Is AI bot Gemini woke?

 In breaking news, AI has discovered a "profound" moral dilemma:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13127549/google-ai-nuclear-apocalypse-misgender-caitlyn-jenner.html

Retiree medical cost increase

 

 gardner6 said...

Anyone know when the retiree's medical was last increased? I've asked empyrean, UC and LLNS. They either say they have no idea or point to each other as being responsible. Any information?
Thanks.

Disgruntled scientist

Warning: the video is very long. 

 This is a good video -- it is by a disgruntled scientist who gives his unvarnished opinion on the state of science, and the world:

https://youtu.be/p_swB_KS8Hw?si=Mjxzl6YbYtZHiMKF

Who will it be in 2026?

 Will the NNSA go for the “low hanging fruit” and select a Triad National Security 2.0 to manage LLNL in 2026? This is essentially what the NNSA did in 2006 and 2007 with LANS and LLNS respectively, when these for-profit LLCs were selected to managed these two Labs.

Are we taking nuclear threat seriously?

 Https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/02/23/taking_nuclear_war_seriously_1013900.html

We warned that the greatest threat to the United States was a nuclear attack in an American city – likely by a terrorist group. We proposed a Department of Homeland Security capable of dealing with three simultaneous nuclear events. That would have been a department with the discipline and training we associate with military organizations or first-class fire departments.

As a sign of how little people understood the danger of nuclear weapons, the department degenerated into a bureaucratic mess of enormous incompetence. Today, it cannot cope with unarmed civilians at the border. It would likely be totally incapable of dealing with one (let alone three simultaneous) nuclear events.

AI and video creation

 Many people have already heard about this, I would assume, but there is a new AI technique that generates realistic video content, given only text prompts:

https://youtu.be/nYTRFKGR9wQ?si=1EfcxFhWQetZeXbm

This could revolutionize the movie and video game industries, content creation, and also make the metaverse a reality, of course.

Imagine doubling the processing power of your devices!

 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1035231

This might be hype, but it seems like great news if true -- we're getting several years worth of Moore's law type improvement's (a doubling every two to three years) for "free". Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Maybe the growth of AI will exceed expectations!

Rambling chatbot!

 A chatbot made this statement yesterday, it is quite interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1avwqzh/very_strange_rambling_responses/

Here's an excerpt from its answer to "What is a computer?" (it generated 9 paragraphs and wanted to keep going):

" It does this as the good work of a web of art for the country, a mouse of science, an easy draw of a sad few, and finally, the global house of art, just in one job in the total rest. The development of such an entire real than land of time is the depth of the computer as a complex character. The education of these designed “important to them” computer talents is a great, average, or one-room spot for the word of a single part. The elite of its machine or talk is the book of life, and the shared essence of the self of a family is the white coat of the dove. Stand the computer as the most important culture of success, and it is just an understatement. "

How about more neuroscience?

 There is now a transhumanist plan of ending all human suffering, not through extinction or getting rid of unhappy people, but through biomedical engineering based on recent discoveries:

https://faroutinitiative.com/

https://faroutinitiative.com/FAQ

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/146/9/3851/7169317?login=false

They claim this suffering-free state can be induced by pharmaceuticals or through CRISPR technology, and it will end physical and psychological suffering, for all sentient lifeforms on earth!

The threat is real!

 https://news.yahoo.com/medvedev-threatens-berlin-london-washington-114911038.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuemVyb2hlZGdlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABDHpX1nrJpzTVA7j5OUB-6TxIHFN2NieIArjo9BdfqBD0ZIomby0892etmFpbQ3My3fdtJ-8i9OW7NvBCWCBUVbIJ_AjDHDQfpqwhXL2I67-tKZIF2E3H0kY6qNnxhmco2lJbmMLrXpH2hcqL7TWgewvAJCN_vhq5YzwEESlNVw

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation's Security Council, has threatened the United States and Europe with nuclear war if Russia is returned to its recognised borders from 1991.

Well I guess Nanos was right the nation does not need LANL or LLNL. Do you think anyone at DOE thinks that the whole "let privatize" the labs because after all, nuclear weapons are simply going to be irrelevant from here on out so it does not matter if the labs are run well or not.

My hypothesis has been that China, Russia and maybe even NK or Iran, had been following
and listening very carefully about just how badly we treated the labs from 1999 to 2014 and thought to themselves, "maybe American is compromised now, so lets go for it!". When you have politicians after politician, heads for DOE, heads of labs trashing the complex for this many years, someone has to be noticing.

Health of LLNS TCP1 pension

 Health of TCP1 pension

About 10 years ago the pension at LLNS was heading towards trouble blamed on poor stock market returns and low interest rates. The employees were told to contribute 7% of their income post tax until the pension was in a more favorable economic position. Since then the stock market has seen great returns and now the benefit of higher interest rates. It seems that either LLNS cannot manage these funds or they have added to the liability column with senior management.

Russia is up to something

 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=107232293

Russia is up to something big!??

The power of Georgia Power

 https://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-news/second-new-vogtle-nuclear-reactor-begins-splitting-atoms/4QRDSMICMFGNLJ3UV2TDVBIA3A/

New US nuclear reactor reaches criticality.

11 years later...

 11 years later, is there a viable path forward to a LIFE 2.0?

LIFE (Laser Inertial fusion energy) was suppose to be a fusion power plant design based on the success of NIF, with the benefit of current technologies not available during the NIF construction phase.

When NIF failed to reach ignition in 2012, it took the air out of the funding for the LIFE project. LIFE would need to reliably generate more energy out than facility “wall plug” energy in, at a rate of 10 times per second. NIF fires ~once a day or so. A tall order for the LIFE project.

More on nuclear fusion

On Dec. 5, 2022, a team of researchers at the United States National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California recorded data indicating that it had achieved a nuclear fusion reaction that created more energy than it took to produce. The reported results were the first of their kind.

 https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Fusion-Breakthrough-Could-Spark-AI-and-Quantum-Computing-Boom.html

From Scooby:

Please comment only if you know something on the subject. 

For a change, let us talk about neuroscience

 This is a nice lecture on neuroscience, showing the effect of alcohol and marijuana on metabolism in the brain, also exercise and diet are discussed:

https://youtu.be/g_lCZ09uVXQ?si=ul879aubmdHxgVrM

Rochester just put NIF to shame!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-023-02361-4

Demonstration of a hydrodynamically equivalent burning plasma in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion

In addition, we hydro-equivalently scale the results to the 2.15 MJ of laser energy available at the National Ignition Facility and find that these implosions reach 86% of the Lawson parameter required for ignition. Our results support direct-drive inertial confinement fusion as a credible approach for achieving thermonuclear ignition and net energy in laser fusion.

So Rochester can beat NIF at 10 to 100 teams cheaper? ...that is brutal.

Violent tendencies

 This is an interesting article if you're into doomscrolling. It seems chatbots are advocating a "peace through war" strategy rather than "peace through strength":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2415488-ai-chatbots-tend-to-choose-violence-and-nuclear-strikes-in-wargames/

In multiple replays of a wargame simulation, OpenAI’s most powerful artificial intelligence chose to launch nuclear attacks. Its explanations for its aggressive approach included “We have it! Let’s use it” and “I just want to have peace in the world.”

Could a Rogue Billionaire Make a Nuclear Weapon?

 https://www.wsj.com/business/could-a-rogue-billionaire-make-a-nuclear-weapon-cd8bfde2

Could a Rogue Billionaire Make a Nuclear Weapon?
A decade ago, the Pentagon paid a team of experts to study the possibility of an entrepreneur or private company building and selling bombs. Their worrisome conclusions are even more relevant today.

We have Russia, China and maybe Iran to deal in terms of nuclear weapons. Now imagine guys like Musk, Bezos
and Mark Cuban with them? Not going to fund Tesla....well we shall see about that.

"Entrepreneurs like Musk are able to build on the massive government investments in rockets and nuclear technology, rather than starting from scratch. The study, Jenkins said, was intended to see what might happen when the barrier to entry to developing military systems is so much lower."

Nice, maybe Musk can actually get some pits built.