Most people use Echos as voice controlled music players with occasional smart assistant functionality, this shouldn't be too hard to replicate in OSS. You could argue that the extend to which they're not making you buy into the Amazon ecosystem is a major failure of the product line.
> how long it'll take to Neuralink to turn their army of computer connected paraplegics into some Mechanical Turk-esque Grok clean up
It's really hard for me to imagine that making more logistic sense than the current state of affairs - which is hiring armies of poor able-bodied people in developing countries.
The point is the scale of poor people vastly outweighs the scale of Neuralink users.
It's not worth both the setup cost, nor the backlash to convert the relatively small number of Neuralink users into forced labour. Especially since they would still need the poor workforce as well.
Agreeing to data collection and sharing of your brain activity while concerning for it's own reasons, is not the same as forcing them to complete Mechanical Turk like tasks.
At this stage in the war keeping your social spaces free of malicious users seems like a much higher priority than providing the other side's civilians with accurate information. Russians can access all the info in the world with a simple VPN setup, that clearly doesn't change the situation in Russia.
This likely keeps normal people from seeing this way better than it keeps away any hackers or bots, as Russian citizens are mostly using DPI circumvention tools. And this was a thing since the first days of the war, it's not something new.
>that clearly doesn't change the situation in Russia
Giving up is the easiest thing to do. Last time some people did, it was blamed on stereotypes like their "learned helplessness" and "fatalism".
The reality is, civilians cannot change a country's domestic foreign policy - especially in a country like Russia.
Revolutions don't work without alignment from power centers like the police, military, judiciary, and a subset of legislators.
Hosni Mubarak wasn't overthrown because of protesters in Tahrir Square - he was overthrown because General Sisi decided to ignore shoot-on-sight orders.
There's no reason for Ukraine media to create a literal attack surface when most Russians already have a decent idea of what is happening in Ukraine (and vice versa) - most Russians and Ukrainians have blood relatives on both sides of the border.
Claiming the exposure doesn't work is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The reality is that awareness is a major factor, that was literally the main way of the power takeover in Russia (see e.g. Suponev, Ernst, Gusinsky, and Listyev). Russian government is really careful about doing things slowly and getting away with everything people let them get away with, and stopping dehumanization and letting people hearing voices is really important. Even if people right now disagree or think of it as propaganda (which it usually is, I hope nobody has any illusions about that), just existence of something in the background is enough to set up something else in the future. The time for the change will inevitably come like it always does, and the question then will become "what Ukrainian media did all this time, and where the hell they were". Turns out they may have not existed at all as well - out of sight, out of mind.
My point is there's nothing "cultural" about it, those suggesting it either have zero idea about it or have never lived through or at least analyzed 80s-90s-2000s in Russia. It's purely the artifact of manufactured consent, and media takeover that was creeping in since Listyev's times and went full speed in 2001 is a primary factor in it. Willingly going into an invisible mode for Russians while having a huge leverage (language+presence), leaving them in their bubble, is a colossal blunder.
Consciously or not, you're spreading Putin's propaganda and justify/validate his actions. "It's world vs Russia, always been and always will be, since Adam and Eve. Nothing can be done. Everybody supports the government, it's cultural. We've always been at war with Eastasia. Spread out, nothing to see here, people are powerless anyway." People like you might have a lot in common with many Russians without realizing it.
Tbf a lot of the thought experiments around human consciousness hit the same exact conundrum - if your body and mind were spontaneously destroyed and then recreated with perfect precision (a'la Star Trek transporters) would you still be you? Unless you permit for the existence of a soul it's really hard to argue that our consciousness exists in anything but the current instant.
I don't know how a materialist could answer anything other than no - you are obliterated. And if, despite sharing every single one of your characteristics, that individual on the other side of the teleporter is not 'you' (since you died), then some aspect of what 'you' are must be the discrete episode of consciousness that you were experiencing up until that point.
Which also leads me to think that there's no real reason to believe that this discrete episode of consciousness would have been continuous since birth. For all we know, we may die little deaths every time we go to sleep, hit our heads or go under anesthesia.
> I don't know how a materialist could answer anything other than no
Well, I'm a materialist and I say yes. Materialism doesn't preclude the existence of information which can be represented by matter. Recreating matter in the same arrangement/configuration as before reproduces the information.
If I copy down an equation, is it now a different equation? Of course not. It consists of different material for sure, but it's the same equation.
Does't this just devolve into the boltzmann brain argument? It's more likely that all of us are just the random fluctuation of a universe having reached heat death.
The same goes for us living in a simulation. If there is only one universe and that universe is capable of simulating our universe, it follows we have a much higher probability of being within the simulation.
> even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders
None of the leaders in this conversation are good people. Elon's controversies are way past the point of "some people decry" (why even use a phrasing this convoluted unless you just want to signal that you don't agree with it?) and firmly in "lots of great people wouldn't touch it with a pole". Part of leadership is creating a safe work environment and shielding your companies/brands from unnecessary drama, and Elon has done an absolutely abysmal job at it lately.
how many times must we repeat that AGI is whatever will sell the project. it means nothing. even philosophers don't have a good definition of "intelligence"
AGI just refers roughly to the intelligence it would take to replace most if not all white collar workers. There is no precise definition, but it's not meaningless.
I can think of a few reasons, most obviously that it's a security nightmare - you've got a non-employee accessing and modifying your company's code and possibly having access to customer data. Some shops might not care about this, but it's ridiculously irresponsible in principle.
What if, instead, the guy was 100% honest and up front about it, and offered to enroll the Czech guy in all security checks that any other contractor would get, and treat them legally as any contractor would be treated?
I wouldn't see anything wrong with this, but I would be willing to bet that 99% of companies would not go along with it--for reasons I'm not sure I understand.
If they were ok with doing the work to bring in the overseas person in the first place why should they hire their onshore cutout? To do it legally would be a whole mess of getting involved in business in a new country.
The main problem is at that point the US guy is operating outside the model of being a direct employee of the company. He's operating as a contracting vendor.
There's legal aspects to the employer-employee relationship that are different than the company-vendor relationship.
Even reporting the pay to the IRS as personal income would probably be legally problematic, because from a legal aspect a vendor is being paid for a service not an individual receiving income from an employer.
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