District5524 (u/District5524)

District5524 commented on A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries policykahani.substack.com... · Posted by u/WasimBhai

bradley13 · 25 days ago

People in low-income countries have low incomes. News at 11:00.

Seriously, what is the point of this observation? Few if any workers earning low wages have any use for a ChatGPT Pro subscription?

District5524 · 25 days ago

I believe it's more about witnessing a deepening AI-divide between rich and poor countries. Or the maturing of the AI market. But in the end, this will only matter if we see these more expensive tools/subscriptions actually having a market advantage that cannot be mitigated by low income countries. (Certainly no new startup will be able to train new models in low income countries, hire world class AI professionals etc.)

District5524 commented on A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries policykahani.substack.com... · Posted by u/WasimBhai

ben_w · 25 days ago

UK tuition fees £9,535/year - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tuition-fees-and-...

£9,535/year * 3 year degree / 124 years ~= £231/year ~= 310 USD/year

UN estimates GDP/capita of Yemen and Burundi were less than this, that Tajikistan has lower gross average monthly wages. Those are nominal, not PPP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

The World Bank numbers here are adjusted for cost of living, say that 1.31% of the world population are living on a dollar a day: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=li...

District5524 · 25 days ago

That's for international students going to the UK to study CS. There is not much point for anyone to go to the UK to study CS for that amount of money (unless they already live there, but they get their degree for a third or even less of that money). It's normal for international student tuition fees to be inflated by many universities, they try to collect some extra revenue based on a perceived extra prestige, especially the US and UK. Similar to charging different prices for tourists than for locals.

District5524 commented on AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was nimishg.substack.com/p/ai... · Posted by u/i_dont_know_

nathias · a month ago

I don't know why people allow others to proclaim they're 'ethicists' if they have no relevant philosophical education. There are whole fields of 'ethics' that are just PR departments trying to escape the now bad connotations of 'PR departments'.

District5524 · a month ago

That reminds me of the new draft standard of CEN/CENELEC (EU std body) on "Competence requirements for professional AI ethicists" https://standards.cencenelec.eu/dyn/www/f?p=205:22:0::::FSP_...

But by the time they'll adopt it, singularity will already have happened... For some reason, my instincts suggests there will be no MA in Philosophy needed.

District5524 commented on Intel CEO Letter to Employees morethanmoore.substack.co... · Posted by u/fancy_pantser

mathgeek · a month ago

> I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion.

Wonder if it’s “not illegal” if it’s done in international waters.

District5524 · a month ago

No, because jurisdiction of the competition authority will still be based on the market activity (or place of registration etc.) of the companies colluding, not on the physical location of the colluding/anti-competitive activity itself. While such conspirative theatre may decrease the risks of discovery, collusions usually come to light by one participant notifying the authority in exchange for immunity or decreased fines.

District5524 commented on AI Market Clarity blog.eladgil.com/p/ai-mar... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

throwawayoldie · a month ago

I think what the public really wants to know about Harvey is, is it named for Harvey Birdman, Attorney-At-Law?

District5524 · a month ago

that would be fun, but what i've heard that it's named after Harvey Specter, from Suits. But that's not something they'll officially ever deny or confirm...

District5524 commented on AI Market Clarity blog.eladgil.com/p/ai-mar... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

District5524 · a month ago

Although there is a part on the use of AI in the legal market, but it is neither comprehensive, nor informative. A much better view of the law-specific state of the art models is available at https://www.vals.ai/vlair (although registration is needed to access the report). That benchmark in the report clearly shows that there is not much added value or moat in the custom training of Harvey (costing supposedly ~5M$), while a Llama-based model can achieve quite similar performance. Of course, no benchmark is perfect but it is still more informative than this blogpost, plus all the linked websites of the "legal" products linked that fail to give you the slightest idea of how they work. Besides claiming to be be disruptive...

District5524 commented on I know genomes and I didn’t delete my data from 23andMe stevensalzberg.substack.c... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

ArnoVW · a month ago

For those still doubting, this is not a hypothetical case.

In the Netherlands, in the early 30's we had a census. All the good jewish citizens of the good kingdom of the Netherlands filled in their religion. Because, why shouldn't they? Fast forward a couple of years, and those detailed census results are really handy for the occupying nazis.

During WW II, 95% of the jewish in the Netherlands were killed. Compare this with a country that does not have a central register of it's citizens (France), where "only" 25% of the jewish were killed.

Also, when you give up your DNA, you're not just giving it up for you. You're giving it up for your family.

District5524 · a month ago

The exact same thing happened in Hungary (sort of, we can't blame it all on the nazis, Hungarians did it enthusiastically themselves). They used the census data of 1920 and 1930 (but not declaring your religion and ethnicity was illegal) in the numerus clausus acts and then in the mass killings and holocaust (600k of 850k). But after the 2nd ww, they used the same census data against the German minority as well, to evict them and move them en masse to Germany.

District5524 commented on Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from stratosphere, dies in Italy theinternational.at/felix... · Posted by u/signa11

neuroelectron · 2 months ago

At least they maintained communism, even if officially it stopped being communist, it was still de facto communist and that's why it became so poor. Don't think of them as poor but as equal outcome.

District5524 · 2 months ago

Communism in Hungary was introduced and kept up by Soviets after the 2nd ww. The very considerable difference between Orban and Kadar (the longest serving communist leader) is that Kadar paid attention not to make his direct family and direct friend the most exorbitantly rich guys in 15 years, which probably also made lots of mid-income people poorer in Hungary. And despite very strong democratic backsliding in many areas, it is still more democratic than during Soviet-led times. But that's probably not due to Mr Orban's character or self-restraint. Baumgartner's idea is probably related to fashionable libertarian ideas of those rich people who never had the patience to feel sympathy for other people, nor to study history or humanities, but feel like they should have a say.

District5524 commented on Doom Didn't Kill the Amiga (2024) datagubbe.se/afb/... · Posted by u/blakespot

louthy · 2 months ago

A lot of words there. But the word ‘console’ is there exactly once.

Games consoles killed the Amiga, just like they did all other home computers that were primarily used for games.

I don’t know anyone that used the Amiga for anything other than games.

PCs survived because they were genuinely used for business, not just games.

District5524 · 2 months ago

I'm sure that was an important reason for the US and UK markets. I don't know much about the Swedish market, but in the Eastern European markets, game consoles were not popular at all until the very late 1990s. Gamers in the early 1990s used Commodore (and less affluents ZX Spectrums and clones), and later, as the article says, more and more PCs. In these parts, people were very short of money, which caused piracy to grow HUGE. Computers were also preferred due to being multipurpose. And console games were difficult to copy, so if you wanted to be a serious gamer, you had to have a PC. Even if you had the money to buy games, you couldn't really do that, because nobody really was selling actual games in these markets. With different currencies and limitations on hard currency exchange, you didn't spend those limited funds on games, even if you travelled abroad. Probably also as a consequence, playing on consoles was considered to be lame. It was for kids only. Hah, for those born in the 1990s only! So that was a bit different over here.

District5524 commented on Fei-Fei Li: Spatial intelligence is the next frontier in AI [video] youtube.com/watch?v=_PioN... · Posted by u/sandslash

District5524 · 2 months ago

An immaterial side note: funny how obsessed she seems to be with her age. She said once that people in the audience could be half or even third of her age. Given that she's 49, is it really typical that 16-year olds attend these fireside YC chats?