@44 I mean this is complete and utter bullshit, of course. A blatant scam that will never amount to jack shit.
But it is indeed the official "play" (or at least it was that particular time he said it. Who knows what it is this week??)

@44 well yeah. Sam Altman said exactly that, in so many words: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter"

We're sooo past even the "Bond villain" caricature stage... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@compfu @david_chisnall The other typical argument for that is the claim that "It'll bring equal opportunities to disadvantaged children who will get their own personal AI tutor", which is such an utterly cynical and finely veiled distraction from the ongoing de-funding of the public school system that it literally makes me sick.

Kids with parents who have either enough free time to help them or money to pay for a tutor will be fine, while the others will be left having to rely on chatGPT to explain them how trigonometry works, while they have less and less time with their underpayed and overworked teachers ("those OpenAI subscriptions don't come cheap, you know!"...)

@compfu @david_chisnall Yeah. In a similar vein, imagine allowing kids in schools to ride motorbikes or e-scooters during physical education classes. It should be obvious to all that it's just defeating the purpose of the whole thing.
Yet we keep hearing people advocating for LLMs in the classroom, generally under the absolutely infuriating pretense of "teaching the next gen to be AI-natives" or such inane bullshit.

@david_chisnall

On the specific topic of "AI" and not just contributions to FOSS but education in general, I believe this is absolutely the crux of the matter. So incredibly short-sighted!

@fribbledom yeah... I think if I had to pinpoint a defining moment for my vocation as a professional computer toucher, teenage me successfully getting Wing Commander 3 to run would probably be it! (Damn you, Mitsumi CD-ROM drive!!)