Granted, I assumed yearly, because this is apparently supposed to replace a yearly benefit that Greenland receives from Denmark.

Even if it is only one time, that’s still a lot of money that Trump seems to want to throw at something completely frivolous, rather than making a difference to the lives of Americans. Can’t see how that feels good for anyone who is struggling with the price of eggs.

Not even remotely. LLMs have failed to find any viable market fit.

The problem continues to be hallucinations and limited utility. This is compounded by the fact that LLMs are very expensive to run. The latter problem wouldn’t really be a problem if LLMs were truly capable of replacing a human employee, but they’re not. They’re just too unreliable for any serious enterprise grade application, and they’re too expensive for any low severity application.

For example, as a coding assistant, a lot of people quite like them. But as a replacement for a human coder, they’re a disaster. That means you still have to employ the expensive human, and you also have to pay an exorbitant monthly fee for what amounts to a very cool search engine.

There are tonnes of frivolous applications where they work really well. The AI girlfriend stuff, for example. A chatbot that sexts you is a very sellable product, regardless of how icky it might seem to some people. But no one is going to pay over $200 / month for it (as an example, ChatGPT still doesn’t make a profit at their $200/month tier).

LLMs are too unreliable to make anything better than toys, but too expensive to sell as toys.

For anyone who voted for Trump because your cost of living is too high… How y’all feeling about this?

Trump wants to give everyone in Greenland $10k. Where’s your $10k? What the actual fuck has this guy done to help you out so far?

How is it that DOGE has to force your grandma to walk to an office for her social security because a phone line was too expensive, but Trump has money to throw $600m a year at this?

Interesting theory. Total absence of proof.

Does the theory fit the available facts? Yes.

Do the available facts prove the theory? Absolutely not.

Insanely bad idea. You should not be honebrewing anything with the capacity to kill people.

Not that Tesla’s solution is any safer, but that’s a separate discussion.

It really doesn’t. You’re just describing the “fancy” part of “fancy autocomplete.” No one was ever really suggesting that they only predict the next word. If that was the case they would just be autocomplete, nothing fancy about it.

What’s being conveyed by “fancy autocomplete” is that these models ultimately operate by combining the most statistically likely elements of their dataset, with some application of random noise. More noise creates more “creative” (meaning more random, less probable) outputs. They do not actually “think” as we understand thought. This can clearly be seen in the examples given in the article, especially to do with math. The model is throwing together elements that are statistically proximate to the prompt. It’s not actually applying a structured, logical method the way humans can be taught to.

I’ve heard a few different theories about big plays that might be the intent here, and they all fall down on that same basic problem; The US, doesn’t have the reliability or the leverage to make it work. That’s not saying that the theories are bad - they’re all plausible enough - just that no matter what the White House thinks their play is here, it won’t work because no one has enough incentive to play nice with them. The US no longer has the economic dominance needed to force these kinds of changes, and they’re too unreliable a partner for anyone to willingly enter a a long term arrangement with them.

But then I suppose none of this is surprising when you look at Trump’s business dealings. He’s never understood any way of operating other than being an unreliable partner and screwing everyone around you, and it’s why his businesses all failed. He’s never understood the value in being a reliable partner.

Ironically, this would largely achieve Trump’s goal of lowering America’s trade deficits. A big reason why America runs such deep deficits is because the strength of the dollar makes it less attractive to buy from the US, but the dollar never weakens because it’s the global reserve.

Of course, when OPEC discussed moving away from the dollar Trump lost his shit, so it’s not like this is his actual plan. There’s no 5D chess here, they’re all idiots. Nor would intentionally devaluing the dollar to increase US exports be a smart idea, but it is something that has been seriously proposed by one of Trump’s economic advisors.

They’re also just good business sense.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are about making sure that you have a wide variety of perspectives represented within your company.

Here’s a really dumb anecdote that illustrates the point; Flaming Hot Cheetos were invented by a Latino janitor. He came up with the recipe, pitched it to higher ups, and through some serious persistence managed to get them to give it a shot. It’s sold as one of those feel good stories about coming up from nothing or whatever, but the real takeaway is that it took a god damn janitor with the dogged persistence of a god to make that idea happen, because there was no one in the rooms where the decisions happened who was able to say “Hey, maybe we’d capture the Latino market better if we made flavours that appealed to them?” A more diverse company would already have been having these kinds of ideas. How much brilliance is being lost because of bad hiring practices?

Diversity makes your business more effective. A diverse workplace can attract and keep the best talent. A diverse workplace can serve the broadest range of customers, and penetrate deeper into every market it targets. A diverse workplace can build a more healthy environment for all its employees, creating better productivity. These are all good things if you are a company that likes making money.

Others have given the detailed answer, but the really simple one is this; “How many jungle plants grow well in deserts?” If it was simply a matter of “hot = good”, surely the answer would be “all of them.”

There are specific conditions that every plant requires to grow well. Some plants are more tolerant of disruption to those conditions, some less so. Climate change affects all of those conditions. Increased global temperatures can make some places hotter, some places colder, some places wetter, some places dryer, and have all sorts of other knock on effects too.

Coffee is quite sensitive to environmental factors and only grows in certain specific regions as a result. Those factors are being upended by climate change. Coffee is going to very rapidly become a luxury product.

Billionaires don’t care. Twenty dollars or two dollars for a cup is effectively the same price to them; insignificant. It’s the rest of us that get fucked.