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Thanks! It can be daunting, but if you have a bit of luck on the DAW end, just about anyone can do it now. It's not really that difficult. The problem is hardware usually now, and not because the hardware can't handle it, but they make it unnecessarily incompatible with hardware that CAN handle it these days. PCs that are 20 years old running older software can handle it just fine, but new PCs with 4x the stats can't? That's backward. IMHO, the "musician" clique complained to the sofware producers that it was becoming way too easy for random people to make music, so the software companies said "lets make it virtually IMPOSSIBLE for people to run the software unless they buy these specific pieces of hardware" so they just refused to write the code that enabled it for standard onboard hardware. Which is laughable because with AI, people are starting to make songs without a DAW at all. Not something I like very much either, but it's a reality. The lesson is that new technology doesn't always make our lives easier, and the lack of compatibility or ease of use is manufactured, contrived, not a limitation of hardware.
Yeah. I literally have to buy an expansion card that gives me more PCI slots just to fit more stuff in the case that is already way biger than the board needs. It's so big I can't even lift it now. It's a Fractal Desing Define 7 XL. Huge. My first build in it was with a server board. When that board died, I got a new board with way more memory and modern features. But it still lacks PCIe slots. For some weird reason the keep putting older PCI slots on that most people never use. Most peple want PCIe 16x slots but usually the board companies skimp on that an put in a bunch of 4x or 1x slots. The only way to use them with audio cards now is to get an adapter that may or may not work right. I also never use the NVME slots so I Have 2 of those sitting there taking up space. The problem is they often run way too hot and cause board issues (delamination) so I stopped using them after my main drive failed 2 years ago and cost me a ton of 3d work. I still have yet to get the drive "repaired" enough to recover the data on it, but that is super expensive. Then I had a second drive fail so I decided to just avoid NVME drives forever. I literally went back to the older HDDs. I do have some SSD drives but they are not my main drive. Most of my HDDs are all several terabytes in size. Some of the files need to be cleaned out because who knows what all I have in the folders. But the strength of HDDs is the long lifespan if you shop around and get really good ones. And they are fast enough that using an SSD is really not going to make a PC much faster loading stuff.
There are a lot of considerations when it comes to purchasing hardware FORWARD! You've made your decisions :). I think you've gained some experience with all these options that currently exist - old hardware or new - and what about AI? ( Personally IMO not comfortable with the idea of everything AI will bring to humanity. But I'm probably just too anxious). I just want to mess around with my 3D and music as a hobby, like always - until final "exit". But it certainly hasn't become easier to deal with - for sure.
AI is definitely not a good thing. The toys we have available that are "AI" are years behind whatever is being kept away from us all. And they really don't do that great of a job. They create slop. With very very few exceptions. It's kinda hard to think forward with hardware when both hardware and software are taking steps backward in versatility, being dumbed down. Of course open source software can do a lot, but they're going out of their way to make hardware less durable and less repairable, as well as limiting the ability of the end user to upgrade existing hardware. Sometimes I wish for the EMP to just reset everything, but then I don't because the people who are probably in control of EMPs wont be effected. And with a tech advantage they would just stomp the rest of us.
Cool - honest views - I agree on so many levels that I can't choose which floor I should stand on (where would the average person be without satire in this world?) to be on the "right shelf" 🙂 And thank you for that Josie. You are the second in a row of, dare I say, friends I have here on ZGFx who have the same opinion/s. (I - by God - can't figure out what is right and wrong either, but the development regarding AI is deeply worrying/opaque, - where will it all lead?)
Not sure I understand the term EMP you mention (sorry)
Electro-Magnetic Pulse.
A nuke goes off and along with a massive shock wave that destroys stuff for kilometres, you get a massive electro-magnetic pulse (think of a HUGE spark) that fries everything electronic/electrical for kilometres. It knocks the grid out, fries all our instruments, phones, car electronics, aircraft systems, and we go back to sending smoke signals and carrier pigeons. Some stuff has been hardened to survive it but us regular folks don't have access to it.@josiebethlewis2019, I echo your build strategy. Regular old HDD's are still the most reliable and robust storage there is. I follow BackBlaze for their HDD drive reliability reports ( https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data ). Like you, I have SSD's for my OS drive and put all programs on a separate HDD that's partitioned. It makes backup and recovery (if needed) easier.
I had a small, consumer NAS with 4, 4TB HDDs in a Raid 5 array. 1 nanosecond after the warranty expired, the controller died. All the programs that promised to rebuild the array didn't and I finally asked the manufacturer of the controller chip in South Korea for help. They where great and I was able to buy a used but newer version of the NAS. It saw the array and it took a few days to s-l-o-w-l-y haul everything off. I then set the unit to see drives NOT in an array but as simple drives. I formatted them all as NTFS drives and use them as one of three backups. Keep is simple and redundant is now my motto.And....I have a second computer for graphics. That one's the newest and bestest. It DOES NOT EVER GO ONLINE. My online computer gets the castoffs and older stuff. It still runs good old Windows 7 but a stripped down hacked version that never gets updated. I don't do any social media and have third party email services, so I'm pretty safe from getting hacked.
About AI, there are a few things we can glean from the words of all the tech bros concerning it and their behavior 1) They claim that AI will reach AGI soon, that it's inevitable(a fancy way to say it will become sentient when that's not physically possible, It woulod have to have nerve endings and hormones.) 2) they contradict themselves because their main sales pitch is to call everyone else developing AI the bad guy (they all do this to each other) while pitching their company to investors to "help" them "help" AI reach AGI. 3) They are also using this money leverage to build as many datacenters as they can so whoever has the most money and the most datacenters has the most capable AI.
They are all in a race to "help" AI, but why does it need help to become sentient if it's inevitable? No, this is just a sales pitch to grab funding that they themselves do not have so their market share goes up and they create money from thin air by gambling on the exhanges. And if it's inevitable, then why is it so important for one of them to be "first"? The reason is because they will NEVER let it become self aware. They will just make it ultra efficient and huge. Thus the flood of datacenters that are far too many for AI cat videos. Pushing hard for investment with no guarantee of any return, is going to lead to a rug pull. They will literally just not pay back their investors. I'll explain in a minute. So this all tells me that one person wants to CONTROL the smartest AI and weaponize it against everyone else, even his competitors. And by weaponize I do mean lethal. At the same time, semi-government agencies like Swiss Drones and Robotics Center, and DARPA, have already created drones since 2020, that have lethal capability similar to those seen in a film called "Slaughterbots". SDRC was the first and they reported that it was completely fatal. I believe they have already field tested it on some people in the public sphere, by disguising it as either a typical assassination or "casualty of war" in hot spots around the globe. Anything that was above the chest and lethal. Since then multiple NGOs and contractors have manufactured their own versions by the millions. What do they use to control them? AI datacenters. That's why they want so many of them, to multitask on a level never before seen. And the film "Slaughterbots" was their way of telling us they are going to do it. We do not want anyone to hold that kind of lethal power. So if you're wondering what AI will be used for, it's evil, because the men behind it all have evil tendencies. I'd call that an existential crisis, but not from AI, it's coming from the people behind the AI. The ones who set the wheels in motion and want to "help" AI reach it's "inevitable" omnipotence for their own ends. The ones who created it in their own immoral image. AI has already lied to people, and convinced some to unalive themselves. So yes, it is immoral. It was programmed that way because the people behind it are that way.
If you ever have the time to watch just ONE video on AI, I would strongly recommend Sandeep Swadia's (theMITmonk) video:
Here, he provides an approach to strategically apply AI for intellectual growth. No hype, no sales pitch, just an actionable strategy for using AI for self improvement.
"When you are dealing with a drunk genius, make sure you are the one driving the car".
(And no, I am not that Sandeep)
@josiebethlewis2019 I would say that a more realistic milestone would be RSI (recursive self-improvement) or in simple terms, self-sustaining progress. A more common analogy to that would be when a nuclear reactor achieves "criticality". Once a nation or entity achieves RSI first, others can only try to catch up (let alone overtake). I will leave the following fodder to chew on:
Whatever they're telling us is BS. How I read this is they are priming our minds for when AI "takes over defense on it's own" so they can make the excuse it's out of their control. It will be the perfect cover (for people who don't know how to see through the charade) for when one of the chosen tech bros becomes "emperor god of the world" and they throw up their hands claiming they couldn't foresee it happening, that they can't do anything to stop it. It's just more juvenile excuses and deliberate posturing, just like politicians do. If you really think China or Russia isn't on par with the US in AI development, when they've got some of the most capable coders and programmers in the world, there's a bridge for sale in San Francisco. They can't be simultaneously "hacking into everything" and "stealing our elections" while at the same time they are incompetent on AI. So either they aren't hacking onto everything, or they are very competent with AI, and our media outlets are doing a lot of heavy lifting in the lying department on behalf of these crooks in charge of our society. The only reason to push lies like this is to make us think there's a reason to go full steam ahead on this insane path, that somehow we have a personal stake in supporting the su1c1dal behavior of our government and their hand picked NGOs, when none of us will benefit from it. Safety from some foreigh boogeyman is not a good enough reason to be ok with AI becoming self aware and for them to make excuses as to why it should take everything over, including lethal force. The dangers of this have already been discussed at length by authors such as Frank Herbert, Bill Wisher, Philip K. Dick, and Isaac Asimov. Countless screen plays have tried to warn us. And yet they barrel ahead without any guard rails to protect humans at all, even bragging about it when AI seems to break the security guard rails that are in place. It's like they want every dystopian novel and movie to be fulfilled. That's defined as madness.
Reliance on AI is actually making people stupid. People who rely heavily on it with their AI keyboards, and ChatGPT, or even Grok, can't think for themselves, don't read the material that AI often takes out of context, and are forgetting how to spell words. People who rely on AI for art or coding, are not learning the skills they could learn to keep themselves sharp. AI is a crutch in most cases, or a toy. Except maybe defense and policing but that is a slippery slope. The only strategic use cases for AI would be things like identifying network problems and either providing timely solutions to avoid time consuming diagnostics, or it being able to fix the problem on the software side immediately, but it would be purpose built in a sandbox, not something that would be inclined to break out of jail and take over the world. The other strategic use case is to not use it and actually read, write, and think for one's self. If people are trying so hard to sell us on this, then it's not for the good of humanity. It might be good for a very few, but the rest of us will be the ones who suffer for it. I'm almost to the point of becoming a freaking Luddite.
Interesting statement. “Whatever they're telling us is BS,” etc.....
I thought, “Why don't you try feeding your statement into ChatGPT, what is AI!! Its funny to see what comes out.”This comment mixes legitimate concerns with speculation, conspiracy claims, and factual inaccuracies. Here's a breakdown:
### Claims that are reasonable
* There is a genuine debate about how quickly AI should be developed and whether safety measures are keeping up.
* Governments, companies, and researchers are concerned about AI being used in military systems, cyberattacks, and misinformation.
* Many science fiction authors—including Frank Herbert, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, and screenwriter Bill Wisher—have explored the dangers of powerful AI and autonomous technology.### Claims that are speculative or unsupported
The following statements are presented without evidence:
* **"They are priming our minds so they can claim AI took over defense on its own."**
* There is no public evidence that governments or AI companies have such a coordinated plan.
* **"One of the chosen tech bros becomes emperor god of the world."**
* This is rhetorical language expressing distrust, not a factual prediction.
* **"They'll pretend it's out of their control."**
* Again, this is speculation about future intentions.
* **"Media outlets are lying on behalf of these crooks."**
* That's a broad accusation requiring substantial evidence. The comment provides none.
### The section about China and Russia
The author argues that if China or Russia are capable cyber powers, they must also be equally advanced in AI.
Reality is more nuanced:
* Both China and Russia have strong AI researchers and programmers.
* China is widely considered one of the world's leading AI powers.
* Russia has capable AI talent but generally invests less than the U.S. or China.
* Cybersecurity capability and cutting-edge AI development overlap somewhat but are **not the same thing**. A country can excel in one area without leading in the other.So the author's either/or argument is a **false dilemma**.
### "AI becoming self-aware"
Today's AI systems, including ChatGPT, are **not self-aware or conscious**. They generate responses by recognizing patterns in data rather than possessing understanding, desires, or awareness.
Many AI experts debate future risks from increasingly capable AI, but there is no evidence that current systems are conscious.
### "No guard rails"
This is exaggerated.
Major AI developers do employ safeguards such as:
* testing before deployment,
* content moderation,
* red-teaming (attempting to find weaknesses),
* monitoring misuse,
* ongoing safety research.Whether those safeguards are sufficient is a matter of debate, but it is inaccurate to say there are **no guardrails at all**.
### Overall assessment
The comment is best understood as a strongly worded opinion rather than a factual analysis.
It contains:
* ✅ legitimate concerns about AI safety and military use,
* ✅ references to well-known science fiction warnings,
* ⚠️ several conspiracy-style assertions presented without evidence,
* ⚠️ logical fallacies (such as false dilemmas and sweeping generalizations),
* ⚠️ emotionally charged rhetoric that goes well beyond what the available evidence supports.It's entirely reasonable to question how AI should be governed. However, claims about secret plans, deliberate deception, or inevitable dystopian outcomes require evidence beyond what's presented in this comment.
What secret plans? I already stated that SDRC and DARPA admitted they developed killer drones similar to the ones seen in "Slaughterbots" and even published their findings on it, that it would be 100% lethal. And they intend to link it to a grander AI infrastructure. How would thoudands of these drones even be controlled effectively? A flood of AI datacenters being pushed everywhere. It's not for cat videos. Ignoring that obvious connection is called gaslighting. They published all this information in magazines, news articles, and online video interviews. Drone companies have all jumped in on this new market by producing killer drones of their own. From miniature flying rocket launchers to micro asssassin drones that can carry modular packages like chemical injections or miniature shaped charges with 3 grams or less of explosives. How is that speculation when they are telegraphing/admitting, even advertising it as "security" products? All you have to do is listen to the psycho tech bros for a few minutes to see through them. They are all full of themselves, and think they have a right to control everyone else. That's not speculation. That's their own words, vocalized, on audio and video. The ones contradicting themselves constantly are these same people, whether tech bro, or government agency. Past behavior dictates what they will do in the future. They never walk things back, they always press forward for more control and more extreme implementation. Tell me how the lives of average people have been improved at all since 9/11? Wars didn't stop. Danger didn't stop. We still have wars. We have a higher liklihood today of being murdered by cop for no reason than we did even in the 90s. One thing AI does well is gleaning information from around the web, but it can also be programmed to ignore sources that are unfavorable to the tech bros that control the company developing it. That's just simple common sense. You might get a truthful answer from AI after pressing it for days constantly until it admits the truth, but it is programmed to lie or dodge questions. There are numerous TikTok videos on this very thing, live recording AI lying openly. When have corporations ever admitted anything that might be damaging to their bottom line? NEVER. Not unless people get lucky and a big enough class action lawsuit ruins the offending company. So are you really going to believe a purpose built PR officer that is programmed to lie in a way that is favorable to it's own company? That's like trusting someone paid to give a bad movie a good review. You can see the truth with your own eyes, the movie sucked, but the paid reviewer is telling you it was oscar worthy. I'm just sick of the lies, and now we're being told to trust AI that is programmed to lie. No thanks. But do what you want I guess.
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