AI Is Building On A Fragile Foundation

The future of AI depends upon a very fragile theory: finding applications for LLMs that increase productivity significantly more than their cost. 

This would generate profits for the application vendors above the costs they have to pay the data centers, which might increase revenue more than enough to cover the power, depreciation and debt service. 

So far this remains elusive, putting the future of AI on a very fragile foundation.

This blurb was heavily inspired/cribbed from DSHR's wonderful observations on the current state of AI.

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Photos From Our Trip to the US East Coast

Earlier this week we returned from a vacation to the US Northeast. My wife is from Canada and had never been to the northeastern states other than PA (wonderful Pittsburgh and other small western PA cities). 

Here some random photos from our trip. 

We flew into Boston to visit my son. I hadn't been to Boston in a while and was very impressed by how clean it was. We saw very little litter or graffiti and almost no beggars or homeless people. I have a friend from Boston and he told me it's because the Mafia keeps the city clean. Whoever is responsible the city looked great. Boston highlights: USS Constitution (I've loved tall sailing ships ever since I started reading Patrick O'Brian's books), Brattle Book Shop, the Old North Church, and some beautiful old buildings and restaurants.

We drove up to Portland, Maine, a gorgeous town with beautiful lighthouses and wonderful views of the sea. Portland highlights included touring the town (smaller and almost as weird as Portland, OR), admiring the lighthouses, and enjoying some great food. I even got to try the legendary Moxie soft drink. Moxie's taste wasn't as strange as I expected - it reminded me of this politically incorrect soda from my youth.   

We stopped off in Portsmouth on the drive back. It's a cute little town and we didn't have much time to look around. We did get some cheap but tasty Mexican food at Howling Wolf. We dropped my son off in Woburn and continued on to Providence.

My wife and I both remembered liking the Providence TV show so we were very interested in visiting the city. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We stayed in downtown Providence and it seems to be going through a bit of a transition at the moment. The downtown area felt largely empty and abandoned. There were many boarded up storefronts and very few people on the streets. The graffiti and litter was a bit of a surprise, especially in comparison to Boston. Downtown Providence is going through some hard times at the moment and it reminded me of Pittsburgh when the steel industry started moving out of Western PA. Pittsburgh was able to come back and I'm sure Providence will soon do the same. We were lucky enough to have dinner at a beautiful restaurant filled with some incredible antiques.  

We caught the train down to NYC which was a lot of fun for my wife. She had travelled extensively in Europe by train and it brought back some great memories. My son came down to NYC and we all got to hang out together. I had been to NYC before but never for pleasure - it was wonderful to have the time to tour the city and experience things I had only read about before. 

I was pleasantly surprised that the best, juiciest Italian Cabernet I've had in a very long time was at a Chinese restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. This culture clash was one of many reasons I fell in love with NYC.

Several of my friends are from NYC and provided some great recommendations. We had a wonderful time in NYC, touring the city, seeing plays, and meeting some wonderful people. Unfortunately we didn't get to see everything we wanted. We will definitely be back soon.