Queensland, Australia introduced state-wide $0.50 public transit fares a year ago, and it’s been a raging success. Conveniently, this also eliminates the entire problem class of needing to calculate fares. Mind you, for those unfamiliar, QLD is a state 2.5x larger than Texas, 5x larger than all of Japan, 7x larger than Great Britain, and is bigger than all but 16 countries.

One example in my field of engineering is multi-dimensional analysis, where you can design a system (like a machined part or assembly) parametricially and then use an evolutionary model to optimize the design of that part.

But my bigger point here is you don't need totally general intelligence to destroy the world either. The drone that targets enemy soldiers does not need to be good at writing poems. The model that designs a bioweapon just needs a feedback loop to improve its pathogen. Yet it takes only a single one of these specialized doomsday models to destroy the world, no more than an AGI.

Although I suppose an AGI could be more effective at countering a specialized AI than vice-versa.

If I were to guess, it's likely that sales projections are down right now, and they're hoping by keeping the existing line a bit longer, new buyer numbers will be larger in the spring. Most people don't upgrade every generation and a lot of people are still running M1/M2 devices.

I would also speculate that there may be some growing pains for the n2 production from TSMC, and/or a desire to get there in the AZ fab production before launch to avoid tariffs hitting their bottom line. They'd rather pay 12-20% more for just the CPU than eat large tariffs on the full cost. I don't think they'd be able to significantly raise prices further based on tariffs, like some other companies with smaller margins are forced to do, on order to be competitive.

This is my problem with design documents. If your stakeholders already have enough trust that they ask you to go build it without writing a doc, then what value does writing a design doc have.

Many will answer that it helps them think. But why do we need a formal process to think? Thinking is a valuable skill that should be practiced all the time.