E.g. all "atoms" of a glider in Conway's Life get replaced every couple turns but an observer can tell it is still a glider because it keeps the shape, and it the same glider because it continues it's previous state.

This makes AI not quite alive because it's missing the continuity.

Or, risking to beat the metaphor to death, because over a span of time I'll cross many more deserts than I would have on a camel, and because I'll cross deserts that I wouldn't even try crossing on a camel.

And being a reasonable person I, just like the author, choose the helicopter. That's it, that's the whole problem.

"I find your email deeply ensloping."

"This marketing campaign is going to enslope a lot of people."

"Feeling ensloped, I closed Instagram and looked out the window".

Now, I tried the web app and chose to learn Greek as a beginner. And while I had better experience with your app than with ChatGPT or Gemini voice modes, I still got lost 5 minutes in because the AI tutor doesn't seem to have a plan for me, nor does it "see" my struggles. For example, after asking me about a hobby, it gives me a long sentence in Greek about how how it is nice to hike in mountains. Being absolute noob I cannot reply to it, nor even repeat it. And I don't even know what it is expected from me at the moment. A human tutor here would probably repeat a part of the sentence with a translation and ask me to repeat, or would explain something. The AI just sits there waiting for me to make a sound, and when I make it, it goes on on a tangental subject of beach vacations. :)

Again, this is still relatively not bad, and I'm going to give it another try.

I try to use AI daily, and every month I see how it is able to generate larger and more complex chunks of code from the first shot. It is almost there. We just need to adopt the new paradigm, build the tooling, and embrace the new weird future of software development.

It doesn't scale if performed by a human. But what if... we employ AI to conduct the voice exams?

There were multiple cases of Ukrainians doing something evil or borderline evil that were swept under the rug. One of the recent examples is the cassette munition explosion over a beach in Sevastopol, which killed few children and wounded a hundred of people. I stopped following the war closely but it got my attention because that's my home town. And in this case I even agree that the rocket wasn't specifically targeting the beach (that would be stupid), it was likely targeting the nearby airbase; but that's not the point.The point is that every single time something like this happens, it gets silenced.

There are multiple high-quality videos of the explosion recorded from different angles. On Reddit, a high-quality video of an even like this, surreal and frightening, would otherwise have been upvoted to skies. But not when it puts Ukrainians in bad light! One the next day, as a random Reddit user, you'd never even know about this event (I wonder how many people know about this at all).

And again, this is just one example. I can probably collect few hundreds of cases likes this over the first two years of the war, where as a Western media consumer you would never know about something that could potentially change your opinion on the conflict. And just like this, you're being manipulated. Of course, so are the Russians who solely rely on Russian news sources. The only way to know the truth is to follow both sides closely, especially to what each side hides and silences. You'd be surprised.

That said, you CAN buy drugs on Telegram, sure, it is just not as easy as everyone seems to think. You need to know the account name of a service that delivers in your area, you need to be reeealy careful when typing the account name because for every real drug seller account there are multiple fakes with slight variation in the name that fish for people using search, and then even if you have a verified account and they sold you drugs last month, there is like 30% chance that the account have been compromised and now you are talking with scammers again.

Cancelling property deals after 2014 would effectively mean most will still be able to live in their homes and apartments but will never be able to sell anything. It took me 5 years to change Ukrainian documents to Russian documents (property documents, passports, driver license, everything), and I still have not received and will probably never receive ownership on the small workshop that belonged to my father's company because it requires something from Ukrainian archives, which is pretty much impossible to obtain. I spent months of my life standing in queues in government agencies and in the court. I cannot imagine changing everything back, it will take decades!

And then, what about the kids who were born here after 2014 and have no Ukrainian documents? What about tens of thousands who lived here all their life but who always were Russian citizens, like my father in law? Sevastopol has been a Russian navy base since 1783, there are so many people who are kids and grandkids of retired navy officers, who were born and lived here but never had Ukrainian citizenship. What about their families, and everybody who had some relation with Russian navy? Half of guys my class in 1994 went to the local Russian navy academy and became Russian navy officers, no chance they or their families can re-integrate in Ukraine. And then the Russian military shipyards, and the local branch of Moscow State University and many many other Russian institutions which were functioning here since forever and all the people working for them and their families... Russia has always had so much presence here, I honestly cannot imagine Ukraine taking over Crimea without expelling or imprisoning half of the population.

Sorry for the brain dump, I didn't mean to make a statement or prove anything, it is just such a mess it hurts to even think about this all.