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Merged Artificial Intelligence

Charlie's opinion on the Spotify allowing AI remixes of songs and tunes to be uploaded and monetised by 'fans'

 
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Kevin O'Leary exposes the organised political activists behind the attacks on his Utah plans.

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful
@kevinolearytv
We uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah data center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from and the results were shocking. What we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international entities. We dug through IRS 990 filings, tracked IP data from around the world, and uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign targeting energy and data center projects across multiple regions.

I shared 90 pages of evidence with federal law enforcement and raised concerns directly with contacts at the White House. This isn’t speculation. The filings, funding records, dates, and connections are documented. There’s a coordinated PR war happening around energy infrastructure and data centers, and we’re not going to ignore it.
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BARTIROMO: The Pope said AI could make civilization 'less human.' Why is the Pope commenting on AI right now?

BURGUM: I didn't know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being Pope

video in link
 
Wudang said:
The more I look at the AI bubble the more I wonder if many of these companies have even heard of ITIL, Underpinning Contracts, Risk Management etc etc.
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The best description I've heard is from this Ed bloke who is very clever (he keeps agreeing with my thoughts so he must be really clever) - skip to 21:20 in the following video (timestamps don't work on embedded Youtube's here). You will hear one of the best descriptions of the modern executive:


The whole video is worth a listen. If you do listen to it all he talks about having to grow new businesses to the scale of Google and MS to reach those figures. I think he's missed something, the thought is the money is meant to be generated by getting rid of your entire workforce and just have a subscription with Anthropic.
 
Anthropic does not even set SLAs? OK I guess a lot more big companies than I thought still have IT talking to the board via the CFO. There's a reason that lack of IT representation on the board is an ITIL red flag. Accountants get told "it's cheap" and they get all misty eyed. I'm only at 12:25 and already run through my RDA of WTFs.
 
I wouldn't set SLAs unless I had a very clear objective from the customer, and a very clear contract with the customer. Not for a new technology, anyway. Even automobile manufacturers don't really set SLAs, outside of government safety regulations, etc. Even when they're pitching a superior product to drive sales, their assertions are either puffery or more like service level objectives (SLOs). I.e., we'll try, but we're not promising anything.

In general, I'd argue that SLAs are ultimately the customer's responsibility. It's not up to Anthropic to make that kind of binding commitment a priori, to all comers. If the customer has a use case, then it's up to them to figure out what's acceptable performance, and it's up to them to ensure the tool they've chosen can meet that standard.

The Pentagon's Digital and AI Office stipulates that different use cases will have different reliability standards, and that each acceptable use of AI by the Pentagon would need its own SLA tailored to that use case. Lower SLA for drafting plans that will be reviewed by a human expert. Much higher SLA for autonomous devices that will be pulling the trigger on the battlefield.

The problem isn't Anthropic not publishing an SLA. It's actually smart of them to make as few measurable promises as possible, at this stage. The problem is AI-ficionados not establishing their own SLAs before going full hard-ass ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ("full HAM") with AI solutions.
 
theprestige said:
I wouldn't set SLAs unless I had a very clear objective from the customer, and a very clear contract with the customer. Not for a new technology, anyway. Even automobile manufacturers don't really set SLAs, outside of government safety regulations, etc. Even when they're pitching a superior product to drive sales, their assertions are either puffery or more like service level objectives (SLOs). I.e., we'll try, but we're not promising anything.

In general, I'd argue that SLAs are ultimately the customer's responsibility. It's not up to Anthropic to make that kind of binding commitment a priori, to all comers. If the customer has a use case, then it's up to them to figure out what's acceptable performance, and it's up to them to ensure the tool they've chosen can meet that standard.

The Pentagon's Digital and AI Office stipulates that different use cases will have different reliability standards, and that each acceptable use of AI by the Pentagon would need its own SLA tailored to that use case. Lower SLA for drafting plans that will be reviewed by a human expert. Much higher SLA for autonomous devices that will be pulling the trigger on the battlefield.

The problem isn't Anthropic not publishing an SLA. It's actually smart of them to make as few measurable promises as possible, at this stage. The problem is AI-ficionados not establishing their own SLAs before going full hard-ass ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ ("full HAM") with AI solutions.
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Yes the Pentagon idea seems standard. SLAs should be appropriate to their use case. But surely if you are dumping staff from any position with any form of learning curve you should be establishing AIs long term viability. And one key mechanism would be appropriate SLAs both internal and external. If I was in service delivery (no matter how Devop/Jenkins/etc my pipeline) I'd still be throwing red flags.
 
JayUtah said:
There is widespread public opposition to his plan. He’s desperate to pretend it’s some nefarious outside organization instead of broad grass-roots local opposition. No “attacks” beyond public speech against his plan.
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Some folk really do have a problem with the word "no". I blame the parents.
 
Darat said:
Some folk really do have a problem with the word "no". I blame the parents.
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Billionaires have every reason to believe they are not subject to the rules because effectively they aren't.

This project was almost entirely secret until it was submitted to the county commission—three part-time gentlemen who generally have no need to dabble in politics. Box Elder County is a quiet, semi-rural area. The most exciting thing there is the factory where they build the solid rocket boosters for the SLS rocket (and lots of other rocket-related things). The second-most exciting thing is a natural hot springs that has been developed into a popular resort experience. What towns it has are picture-perfect middle America: kids riding their bikes down Main Street without a care in the world; diners where you can still get a bottomless cup of coffee; bunting on the courthouse for the 4th of July. The rowdiest party is the Peach Days festival.

It's pretty clear the powers behind it wanted to push the data center through under the radar. All the "approvals" had come from MIDA, a small, innocuous state committee whose job formerly was to think of ways to develop underutilized land associated with the military. Because the data center was given "national security" status (despite being built by and for a private interest), most of the customary reviews and impact studies were simply redlined out. And because it was "national security," MIDA discussed the project entirely behind closed doors in "executive session," an exception to Utah's Open Meetings law. Normally MIDA proceedings must be open to the public. When the final approval landed on the commission's public agenda, there was a giant collective, "Wait! WTF!?" And frankly, the county commissioners issued their own, "Wait! WTF!?" They hadn't been told about it in advance. They were evidently just supposed to rubber-stamp it.

Yeah, a funny thing happens when you tiptoe around the public to build a giant industrial complex in their backyard. It's bad enough that the biggest project of its kind in the world bypassed all the normal impact studies. But then even when the mask was ripped off the plans, no public comment was accepted. You don't do that to Utahns. Utahns are fiercely tied to the land in a way people like O'Leary can never understand. When you just elbow your way into their lives and flatly tell them, "We don't care what you think," you're going to get a lot of backlash. And no, if the public had been allowed to weigh in on whether they wanted O'Leary's dream project on their land, the answer would have been "Hell, no!" Any Utah politician could have told him that, but a small cabal of power brokers went ahead and tried to do it anyway.

Billionaires and their allies on the political right have mastered the art of behaving outrageously and then making hay out of the outrage. Gov. Cox at first said he was tired of all the red tape and how long it took to get anything done in the state. Well, yes, Governor, as a landlord I would prefer not to have to deal with the building inspector and all the red tape having to do with managing property in the state. But the people of the state seem to think that's necessary. Funny when they keep thinking it's necessary despite your personal wishes!

Even worse, the President of the Utah Senate—a particularly odious politico named Stuart Adams—chairs the MIDA committee that brokered the deal. When the Box Elder county committee gave final approval behind closed doors, a $135,000 donation appeared in Adams' PAC account the next day. That amount is about one-tenth of all donations to all Utah Senate campaigns for an entire election cycle.

Lately the governor has backed off and admitted that the "roll-out" of the data center was "poorly handled." Yessir, you rolled the dice, got caught, and now it has to be done the right way with public comment, public disclosures, and the proper impact statements. The backlash has been so unequivocal that all new data centers in the state are paused pending review of their approval process. Utahns are really, really mad.

But O'Leary went on the rampage from Day One. He said such dumb things as the crowds being "AI-generated." He claimed all the protesters were bussed in from outside the state and paid off by liberal donors. In other words, the standard knee-jerk attempts from the right to defuse the effect of their massively unpopular proposals. Yes, a lot of people came from Salt Lake and other traditionally liberal pockets of the state. But as a share of Box Elder County's population, almost everyone from the county showed up. These are Trump voters—79% for Trump in 2024. Read that number again. When Box Elder County was polled to determine whether they wanted the data center, it got a 2% approval. Read that number again.

Gov. Cox is backpedaling because this may be bad enough to kill his career in Utah politics. O'Leary is under no such threat. He doesn't live here. (He was bussed in.) He doesn't vote here or run for office here. So he's doubling down. He imagines that even if his bluff were true, the people involved would somehow be breaking the law, and so he's "collected information" and "passed it along to law enforcement." Protesting is not illegal. Traveling to another state to protest is not illegal. Donating money to fund protests is not illegal. All the things he's saying people are doing to kill his giant mega-project are not illegal, irrespective of whether they are actually doing them—they aren't. But he's so indifferent to the truth and public opinion that he wants to send out a threat that people are going to be arrested and prosecuted for opposing him. It's mounting desperation.

The really stupid thing is that out of the other side of his mouth he's trying to assure Utahns that his project won't affect the climate, won't use up all our precious water, won't drain the Great Salt Lake watershed, etc. He wants to convince people that even though the proper studies and covenants weren't made, we should still trust him to do the right thing. And O'Leary seems to want to reinforce that trust by threatening people and lying about them. If there was ever a personification of, "I can do whatever I want no matter what anyone says," it's these billionaires.
 
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