If this is true then almost all of the jobs in the world would already be replaced by AI. Sure, the model might be better than most people at lots of things but there are still tasks that human children find easy and AI struggles with. I wouldn't call being better at something than humans being "smarter" than them; if you do, calculators must be smarter than humans since they have been better at adding up numbers than us for a long time.
For text and image-based tasks they are infinitely better than a human.
What they lack are arms to interact with the physical world, but once this is done this is a giant leap forward (example: they will obviously be able to do experiments to discover new molecules by translating their steps-by-steps reasoning to physical actions, to build more optimized cars, etc).
For now human is smarter in some real-world or edge cases (e.g. super specialist in a specific science), but for any scientific task an average human is very very weak compared to the LLMs.
There are forms of science that don't involve "arms". Why don't we see a single research paper involving research entirely undertaken by AI? AI development and research itself doesn't need "arms". Why don't we just put AI in a box and let it infintely improve itself? Why doesn't every company that employs someone who just uses a computer replace them with AI? Why are there no businesses entirely run by AIs that just tell humans what to do. Why don't the AIs just use CAD and electronic simulation to design themselves some "arms"? Why can't AI even beat basic videogames that children can beat?
>>For text and image-based tasks they are infinitely better than a human.
Sometimes. When the stars align and you roll the dice the right way. I'm currently using ChatGPT 5.1 to put together a list of meals for the upcoming week, it comes up with a list(very good one!), then it asks if I want a list of ingredients, I say yes, and the ingredients are completely bollocks. Like it adds things which are not in any recipe. I ask about it, it says "sorry, my mistake, here's the list fixed now" and it just removed that thing but added something else. I ask why is that there, and I shit you not, it replied with "I added it out of habit" - like what habit, what an idiotic thing to say. It took me 3 more attempts to get a list that was actually somewhat correct, although it got the quantities wrong. "infinitely better than a human at text based tasks" my ass.
I would honestly trust a 12 year old child to do this over this thing I'm supposedly paying £18.99/month for. And the company is valued at half a trillion dollars. I honestly wonder if I'm the bigger clown or if they are.
At analyzing and reproducing language.. words, code etc sure because at their core they are still statistical models of language. But there seems to be growing consensus that intelligence requires modeling more than words.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Seems like lot of people with high ego are not ready to accept the truth that a human has way less knowledge than a world encyclopedia with infinite and practically perfect memory.
Otherwise researching intelligence in animals would be a completely futile pursuit since they have no way of "knowing" facts communicated in human language.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are very insecure. I’m genuinely sorry for them. I think the best thing to do is to derive utility from AI (to mitigate the costs).
>>Seems like lot of people with high ego are not ready to accept the truth that a human has way less knowledge than a world encyclopedia.
Well, thank you for editing your own comment and adding that last bit, because it really is the crux of the issue and the reason why OP is being downvoted.
Having all of the worlds knowledge is not the same as being smart.
Smart is being able to produce knowledge quickly. I’m not sure how it could be denied that AIs are capable of producing knowledge quickly (obviously extremely quickly).
R’s the best, bc it’s been a statistical analysis language from the beginning in 1974 (and was built and developed for the purpose of analysis / modeling). Also, the tidyverse is marvelous. It provides major productivity in organizing and augmenting the data. Then there’s ggplot, the undisputed best graphical visualization system + built-ins like barplot(), or plot().
But ultimately data analysis is going beyond Python and R into the realm of Stan and PyMC3, probabilistic programming languages. It’s because we want to do nested integrals and those software ecosystems provide the best way to do it (among other probabilistic programming languages). They allow us to understand complex situations and make good / valuable decisions.
Exactly, I’d expect reducing its judgement has spillover effects, bc in a sense everything is political. ie- the idea of making it wise and unwise at the same time is incoherent. Bias comes at the expense of information.
Pozsar assigns far too much weight to Russia. It’s an economically small country. He should be focused a lot more on large American companies that carry actual heft.
According to the article, Russia is just a precursor: "What had been viewed as having negligible credit risk suddenly carried confiscation risk. For any country potentially facing future sanctions, the calculus of holding large dollar reserve positions shifted." -- So the question is: what share of the global economy do these countries represent? If China is among them, this share is considerable.
China has no serious alternative to Treasuries (bc the closest competitors have lower yields). Also, other countries don’t place themselves in the same group as Russia, bc they violated international norms in an extreme manner.
Someone should tell the Chinese that, because they've been a net seller of US treasuries for some time now. They are clearly at a minimum diversifying right now. I'm sure if you ask some people they will say "diversifying" isn't a strong enough word for the velocity of the changes we're seeing. "De-linking" is the popular word these days for what's going on. Truth, as always, is likely somewhere in the middle.
Obviously we can't see all that goes on inside China, but we have 100% visibility on what's happening with US treasuries. Regarding the whole picture, just from what is publicly reported, it certainly seems like China is betting on what appears to be, themselves. Maybe that's a good market in the future and they make out like bandits? Maybe it's a bad market and they take significant hits? Not really sure anyone can say with certainty right now?
If I was forced to bet, I'd say it will pay off, but not as big as they think. Probably big enough to not really need the West though. Which is a strategic win I suppose?
Good question on the USDCNY trajectory. I think it’s fair to assume that they manage this through capital controls rather than market forces, so the adjustment might play out differently than typical reserve diversification scenarios. The GDP growth question is the interesting one: are they trading some growth for strategic autonomy, or betting they can maintain growth through domestic consumption + non-Western trade? Probably find out in the next 5-10 years.
Thank you. If it's for strategic autonomy, it's a bad trade. China needs domestic consumption like you mention, to absorb their supply / keep people working. Weakening USD would make Chinese exports more expensive, esp. if they convert it to Yuan. Meanwhile there's a property crisis and they can stimulate demand, including for strategic autonomy. One devious possibility is just giving it to Russia. Repatriating it as Yuan to stimulate doesn't make sense to me.
The property crisis and domestic consumption issues are real constraints, but I think the framework's point is that the calculus has shifted even if the alternatives aren't great. China's treasury holdings peaked around $1.3 trillion in 2013 and are now closer to $750-800 billion.
You're right that repatriating as yuan for stimulus doesn't solve the structural issues. But Pozsar suggests the alternative isn't necessarily converting back to yuan, it's using dollar reserves to lock in commodity supply agreements or funding infrastructure that creates yuan-denominated trade flows. Strategic rather than economically optimal, but reduces exposure to assets that could be frozen.
Your "giving it to Russia" point is interesting because it addresses multiple objectives simultaneously: supporting an ally while converting financial assets into physical resources and geopolitical relationships. Whether that tradeoff makes economic sense long-term idk.
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