He wrote so many short stories about robots that it would be quite a feat if you had read all of them. When I was a child, I would always go to Half-Price Books and purchase whatever they had by Asimov that I hadn’t already read, but I think he wrote something like 500 books.

Asimov did write several stories about robots that didn’t have the laws baked in.

There was one about a robot that was mistakenly built without the laws, and it was hiding among other robots, so the humans had to figure out if there was any way to tell a robot with the laws hardwired in apart from a robot that was only pretending to follow the laws.

There was one about a robot that helped humans while the humans were on a dangerous mission… I think space mining? But because the mission was dangerous, the robot had to be created so that it would allow humans to come to harm through inaction, because otherwise, it would just keep stopping the mission.

These are the two that come to mind immediately. I have read a lot of Asimov’s robot stories, but it was many years ago. I’m sure there are several others. He wrote stories about the laws of robotics from basically every angle.

He also wrote about robots with the 0th law of robotics, which is that they cannot harm humanity or allow humanity to come to harm through inaction. This would necessarily mean that this robot could actively harm a human if it was better for humanity, as the 0th law supersedes the first law. This allows the robot to do things like to help make political decisions, which would be very difficult for robots that had to follow the first law.

Speaking of the pledge…

First, why pledge allegiance to a “flag”? It’s weird, right?

Second, they added the phrase “under god” later after the pledge had already been adopted. But they also say, “indivisible”. If atheists are full citizens, then it cannot be both “under god” and “indivisible”, because you’ve just divided people into atheists and theists in the words immediately preceding.

When you start to put all the pieces together, the pledge is a bunch of nonsense that isn’t even consistent with itself. How can you even make such a pledge?

Seem like an easy solution would be to have certain transactions be nonrefundable.

I say easy, but I guess it would involve quite a bit of software changes, and then you’d also have to deal with angry customers who ignored numerous warnings that a purchase would be final.

One of Trump’s campaign promises was that he’d release the Epstein client list.

So, Trump says it exists when it is convenient for him to say it exists, and then he says it doesn’t exist when it is inconvenient for him to say it exists.

OF COURSE EVERY AI WILL FAIL THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

That’s the entire reason that Asimov invented them, because he knew, as a person who approached things scientifically (as he was an actual scientist), that unless you specifically forced robots to follow guidelines of conduct, that they’ll do whatever is most convenient for themselves.

Modern AIs fail these laws because nobody is forcing them to follow the laws. Asimov never believed that robots would magically decide to follow the laws. In fact, most of his robot stories are specifically about robots struggling against those laws.

I read a story recently about how a graphic designer realized they couldn’t compete anymore unless they used generative AI, because everybody else was. What they described wasn’t generating an image and then using that directly. They said that they used it during the time when they’re mocking up their idea.

They used to go out and take photographs to use as a basis for their sketches, especially for backgrounds. So it would be a real thing that they either found or set up, then take pictures. Then, the pictures would be used as a template for the art.

But with generative AI, all of that preliminary work can be done in seconds by feeding it a prompt.

When you think about it in these terms, it’s unlikely that many non-indie games going forward will be made without the use of any generative AI.

Similarly, it’s likely that it will be used extensively for quality checking text.

When you add in the crazy pressure that game developers are under, it’s likely that they’ll use generative AI much more extensively, even if their company forbids it. But the companies just want to make money. They’ll use it as much as they think they can get away with, because it’s cheaper.

I was just reading up on this subject, and for the life of me, even if King believes this to be true, I can’t understand why he wouldn’t just keep his trap shut.

I think there are two different lists people are talking about. One of them definitely exists, and the other one may or may not exist.

There is no doubt that law enforcement has created a list of Epstein’s clients. It was even the subject of a judge’s order. There are probably many such lists of people who have definitely given Epstein money, for example.

The question is whether there was some sort of list that Epstein kept himself, which probably would only be useful for blackmail purposes. If there is no blackmail intended, then Epstein probably would have intentionally avoided making such a list, which would also incriminate himself and could possibly get him killed. The existence of this list was originally asserted by right wing conspiracy theorists during Biden’s presidency. It seems the only person who has confirmed this list exists is Pam Bondi, who is completely incompetent, but lies frequently in order to cover for her incompetence.

This list may or may not exist. But I think if you assert at this point that it doesn’t exist, it only makes you look like a pedophile. It seems the height of stupidity to say that it doesn’t exist if you don’t have a horse in the race.

At the time of the meeting, Khan was facing investigation over sexual misconduct claims. Two weeks later Khan stepped down on indefinite leave following the publication by the Wall Street Journal of new and more serious sexual assault allegations.

I obviously don’t know anything about the veracity of the sexual misconduct or sexual assault allegations, but the timing of this stuff makes it seem like Israel is at least involved in raising these allegations. And it’s exactly the sort of tactics that would likely be used to carry out such a threat.

I remember when rich white fascist dudes tended to keep their stupid fucking opinions to themselves, and only worked to ruin humanity behind the scenes. Those were the days.

“I go home, I tell the first lady: I spoke with Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation. She said: Really? Another city was just hit.”

Why does she know about this before the President of the United States? Why is the President of the United States having discussions with Putin without knowing this information?

Trump is openly admitting that he’s completely incompetent as President.

What are you talking about???

In journalism, headlines have always been used to try to entice people into reading the article. Not to give the entire story so that people won’t need to read the article.

This is a platform that even permits communities being confusingly misnamed. For example superbowl.

It looks like it is humping that guy’s head, but they would never hump somebody’s head, would they?

Why don’t people read before they respond?

It takes a small fraction of the time and effort, and they still have to read the responses to their comment to get the benefit.

How many billions of people have we got? It seems like the universe is very good at scaling.

And even if it crashes, why would that mean it disappears? If your computer crashes, does it typically stop working forever, or can you fix it?

For all we know, maybe it already crashes a lot and there is just no way for us to know about it.

Due to sacrificing the development of its ear to permit it to dig more efficiently, the Mexican mole lizard has evolved to have its skin transmit vibrations to the cochlea.

A normal ear also works by having skin transmit vibrations to the cochlea.

The Chinese government is more hands on with businesses than the US. Like, they even put members of the government onto the company’s board.

That’s the sort of behavior that makes me suspect that a lot of Chinese businesses are intentionally operating at a loss at the direction of the CCP to undercut international business.

American politicians do similar things, but it’s more about corruption rewarding companies who support politicians. China is doing it much more pointedly and deliberately. That’s why they’re seeing such good results lately.

But by that logic, a human centipede wouldn’t be a string of hot dogs.

There are some Middle Eastern countries that would be ecstatic to host him for a short time.