid to keep the USA out.
(What strange days, to write that without it being fiction…)
> if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet
I have. It’s wild for anyone to say this.
Waymo works. FSD mostly works, and I seriously considered getting a Tesla after borrowing one last week. But it needs to be supervised—this is apparent both in its attention requirement and the one time last week it tried to bolt into a red-lit intersection.
The state of the art is Waymo. The jury is still out on whether cameras only can replicate its success. If it can’t, that safety margin could mean game over for FSD on the insurance or regulatory levels. In that case, Rivian could be No. 2 to Waymo (which will be No. 1 if cameras only doesn’t pan out, given they have infinite money from Google). That’s a good bet.
And if cameras only works, you’ll still have the ultra premium segment Tesla seems to have abandoned and which may be wary of licensing from Waymo.
Waymo operates on guardrails, with a lot more human-in-the-loop (remotely) help than most people seem aware of.
Tesla's already have similar capabilities, in a much wider range of roads, in vehicles that cost 80% less to manufacture.
They're both achieving impressive results. But if you read beyond headlines, Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years.
> Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years
Iff cameras only works. With threshold for "works" beig set by Waymo, since a Robotaxi that's would have been acceptable per se may not be if it's statistically less safe compared to an existing solution.
Waymo also sets the timeline. If cameras only would work, but Waymo scales before it does, Tesla may be forced by regulators to integrate radars and lidars. This nukes their cost advantage, at least in part, though Tesla maintains its manufacturing lead and vertical integration.)
Tesla has a good hand. But Rivian's play makes sense. If cameras only fails, they win on licensing and a temporary monopoly. If cameras only work, they are a less-threatening partner for other car companies than Waymo.
In the increasingly rare instances where Tesla's solution is making mistakes, it's pretty much never to do with a failure of spatial awareness (sensing) but rather a failure of path planning (decision-making).
The only thing LIDAR can do sense depth, and if it turns out sensing depth using cameras is a solved problem, adding LIDAR doesn't help. It can't read road signs. It can't read road lines. It can't tell if a traffic light is red or green. And it certainly doesn't improve predictions of human drivers.
In "scenarios where vision fails" the car should not be driving. Period. End of story. It doesn't matter how good radar is in fog, because radar alone is not enough.
Too bad conditions can change instantly. You can't stop the car at an alpine tunnel exit just because there's heavy fog on the other side of the mountain.
If the fog is thick enough that you literally can't see the road, you absolutely can and should stop. Most of the time there's still some visibility through fog, and so your speed should be appropriate to the conditions. As the saying goes, "don't drive faster than your headlights."
It seems you’re misinformed about how this sensor is used. The point clouds (plus camera and radar data) are all fed to the models for detection. That makes their detectors much more robust in different lighting and weather conditions than cameras alone.
It's just "sensing depth" the same way cameras provide just "pixels". A fused cameras+radars+lidar input provides more robust coverage in a variety of conditions.
Which begs me the question why Tesla took so long to get here? It's only since v12 it starting to look bearable for supervised use.
The only answer I see is their goal to create global model that works in every part of the world vs single city which is vastly more difficult. After all most drivers really only know how to drive well in their own town and make a lot of mistakes when driving somewhere else.
It was only about 2 years ago that they switched from hard coded logic to machine learning (video in, car control out), and this was the beginning of their final path they are committed to now. (building out manufacturing for Cybercab while still finalizing the FSD software is a pretty insane risk that no other company would take)
Path planning (decision-making) is by far the most complicated part of self-driving. Waymo vehicles were making plenty of comically stupid mistakes early on, because having sufficient spatial accuracy was never the truly hard part.
Tesla literally has a human in the driver seat for each and every mile. Their robotaxi which operates on geofenced “guardrails” has a human in the driver seat or passenger seat depending on area of its operation, and also has active remote supervision. That’s direct supervision 100% of the time. It is in no way similar in capability to Waymo.
We’ve been hearing Tesla will “surpass Waymo in the next 1-2 years” from the past 8 years, yet they are nowhere close. It’s always future tense with Tesla and never about the current state.
My first instinct is also that Rivian's strategy doesn't make sense. Self-driving is a monumentally hard problem, to be successful you need a world-class engineering and research team, resources and time.
I suspect that when Rivian has an L3 product, Waymo will be already offering an L4 package to car manufacturers.
Waymo's AI so far has been narrowly focused few cities. Good start, but remains to be seen who will scale out quicker. IMO both will succeed.
Right now if you want a personal car Tesla's FSD is the only option and will remain so for likely a decade. Waymo doesn't seem to be excited about their mission at all. If it moves to Google's graveyard they'll be like "meh" while it's mission critical for Tesla.
This is such a wild take. Waymo is expanding to cities across the country, doing millions of paid rides every month. Meanwhile Tesla's "Robotaxi" is tooling around Austin with a few cars, every one of which has a driver in the front seat. On the personal vehicle side, Tesla hasn't done anything new or interesting in years, and sales are slumping. FSD never seems to actually become good enough to actually be "full self driving", it's just year after year of Tesla stans coming in here to tell us how "the latest version is incredible, actual full self driving is just around the corner!"
> Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go
In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers are already treating self driving as table stakes. If I have a choice between a subscription car and one that just works, I’m buying the latter.
> continuous development and operations/support
ICE vehicles require continuous servicing and manufacturer support.
They could sell on credit submarines, drones, and so on to Venezuela, along with some training. They could even make it into a war by proxy, but asymmetrical by the Chinese themselves? They have too much to lose to do that these days.
We probably agree more than not. But users getting more rights isn’t universally good. To finish an argument, one must consider the externalities involved.
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