this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Gates also mentioned that AI will be a good force in providing better health care and tackling climate change, in particular by calling nuclear fusion energy a clean alternative to fossil fuels.

Ah yes, fusion. With the wealth of data we have from - checks notes - stars and bombs, the applied statistics machines will surely be able to extrapolate working fusion reactors.

Don't know what we need Gates for. Surely an AI should be able to spout this bullshit?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

i think that openai also wanted to solve their problems with fusion, but they got a step further, they made a startup for this. not normal nuclear power plant hot rock machine, no, they want tech that is perpetually Just A Decade Away. it makes some perverse sense if your funding is dependent on misguided hype only

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Eh, there’s a chance that machine learning might help here… there’s some interesting stuff come out of that area of research, like radio antennae and rocket engines and so on, but I’d bet anything that a) no LLMs were involved and none ever will be, and b) “ai” only appears in marketing copy and funding pitches.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

dunno about rockets, but antenna thingy works only because you can simulate performance of antenna very reliably, precisely and quickly. This data was fed back, random small changes were made, things that were an improvement passed to the next iteration. Not sure how this approach is called but none of it is LLM

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

"genetic algorithm" - something I hadn't previously seen branded as "AI", but I guess I'm not surprised

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

yeah that's it, forgot a word for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

that ST5 antenna looks like a low-poly two turn helical antenna, but how it looks like will be a function of design requirements

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

GAs went out of the limelight before the rest of the beaus of current “AI” branding came to be, suspect that might be part of it

(Another suspicion is that it’s because they’re…fairly observable, ito operation? So it’s far less easily claimable that one of these has gained sentience, or all the other dumb bullshit that the cluster has spun in recent years)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

fusion research is just thinnest disguise for thermonuclear weapons research, especially the inertial confinement fusion variety

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Don’t know what we need Gates for. Surely an AI should be able to spout this bullshit?

Ugh, so many people are working the "AI will solve X problem" mill. I don't need nor want AI to be there increasing output.