ASFO 2022–09–24

In which I step outside my usual track and talk about Computers and “AI” for a bit. This is, if anything, a propos of the misguided efforts to tame inflation by depressing wages, when labour productivity has grown much more rapidly than wages since the 1970s, with the result that direct labour costs are a less proportion of the cost of providing goods and services than they ever have been. Also something about a video game and what it implies for our efforts towards space settlement. Maybe next week we’ll have a Double Asteroid Redirect Test or SLS launch to talk about.

A page with the text A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION (as discussed on the show)
This appears to be from 1970s IBM training materials
View of a "claw machine" with a bin of plushies. On the mechanism is the text "MACHINE'S DECISION IS FINAL".
The opposing viewpoint
A desktop with a mailing envelope on which the recipient address has been obfuscated ; some pro-nuclear stickers and pamphlets ; and an accompanying letter
Sample parcel of stickers as mailed to a Reddit user
Supplementary Show