Sorry if I wasn't clear; I didn't mean to make it sound like an attack or a lecture. Section 31 is just one of my pet peeves in Trek for a while. We are in agreement! 😊

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what Section 31 is supposed to be. Sloan wasn't a good guy. 31 actively tried to commit genocide.

The idea behind them is that arguments of ends justifying the means and "getting dirty" to preserve higher ideals is morally, philosophically, and practically bankrupt. The Federation didn't need 31 to win the war, and in fact, their methods would have made it much worse. Section 31 as a plot device exists to show us that there will always be those looking to use higher ideals to support terrible actions, and we must be constantly vigilant against them.

It truly pains me how that message has been twisted, and people think Section 31 are not only good guys but also cool.

Sure, that law isn't airtight. Really, though, what's a law but a piece of paper when there's a SCOTUS decision effectively making POTUS king and Congress unwilling to stop him. At this point, are even so-called airtight laws safe from transgression? I think it's doubtful.

This is what's getting me. If he won via electoral college or couping, I'd be angry and ready to do the work to pull the country out of this mess and end Trumpism once and for all. But instead, he won the popular vote. People in the United States saw a wannabe-autocrat who was specifically called a fascist by his own officers who admitted to being a dictator "on day one" among so many other things. After seeing that, a majority of people either affirmatively supported the fascist candidate by voting for him, or they are tolerant enough of it to sit at home and not vote or vote for a third party knowing the outcome. And that really just makes me lose faith in my country and the people, and so I'm just sad knowing that this country actively chose this outcome.

What's worse is that I really don't feel a strong desire to try to change anything since it'll just fall on deaf ears at best. More to the point, I don't even want to hear "their side" or "their reasons" for why they voted the way they did because no matter the rationale they give, it will come down to them being comfortable with oppression of minorities and autocracy. I always want to believe the best of people, but after today, I really can't anymore.

Yes! "AI" defined as only LLMs and the party trick applications is a bubble. AI in general has been around for decades and will only continue to grow.

See, this is part of his long con. Clarence knows his wife is crazy, so instead of divorcing her, he's just going to make their marriage illegal. /s

I can see the allure for places wanting to keep certain trouble-makers out as a precaution, but this gets so close to a privatized social credit score that it's beyond uncomfortable.

Depends on your skills. Documentation is always useful. If you have language skills, translation of documentation or helping create language packs/translations.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could come up with more.

YES! I study AI, and this is exactly how I feel!

Side note-One of my favorite things to do is ask people what their use case for using AI is, and watch them sputter out "uh...emails and productivity and things."

I work/study in AI, and it is completely over-hyped. For one thing, the C-suite can't wrap it's head around the fact that AI != LLM; they all seem to think all AI is just LLMs. On top of that, they are way too eager to throw humans out of the loop.

That said, I think LLM applications, even in their current form, are super useful in development and business practices. I myself use it to increase my productivity in coding. But, I use it as an augmentation rather than a replacement. One of my friends put it best the other day, "LLMs are like a junior dev to your senior dev. You need to be hyper-specific, and you need to check it's output." In other words, it's great for off-loading some work, but it isn't going to completely replace humans.

With that said, I'm a bit annoyed that other AI fields are being over-shadowed by LLMs. There's a ton of other interesting work being done in those fields that is super useful and important. All of them, though, are not going to replace humans but rather augment and make humans more productive. I've found that an AI-Human team is most effective.

Karl Urban is the best of the Kelvin-verse cast. He felt like De Kelley/McCoy without doing an imitation or parody. Even in little things like facial expressions and line delivery, he nailed it.

No lie, he seems like such a cool dude. If I were in the area, I'd totally go to see him. And while I first knew him as Chekov, I grew to love him as Al Bester on Babylon 5, truly some of his best work!