I really don't understand this perspective. I truly don't.

You see a new technology with flaws and just assume that those flaws will always be there and the technology will never progress.

Like. Do you honestly think this is the one technology that researchers are just going to say "it's fine as-is, let's just stop improving it"?

You don't understand the first thing about how it works but people like you are SO certain that the way it is now is how it will always be, and that because there are flaws developing it further is pointless.

I just don't get it.

I've actually worked professionally in the field for a couple of years since it was interesting to me originally. I've built RAG architecture backends for self hosted FOSS LLMs, i've fine tuned LLMs with new data, And I've even took the opposite approach where I embraced the hallucinations as I thought it could be used for more creative tasks. (I think this area still warrants research). I also enjoy TTS and STT use cases and have FOSS models for those on most of my devices.

I'll admit that the term AI is extremly vauge. It's like saying you study medicine, it's a big field. But I keep coming to the conclusion that LLMs and predictive generative models in general simply do not work for the use cases that it's being marketed for to consumers, CEOs, and Governments alike.

This " AI race" happened because Deepseek was able to create a model that was more or less equivalent to OpenAI and Anthropic models. It should have been seen as a race between proprietary and open source since deep seek is one of the more open models at that performance level. But it became this weird nationalist talking point on both countries instead.

There are a lot of things the US is actually in a race with China in. Many of which are things that would have immediate impact. Like renewable energy, international respect, healthcare advances, military sufficiency, human rights, food supplies, and afordible housing, just to name a few.

The promise of AI is that it can somehow help in the above categories eventually, and that's cool. But we don't need AI to make improvements to them right now.

I think AI is a giant distraction, while the the talk of nationalistic races is just being used for investor buy in.

Have you considered that if the worlds two superpowers are dead certain on this being an important area that they are willing to throw coutless billions of investment into, that they might know more than you do?

Turns out stubborn contrarianism and anti-science bias are not viable philosophical foundations for progress; what a surprise.

Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing lead is real. You don't need to believe any propaganda, just travel and observe.

The asterisks are not about their usecase but political.

This is the dawn of the new Chinese century. I have no doubt in 20 more years China will be in an even stronger position as the USA continues to decline.

We, the USA, could do all the stuff that would make us competitive. That would require more socialism, more taxing of billionaires, more spending in green energy, education, transportation, healthcare becoming affordable and an actual human right for all in our borders, a real plan to transition off fossil fuels and shore up our domestic energy production and electric grid.

Idk more than that of course but that's the elevator pitch.

We won't do it though because corrupt capitalism and the oligarchy.

Maybe we will if at some point enough of us are struggling but we're pretty fat and have plenty of entertainment to distract us even if we are being fucked. So ... Yeah ... Desperately hoping I'm wrong about most of my predictions, devastated as I keep seeing them come true.

This is the dawn of the new Chinese century.

Betting on a totalitarian kleptocracy saving the world is as unwise as betting in the 1980s that already overworked Japanese wage slaves could be overworked even further.

But knowing what's real and what's bullshit is an absolutely essential prerequisite for progress.

Technically there should be a ratio of young to old to take care of all of the elderly

That's a rule of thumb that assumes a lot of things about elderly people's need for care, how much that's funded by the young, productivity in how that care is provided, and a huge number of other variables.

Lower population will make resource allocation easier and improve quality of life, and obviously is necessary to prevent further environmental damage.

The environmental damage is more to do with bad choices about the mix of technology currently used to power the economy, and the poor ratio of GDP per unit of energy consumed. So I dispute that "obviously."

Chinese infrastructure and manufacturing lead is real.

And if you ignore the theory of comparative advantage, not only is it real, but it also matters. Otherwise, not.

I also run a consistent payment deficit with my barber. Should that be corrected?