I didn’t replace a light bulb rhat went out and it started working again a few days later.

Sorry. From your question, I didn’t know you were an expert on CS/AI history. I defer to your wondrous knowledge on the subject to nitpick at what you baited me into talking about in detail.

AI was coined in the 50’s and was broadly meant to be “a computer that can behave like a human” in terms of reasoning, and self-improvement. It kind of put a name to what Alan Turing was working on with the Imitation Game/Turing Test, which he hinted would require a “learning” aspect.

In Sci-Fi, and generally in computer science, that was what was meant by AI for a long time, maybe with Sci-Fi taking it further into the super intelligence realm (e.g. in Neuromancer), until people started applying the term to smaller research items like math problem solvers, expert systems, machine learning, computer speech and recognition. Once that became more prevalent, AGI was coined.

I think you’re referring to artificial general intelligence (AGI) and super intelligence (SI) or artificial super intelligence (ASI). Both were coined many years ago (~30) to differentiate from AI, which was already being used for much more than the original definition (which was meant to be AGI, or even ASI.)

For all three, GIF, hacker, AI, you just have to accept that language is fluid. Words are co-opted from other places all the time to describe new things. And to be honest, all of those terms have been used for meanings outside their original one for almost as long as they’ve existed, especially on the scale of human language.

I used to lament the term “drone” being used for remote control quadcopters… But the world won, so I have to stop being a nerd about it, and accept that it has a broader meaning now.

And just to note, people don’t just mean genAI when they say AI now. They use AI for everything. You wrote a program to track workouts in a database? Better call it… “AI!”

Do some research about how the city water treatment works. Find out what the issues are. There may already be published studies about the water treatment and tap water quality. Or maybe your city just doesn’t have a good water source to begin with and they’re doing the best they can. Maybe the issue is specific to one area or even just your neighbourhood. Whatever you do, if you’re going to get involved make sure you educate yourself first, to avoid embarrassing yourself.

Write the mayor and city council about the issues, or go to town halls and present the issues to council.

If there isn’t a reasonable response, go to local social media, traditional media, write op eds, try to garner support from other like-minded people.

Go back to city council with more support behind you. March in the streets. With more people behind you, you might be able to get money for independent studies. Do petitions, and bring those to city Hall.

Rinse, repeat. Get more and more support until you have a big enough voice that the city council has to listen. At each repetition, your support should be growing. If it isn’t, you’re not successfully finding like-minded people - either because you’re doing it wrong or not enough people genuinely agree with you (which may mean you’ll never get change).

Ultimately you can run for council or mayor and do it yourself.

Also, check social media and media archives to see if anyone else has brought up the issue or similar issues. There might already be a grassroots group already working on it. Better to join them than to start from scratch.

One last thing: watch out for people with the more outlandish theories and behaviour (traditionally called “conspiracy nuts”, but I think that’s used too broadly, since sometimes there really is a conspiracy at play). They may try to glom onto you or may be the ones already actively doing stuff. They can take you down less-than-ideal paths. Keep yourself grounded in reality and facts.

The tech offices in Toronto and Vancouver have grown a lot over the years as the US makes it more difficult to bring foreign workers in (including Canadians). At least in Vancouver that has led to quite a tech boom, and it certainly isn’t just foreign workers getting jobs.

It’s kind of funny though because that is how it started. Offices that were just temporary stops for Indian and Chinese (mostly) devs while they waited for an H1B.

Same for me.

Nope, the answer is on the posted page.

My wife’s a dromomaniac.

I don’t know why people are downvoting you. I stopped using my friend’s server when I realized he was watching everything we were doing. Really weirded me out.

I usually “ETA” or “Edit” if it’s more than a typo or more than a couple minutes.

Earlier this week I used a reply to myself because I thought it would land better, but I think I confused the OP of the post.

This is a pretty neat way to examine how statistics work.

Damn it, now I have to create the Super Ignorance community.

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Yeah I don’t think those prices are reasonable either.

But… I don’t drink anymore, so what do I know.

Which would be sort of reasonable if it was a pitcher/jug. But we know it isn’t.

TLDW?

Who are you referring to? OP you responded to used “they”, and I think OP is referring to the operator of the AI Agents.

Their comment doesn’t imply anything non-anthropogenic.

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I’d say flying foxes (giant bats/megabats) that are all around the Indian Ocean fit the definition of flying during the day. You can see them fly over Sydney at dusk every day. Also, I think some aren’t even considered nocturnal.