Good luck, I guess, but in 2026 "CSS Tricks" seems about as relevant as "PostScript Tricks" or "Office Open XML Tricks". Human manipulation of CSS is going to be, at best, a hobby for a few dedicated tinkerers. And I say that as someone who invested a significant amount of the last 20 years getting good at CSS.
I don't really have a definitive answer, so this is more thinking out loud, but why do the Economist, Spectator, WSJ, NYT, or the like continue to do reasonably well?
News is everywhere now, and AI can do a reasonable job guiding me on any economic or political topic I might care about. Yet.. named authors with track records or strong personalities/opinions still seem to draw readers and have value, and maybe CSS Tricks is mildly like that in some niches.
In the old days? Reading the www-style W3C mailing list was the best way to learn about proposed features and people like Dave Hyatt, David Baron, Anne van Kesteren, Eric Mayer, Paul Irish and many more I've forgotten about used to blog about upcoming things. Sites like A List Apart and Smashing Magazine were also good resources for articles about established features and interesting techniques.
A lot depends on what the models were specifically trained for using reinforcement learning. Modern models are generally OK and everything, but they're only really good at the things they have extensive RL for.
New Constructs takes a similar position on all mega IPOs. Sometimes they're right, but sometimes they're wrong. For example, they insisted Uber's IPO valuation was too high due to unsustainable losses, hidden liabilities, etc. Initially they were proved right when the post-IPO stock price plummeted, but in the long term Uber has performed well, become very profitable, and now trades well above its IPO valuation.
I'm expecting a similar story to play out with Anthropic: The stock price will come down significantly after the IPO, resulting in lots of headlines about the AI bubble bursting. But in the long term it'll climb up again and investors who stick around will do very well.
“Now trades well above the IPO valuation” does not mean something would have been a good investment at the IPO price given opportunity cost and the time value of money. Additionally, the current price could equally not represent good value.
I suspect SpaceX is going to be the opposite of what will happen with Anthropic. With SpaceX I think the overwhelming majority of people didn't initially understand what Starship is, how far along it is, or what it even means in terms of its impact on the pathway of getting humans to be a multiplanetary species. So it was greatly undervalued and zoomed upward.
With Anthropic I think a lot of people haven't really realized the trend line of cost of "AI" (both in literal $ terms, and compute costs for local operation) or what open weight systems will do to the market in the "long run", where long run in this case means the next year or two. I don't think any LLM company is going to come out a winner in the longrun, because the price for LLM output is going to approach $0 with no chance for a moat whatsoever.
> the overwhelming majority of people didn't initially understand what Starship is, how far along it is, or what it even means ... So it was greatly undervalued
I don't think anyone was undervaluing the "space" segment of SpaceX. It's the clear leader in launch frequency and cost-to-orbit among the new wave of space firms, and shows no sign of losing that position.
Where the IPO raised a bunch of red flags was SpaceX suddenly acquiring Elon's AI firm, which had a significantly more nebulous basis for its valuation...
Think about what you're speaking of at the most fundamental level. Humanity starting to set foot permanently into the cosmos means you're opening the door practically infinite resources, land, and potential for expansion. And the first nation to start claiming territory and expanding outside of Earth will see its overall influence on the future of this species begin to grow exponentially, which will likely turn such into a race. You can already see the outlines of this forming today, but of course we're all still just lining up at the starting line. And this time the finish line will almost certainly be rather more remarkable than flags and footprints.
There are plenty of resources, land, and potential for expansion right here in earth. The reason it's not done is because it isn't economically viable. If it's not economically viable here, how could it possibly be so on another planet?
There is literally no unclaimed/unrestricted land left on Earth. Every single inch of this planet, no matter how barren, has been claimed or restricted from claims.
And I don't think the reason things aren't done isn't because they aren't economically viable, but because there's no interest in doing them. Could somebody start a megacity out in the middle of nowhere? I mean probably, and it might even be a good idea, but things like this require a visionary to get them going. Electric cars prior to Elon were glorified go-karts for virtue signaling hipsters. It's not that they were inherently viable, but nobody had really shown the path forward yet.
And here there's already major interest and money behind it, so getting started won't be a problem. And from that point, the path forward will become ever more clear.
On a board where many people still think AI is a gimmick and a bubble that will pop, explaining where the economic value of expanding humanity's reach beyond low Earth orbit is, is going to be impossible.
It's possible to believe that AI will revolutionize humanity and that AI is a bubble that will pop. I suspect that this is the more typical view than believing that AI is a gimmick.
Trillions of dollars are being dumped into companies when frontier level open weight alternatives that are able to be run on ever more reasonable hardware already exist. It feels reminiscent of how everybody certainly knew that tulips could just be planted, but people operate under their own assumptions about the world and its future, and sometimes it can lead to quite odd outcomes.
Right. But then frankly, who ever cares about those trillion dollar valuations? That's just rich people doing rich people's silly things with numbers. Meanwhile, the technology is there, useful on the ground, and will not disappear even if the bubble pops.
I tend to frame this as beneficiary vs. investor perspective. I'm a beneficiary of AI, not an investor. I couldn't care less about whose name is on the model, it doesn't affect the way the technology transforms my life, or the world around me.
I always wonder: How is it that wanting to deport billionaires to cleanse society of their power is “left”, wanting to deport jews to cleanse society of theirs is “right”, and that those are to be considered not the same (say, scapegoating), but opposites?
> the pathway of getting humans to be a multiplanetary species
I am afraid that you're suffering from Flavor-Aid poisoning here. We need a reality check about "multiplanetary colonization".
I've been following human spaceflight since I was born. I've actually participated in robotic spaceflight. And I'm here to say that it is robots who are destined to be a multiplanetary species. The robots have already successfully escaped our solar system and extensively explored the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
Many unscientific people believe that it's harder to colonize the Moon or Mars because they are farther than Africa or Rio de Janeiro is from Rome. But mere distance is not really your biggest obstacle.
I've also been following the ISS since its inception, and they have empirically disproven the feasibility of colonizing planets. If we succeed in establishing a crewed Moon base, it will be an ultra-Herculean effort, and it's on the edge of feasibility.
But Mars? Venus? Asteroids? Europa? You really think humans are going to live there?
The reasons that ISS has disproven this are manifold, but I'll point out two key points:
Their supply-chain is only about 8-48 hours, and they can stash large amounts of provisions up there. Their escape route is also only 8 hours and they're back on Earth in a jiffy. None of this is true for any body outside of Earth orbit. The Apollo missions arrived on the Moon and returned safely, by burning, jettisoning, consuming, and abandoning nearly everything they started with!!
A 15th-century expedition to Africa or Brazil means that you can fish in the ocean, breathe the air, drink rainwater along the way. An expedition to the Moon puts you in an airtight bubble with no stops, no rescue, no resupply, and most importantly, no breathing on the way, nor once you get there.
The ISS has also demonstrated the severe toll on the human physique in microgravity conditions. Watch astronauts who land or splash down. They are carted off in gurneys. They are literally unable to walk unassisted. NASA restricts returnees from driving or even jogging. The astronauts describe having to "relearn gravity" activities like brushing your teeth and showering. Any astronaut arriving on Mars would be as helpless as a toddler! Do you want to colonize Mars with toddlers? Because all the treadmills and workouts along the way won't make them fit for purpose on arrival.
So between here and Mars it's minimum six months, no escape, no rescues, no takey-backsies. We could send humans to Mars if we didn't want them to survive or return. I mean, no problem. There's no air to breathe on Mars; no water to drink; no fuel to burn; no fish to fish nor deer to hunt; no steel to build a shelter. You pack it all into the spacecraft, newbie?
But NASA and the rest of the world has amply demonstrated just how capable robots are where humans fail. Robots are going to inherit the solar system. Robots are in 2026, the de facto interplanetary species, sine qua non. My heart is warmed by these human achievements. I, for one, am happy to live and die on Earth. I think that every American should be grateful for Earth, and not permit our oligarchs to cheat and lie to us with fairytales of escaping our Earth.
The whole caring oh so much about humanity simply doesn't pass the smell test for me. I don't want to go into details and individuals, but I just don't buy it; what I do buy is wanting to get a foot into space to get even more leverage over the humans on Earth, and not for our benefit. That actually fits their actions and their aura, so to speak. But "preserving the light of human consciousness" and such? Now I know it's a scam and an agenda. And the more flowery the language, the more sinister I expect the actual designs to be.
Do look up CG Jung and the concept of the shadow and its projection.
There are many people who believe the opposite, btw. Earth has a disease. And the disease is called man. The world would be better off without humans, etc. Say that in a pub - you’ll get nods. But say you want humanity to populate the universe, and people will think there’s something wrong with you. Says less about the speaker and more about those who listens, if you ask me…
This has nothing to do with the idea of "going to other planets" and the motivations and issues of certain people pushing for it. The idea that we need to go to Mars or whatnot to "survive", considering the treatment of humans and resources on Earth by these people is just spam from Nigeria to me, at best.
I love going to the beach, but I wouldn't hop into a car with no wheels and blood trickling from the trunk, just because the guy wears a hat saying "I love the beach! That's where I'm driving! No detours, no tricks." and makes grunt noises at me because he never had the patience to even learn to properly mask and come up with a coherent ruse. To make that about "beach haters" is as expected as it is off the mark.
There is one core reason that Machiavellianism is naive. It's because the grand long-term ends people seek to create with all of their sinister deeds in the short-run rarely ever comes to pass. Yet all those sinister deeds absolutely do come to pass and are what we all get to live through.
So the most well intentioned person doing awful things? In my mind he's an awful person. But this also goes the other way as well. Imagine you're right, and the idea of getting humans into space is some elaborate scheme to somehow get more leverage over humanity. Awesome! Because it's highly unlikely such schemes will come to pass in any sort of remotely realistic way, but we'll be left with the means of humans actually meaningfully expanding into space.
I'd love to see as sharp increase in the number of evil people plotting to do good things to further their evil ends. All the 'good' people doing evil deeds in the name of some grand end that never happens is quite tiresome.
See, there is that "simple solution" always proposed in HN comments that solves everything and sweeps away every possible objection. Just send robots.
Look, the GP went beyond "colonizing" into "a multiplanetary species". We have already landed and walked on the Moon, we've established an extremely safe and stable outpost in LEO, but we haven't even colonized Antarctica!
Think about that for a few. We can't colonize Antarctica. It is not far away; it has plenty of breathable air; it's... replete with water, if you will. But still, there are only a few scientific outposts that are unsustainable without constant resupply and staff changes. That's not a colony.
I don't believe we could colonize the Moon. I mean, the astronauts could walk around after landing, and the supply chain isn't absurdly long, but to sustain a Moon outpost you'd need a perpetual supply chain, sending up needed provisions.
I don't know about your definition of "colonize" but, generally on Earth, that means putting down roots and establishing a rather self-sufficient presence that happens to consist of foreigners. How does a colony of ants get established? They find food and resources nearby; they begin mating and reproducing; they build with what they find. The ants are not smuggling in breathable air, food and water over 10 miles away.
The supply-chain to Mars is ~6 months. I mean, you can fly humans there in about 6 months, every 26 months. Now imagine that you have a "colony" or "outpost" on Mars that needs perpetual resupply. Can you launch 26 months' worth of provisions in the short window every 26 months? Can you launch the provisions during the worst-case window, when it will take much longer to arrive? Are you going to send a bunch of provisions up with the robots in advance?
Those resupply logistics are just nightmarish, and they are daunting to envision, even if everything goes right with every single launch and voyage. The margin for error is nil. The opportunity for rescue or emergency escape, is nil. Again, send humans to Mars, but don't expect to get them back in one piece!
So, I contend that even with spinning capsules, and advance-team robots, and even with some magical method of extracting resources for fuel, a Mars colony or self-sufficient outpost is infeasible with current technology, as well as any foreseeable future technology. Sure, set up a "Moon base" but it will always be more difficult than Antarctica, and never self-sufficient. Rescue and escape from the Moon are likewise unlikely.
The thought leaders who are promising "multiplanetary species" are leading you down a primrose path. They're encouraging fantasy scenarios so that young kids will enter STEM programs and pursue science career paths. They solicit donations and support for tech programs that are, ultimately, just part of the military-industrial complex.
But it's all borne on the wings of sci-fi imaginations and not gritty reality. I was just chatting with my parents about how the ISS smells, and how chaotic it is. It's worse than a submarine. It's sending our best & brightest to camp in a hoarder house. They've got a chance of survival if things go wrong up there. On the Moon or Mars, they wouldn't. They won't be smiling, and they won't be growing potatoes.
I looked up where "primrose path" came from and it was a Shakespeare character saying you should be dutiful rather than partying. But I mean you die at the end whichever path and partying can be fun. Similar with space stuff - it may not be that practical but is maybe kind of fun.
I fully agree with your points: the hard, unyielding reality which most Trekkie fanatics refuse to acknowledge, except for one: "severe toll on the human physique in microgravity conditions."
That's easily fixed!
Spinning a space station for gravity is straightforward, it's just that the ISS wasn't designed for it, and NASA didn't have the budget to build a second, bigger space station with "extra engineering challenges" on top.
It's definitely practical though, it's just a matter of launching enough mass to orbit.
Like you said, Starship is going to change a lot of things, starting with space station design.
Yeah, I mean, I get that the spinning has long been a viable proposition. Perhaps if we send a spinning expedition to Mars, the astronauts won't be toddlers when they arrive on a barren, hostile, resource-free world. Yet, that is a lot of extra mass; that is non-zero extra fuel; that is a lot of extra "stuff goes wrong" risk inherent in that design.
But it's unprecedented, untried, and not currently in any pipeline, AFAIK. I believe there were a few experimental spinning crewed flights, during the original Space Race. But does Starship spin and simulate gravity? Is there any crewed spinning spacecraft extant, in production, or even being designed?
They don't need to spin their way to the Moon, so it would be unlikely that any Artemis or future crewed Moon mission spins at all. But if spinning our way to Mars will solve an otherwise intractable set of problems, I suppose we'd better get started on proving it.
We're not escaping Earth nor seeking to replace it. The entire idea of becoming a multiplanetary species is exactly that. Ostensibly we all started in Africa, and plenty of us are still in Africa. The same will be true on a planetary level, and eventually on a star system level. You said a lot and I don't want this to turn into a wall of zig-zagging tit for tat nonsense, so I just want to speak briefly and holistically. The first missions to Mars will be fully dependent upon supplies we're bringing. The goal of self sustainability is aspirational and long-term. At best it will take decades. In reality, it may never happen much in the same way that no country in the world today is fully self sustainable in practice, even if many could be in theory.
The whole point of the extended stays in LEO are precisely to simulate worse case scenarios for travel to Mars. So for instance the record for the longest time in space is held by Valeri Polyakov. [1] He spent 437 days on Mir in LEO, and then opted to immediately walk upon landing back on Earth. It was all to prove that humans would be physically capable of working on Mars (which has 1/3rd the gravity of Earth) even after absurdly long periods of time in space. In fact his first words upon return from his first (240 day) stay in space were "We can fly to Mars."
Robotics don't really work well for space exploration, because moving parts break. For instance the Curiosity/Perseverance drills are cutting edge yet have a max depth of ~2.7 inches. And traveling is even harder. On average Curiosity ended up traveling about 1 mile per year. It's all because if anything breaks, that's game over. So everything has to be done with the utmost of caution, and even then stuff constantly breaks. Curiosity's drill broke after about a dozen activations and required a team of scientists and months of full-time work to create a passable work-around when it could have viably been fixed on the ground by a human in a few moments.
This is part of the reason that we only learned in 2013 that the soil/regolith on Mars is actually extremely moist, 2-5% water by volume. A cubic foot of soil heated up gets you about 2 pints, a liter, of water. The whole plot-line in "The Martian" about having to jump through hoops to get water was correct based on the latest knowledge when the book was written in 2011. We'll probably learn more in a couple of weeks with people on Mars than we have with 60 years of probes and rovers.
I'm certain every human of sound mind is grateful for Earth. That's not a reason to not seek to expand out as far and as wide as we can.
This is more like shouting to everyone in a restaurant that's mainly filled with people you've never met that you're done with your meal and are leaving
It is nothing like that. No one is forcing you to read or pay attention to those blog posts if you don’t want to, they’re there so the people who have come to expect something of those people know not to expect it anymore and don’t get worried or go looking.
I don't really understand the IP protection angle here: These browser ports are no more or less illegal that hosting a RAM file for use on an emulator, or pirated software in general. And sites hosting them are no harder or easier to shut down than existing piracy sites.
What's more interesting is the new ability to easily create ports of old games that let you play old games legally: Bringing your copy of the original's data files and playing on a modernised engine with high-resolution, unlocked FPS, bugfixes, etc. In the past couple of months, I've seen a bunch of vibe-coded ports of DOS games for which the source code was lost.
> I don't really understand the IP protection angle here [...] What's more interesting is the new ability to easily create ports of old games that let you play old games legally: Bringing your copy of the original's data files and playing on a modernised engine with high-resolution, unlocked FPS, bugfixes, etc. In the past couple of months, I've seen a bunch of vibe-coded ports of DOS games for which the source code was lost.
If you've noticed the obscene amount of ports, remakes, and remasters (most of which are done terribly) in recent years, it's obvious why certain people are pushing this as IP infringement. Companies were loving the fact that they could pull from a back-catalog of their PS2 games, get it compiling again, do some minor fixes to support modern widescreen/controllers/etc, maybe do some minor graphical enhancements, then resell a 20-year-old game for $60. Far less work than a new title, and far less risk since it has a built-in fanbase.
It's exploitative and shitty, to be clear, but it's understandable why some people are very upset about this.
> it's understandable why some people are very upset about this.
The people who are looking to lay off all their developers and lazily vibe code ports are furious that other randos are able to lazily vibe code ports just as easily.
Clearly. Ever since the government has decided people get to train AI ignoring everyone's copyright I imagine the respect for copyright has gone down the drain, as using other people's copyrights to steal their jobs was suddenly declared legal as soon as it became possible. That is so incredibly unfair there's ... there's no more pretence.
If big companies can make money from people's copyright, it doesn't apply. If big companies lose money from some person's copyright, BIG sentences, off to jail!
By the standards used in Nappster cases, combined with the 500.000 works Anthropic was caught using that becomes (2 months jail + $150.000 PER INFRACTION, because "wilful infringement"), Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mark ZuckerBerg and Larry Page deserve 500.000 * 2 months = roughly 100,000 YEARS of jail (each of course) PLUS 75 billion dollars each PLUS of course starting to do these cases internationally (they certainly didn't limit themselves to downloading US books only)
But of course, such things only apply to 9 year olds stealing big company copyright.
This is yet another step towards the inevitable total clash: when claude AI is good enough that it can build Halo, The Simpsons: Hit And Run, ... (slight variations, e.g. with different IP) without needing more than a promo vid and a wikipedia page on the game. Same for movies. Songs. That, too, is coming.
Or even do the Disney playbook from scratch. After all, essentially every story Disney touches is public domain: Mickey Mouse itself, of course, Snow White (
Once we are there, that will force congress to finally choose: destroy copyright or declare it's scope to include AI training and AI outputs. And not just congress but EU, EU country parliaments, even Russia and China's CCP will be dragged, kicking and screaming, into making this decision.
Games aren't like old movies getting remastered that can be done in a rented-out storage container for a weekend. Video game ports are generally a skillset that takes time to master. Plus, getting a 20-year-old game running well on a new system isn't free. I'm on board with copyright protection incentivizing all that initial hard work, the years of blood sweat and tears will get to live on as long as possible.
Looks like software is having its Napster moment now. Except, instead of one entity dictating the rules of engagement and deciding to sue Napster and its clones out of existence, we have 100s of entities with competing interests.
IP has been a good source of revenue generation, that social contract is now broken. I've got my popcorn bowl ready though, the industry that just fought Google and Apple for better revenue sharing is about to take all that legal infrastructure they acquired and make a big mess of everything. Here's to the next decade hah.
There are a few bad examples like Halo, Black Flag, and Oblivion but overall I think remakes/remasters over the last several years have been pretty good. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Space, Persona, Final Fantasy Tactics, Gothic, Super Mario/Paper Mario, and Tomb Raider all come to mind.
Regardless, IP holders should have the rights to distribution and while you may disagree with that it's still a legal protection they get to enjoy under our legal system.
It isn’t if the website forces you to bring the ROM yourself. The Halo CE and God Of War ones work like that. They don’t provide the ROM and you can legally rip the ROM from a CD/DVD you have and play it legally.
If you own the game legally, ripping it and playing it on a web emulator is not illegal.
Computers can make decisions: Almost everyone reading this will have a implemented an if-else statement or equivalent control flow. That is a decision made by a computer on data it receives at runtime. You can argue that it's different, because we fully understand the logic of such a statement, whereas LLMs are closer to a black-box. But at Turing observed, in practice we are frequently surprised by the output of complex algorithms, even those we have authored ourselves. The more difficult the task, the more complex the algorithm we need to achieve it, and the more unexpected behaviour can emerge from it. In that way, LLMs are just the latest, highest point on a rising line of algorithmic capability and complexity.
We can (and should) try to improve AI safety and alignment, but perfect safety is probably impossible without losing the capabilities that make AI unique. Black-and-white positions that insist anyone creating or using an AI is responsible for anything it does wrong under any circumstances are also unrealistic. AI is a general purpose technology, and we have always accepted that it is not practical for suppliers to envisage and constrain every downstream use: Car manufacturers cannot prevent every instance of mechanical failure, nor can they stop cars being used in crime.
What you're missing is that "making decisions" isn't the same as being technically capable of making a selection.
Making decisions means taking responsibility.[0] This is really all there is to it -- a computer cannot decide, not because humans are uniquely able to make a choice based on input, but because a computer cannot be responsible.
You can decide to do something based on the output of the computer, but that's you deciding to do that.
At any point where a computer appears to have made a decision, someone else was behind it. You can complicate this, randomise stuff, obfuscate things, etc. but ultimately either the computer was set in motion by a person, or it malfunctioned. The malfunctioning computer thing is quite interesting but it's not going to change the outcome.
LLMs ("AI" today) have not changed this. It's still just software, it's still doing what it's told. Surprising future technologies may alter this, but there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that's a likely future and it certainly is not the case today.
> Black-and-white positions that insist anyone creating or using an AI is responsible for anything it does wrong under any circumstances are also unrealistic.
At this point in time, AI is just a piece of software. It doesn't matter how useful it is or not. It's just software. We can and should treat it like software.
So to evaluate when/where/how someone should (or should not) be held responsible for something that "the AI did", we can start at the same point as we would for any other vendor/creator/user of a piece of software.
I'm not going to get into that -- my point is that the framework exists. And yes, sure, maybe that framework needs some tweaks in consideration of the new software, that's OK. The starting point should still be in reality, where software is software.
[0] Yes, this is nuanced, things go wrong, different situations, etc. etc.
> At any point where a computer appears to have made a decision, someone else was behind it.
Are you arguing that not computers are best at chess, but that whichever human last updated the chess algorithm is actually the reigning chess champion?
I disagree. Computers cannot make judgemental decisions about course of action, they can only execute predefined courses of action. The software developer made a series of decisions. The computer just carried those out.
These discussions around decision-making seem to ignore what a "decision" is. How does a human being make a decision? And what exactly is happening when a person decides to do something?
Suppose I check the weather forecast 5 mins before leaving the house, and it says 95% chance of rain today. Do I bring or not bring an umbrella?
I would bring an umbrella. I would made that decision to bring an umbrella. But my decision to do that is (at least partially) the result of the weather forecast. The causal chain is (atmospheric conditions -> weather forecasters -> my decision). Did the weather forecaster just "program" me? Did the water molecules moving in the sky just "program" the weather forecaster?
My answer to these questions is as follows: a decision, and my understanding of the concept/definition of a "decision", refers to exactly the processes where I do something as a result of external influence/programming, rather than just internal thought/processing. I could think really hard and imagine myself moving forward at 100 meters per second, or even beyond the speed of light, but in reality, no matter how hard my neurons fire to imagine that scenario, my actions are still physically constrained. Such physical constraints influence our every decision. That is the "programming" part. Everyone and everything "programs"/influences everything else.
That said, perhaps the particles which make up my brain/body has its own whimsy. Perhaps there is a hidden local random number generator that samples from the distribution of possible future states available to this particular clump of matter that is "I".
How different is this from a computer running a non-deterministic program such as an LLM-based AI agent? Remember, every token sampling involves an RNG. They don't perform as well or feel as creative and human-like when deterministically sampled.
This isn't an excuse for anyone, especially not for Anthropic or OpenAI. But I think these are questions we ought to ask if we are to honestly discuss liability and perhaps even personhood for AIs that are increasingly autonomous.
The technical/technological nature of the system that made the choice is irrelevant.
That is, I think it's right to ignore what a decision is, as you put it.
The ability to make decisions is not the ability to choose -- it's the ability, right, privelege, obligation, expectation to take responsibility.
Discussing anything like personhood for AI is really jumping the gun.
The chatbot is software.
The software does what it is told. It performs tasks requested of it by the user/operator in line with the (designed, ) immplemented functionality of the code. If the software fails to do what it is told, the vendor has not provided working software. If an operator controlling some software does not do so in a reasonable, safe manner, the operator is negligent. If damages result from such failures or actions, the people who made the decisions that led to that are the people who are responsible.
It does not matter how complex the software is: if a vendor of some software doesn't expect it fail in costly ways because it's too complex or hard to understand, that is a (legal, ethical, moral) failure of the vendor.
It does not matter how autonomous it is: an autonomous sprinkler system that floods the neighbour's basement is not held liable for the damages. The owner, installer, vendor, etc. is. -- maybe the neighbour even did(n't) something wrong!
In the context of free will (disregarding the full context here for a moment), this is where it actually gets interesting.
Theologists and philosophers alike have been thinking about the problem what "free will" even means exactly because of this, when there are no preconditions informing my decision, what does "free will" even mean?
In German, I have heard this being framed as "bedingt freier" versus "unbedingt freier Wille".
As a thought experiment, it makes a very good argument for a deterministic world view, quantum woo aside.
When there are no reasons for what I decide, what are my decisions based on? A whim? Chance? My personal taste? Well, my personal taste is a reason. And all reasons come from somewhere, right?
On the other hand, thinking of my decisions as without preconditions: what does that give me?
Decisions without rationale?
Sure, one can make everything more fuzzy by introducing probablities, even real chance if you like.
But also then, total determinism with hidden information is an immune theory that cannot be refuted, so it explains nothing.
But was does true randomness help with? I'd say, from a philosophical perspective, it doesn't bring any interesting argument to the table.
So this leaves us with free will as the only useful way of understanding ourselves and our role in the world, but on the other hand, it seems like a sneaky device for ourselves to ignore the infinitely confusing thought of considering ourselves determined by our circumstances (which, as a thought, already has real side-effects, too).
> they can only execute predefined courses of action.
Even in near trivial cases such as Game Of Life (just a handful of rules), the fact that a <machine> technically carries out deterministic actions is already quite meaningless.
To determine by mathematics, especially by numerical methods: synonym: calculate.
"computed the tax due."
decide /dĭ-sīd′/
intransitive verb
To reach a conclusion or form a judgment or opinion about (something) by reasoning or consideration.
"decide what to do."
I would agree.
The programmer, architect, CIO, engineer, etc. made the decisions, reached the conclusions, reasoned about the problem.
In the case of an AI vibe coder, the collective published works of said programmers, architects, CIO, engineer, etcs reasoning was applied to the vibe coders question, itself a result of reasoning. AI is still just calculating.
Digital computers ( the ones I assume we are talking about ) are turing machines.
Humans can make decisions because they have a random number generator inside of them, and therefore computers cannot? Or are you making a free-will argument based on some mystical substance in a human brain? You need to think this through a bit more.
And it's the same for humans: humans cannot make judgemental decisions about course of action. Evolution made a series of decisions. Humans are just carrying those out.
>That is a decision made by a computer on data it receives at runtime.
I disagree. A light bulb is on if and only if it is supplied electricity. With a switch, I have control over input of electricity. The bulb is on if and only if the switch is toggled on. The bulb isn't deciding whether or not to be on based on the if-statement represented by the switch. It just is on or is off depending on conditions.
To make it more dynamic I can replace the switch with a motion sensor. The light is now on if and only if motion is detected. The light is not deciding to be on but must be on as required by the motion sensor toggling the flow of electricity. The light either is or isn't on depending on the conditions.
If I write an if condition that prints true if there are more than ten files in a folder, and then a second that places a random selection of up to 20 files in the folder before deleting them every second, the if function will be true roughly half of the time. The function either is or isn't true based on conditions.
All of the decisions made for and involving both the lights and the if condition were made before they existed. Once implemented, those decisions will remain true until some force acts upon them (later conditions or decisions). While the initial decisions (to wire the light, to write the if condition) are true, the system itself makes no decisions. Either systems current condition depends entirely upon the decisions made before it existed.
Saying an if-condition makes decisions is like saying a bicycle decides to fall down when running out of momentum or encountering an obstacle.
The original article feeds precisely this misreading. It quotes the old IBM adage ‘a computer MUST never make management decisions’ (my emphasis) but describes it in its headline as ‘a computer CAN not make decisions’ (my emphasis)
These are not the same, and this misinterpretation of the author’s intent inevitably follows.
CAN NOT is horribly ambiguous in English which is why RFCs use MUST and MAY.
In casual speech someone might say “you can’t park there” but that’s not true. They might mean “you must not park there” or “you should not park there” but the only reason they are telling you is because you CAN park there.
It gets used more often to express prohibition not impossibility (“you can’t be in here” spoken to someone who manifestly is for example). Also disbelief (“this can’t be happening” about something that is happening). It’s just not clear which sense people mean it in, so it can’t be used when you want to be sure you can’t be misunderstood.
For another example of ambiguity, consider the sentence “A triangle can not have any obtuse angles”.
Is this 1) true, because there exist triangles with only acute angles, or 2) false, because triangles can have obtuse angles?
Precisely. It seems reasonable to say that ‘a triangle can only have one obtuse angle’ - but in some strict senses it is incorrect - one obtuse angle is not the only thing a triangle can have; it can also have none.
More to the point, a simple control flow statement is really a decision made by the person who programmed the computer, not made by the computer.
Though LLMs make this all fuzzy it's still basically the same thing. LLMs didn't decide to make a toxic culture of LLM use, people did. They were told that it was necessary to save themselves.
Computers are operated to (either through command or through training) make decisions. Liability for the consequences of the decisions obviously lies on the operator of the computer that made the decisions. Or at least that should be obvious.
That's fundamental to how _any_ technology works. If the bar for use is "can never go wrong ever", then you need to throw away every human invention ever made.
The problem is the scope of errors is so wide. It's not reasonable to compare LLM style failures to other technology failures. These 'failures' are not actually failures, they're part of the normal operation of the system.
It's like a vending machine that 99% of the time it dispenses tasty snacks, but 1% of the time it gives you poison that appears to be normal, unexpired product. It just does this. They did their best to minimize how often it happens, but the poison chance is still there. It can't be removed. It's part of the system.
A "normal" vending machine has failure conditions, sure. They generally can't do worse than cause you to lose your money without giving you a product.
Outlook 2003 never presented a risk of draining my bank account to buy memecoins because a spam email was treated as instructions.
Both articles are practically useless. All they do is reprint statements from either side, neither of which is concrete about the specifics of what supposedly happened. I.e. OpenAI says they "confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures".
What sensitive information? Mishandled how? Which company procedures? It's all utterly vague and impossible for an outsider to form any opinion on. All people can do is guess and apply their own pre-existing opinions. E.g. if you don't like OpenAI, you assume they're lying. Who's to say they're not? There's no solid evidence provided either way.
What I really want is journalists who do the legwork to get to the bottom of stories like this: Establish sources inside the company and use them to report on the real details of what's happened, triangulating multiple accounts and leaked documents to back-up or invalidate either side's claims. Without any of that, these stories are just gossip.
Let's face it, it's not that remarkable. A substantial proportion of Hacker News commentary has always been people only reading the submission title, then arguing with each other based on what they imagine the article might say.
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