I instantly recognized these streets, the one at the 90 second mark is one I walked on just last week. I know exactly how attentive you need to be to drive a large car through there. So I'll admit I had to do a bit of soul-searching.

You're flabbergasted that a Tesla successfully made A run.

Or am I still missing something here?

The Tesla needs to make the run every time, without fail, without concern, without drama because humans make the run every time, without fail, without concern, without drama. It's that lowering-of-standards that we're talking about directly.

Google has self-driving cars out there. In limited circumstances, under total ownership of Google, where they're providing a service using devices they have exquisite supervision over. Tesla is YOLOing into self-driving the way they YOLO into everything. You've got a video with no crashes. Here's a video based on 200 crashes.

As to Youtube, am_unition once argued with me that Youtubers hold their lavs because that's the fashion, not because they're fucking morons (never mind that I spent ten years working with cream-of-the-crop fucking morons; if i've got emails directly from Anthony Padilla to me exemplifying gawping stupidity, that should factor into our comparative expertise levels). Fast forward three years and you can buy a GoPro lav and all of a sudden every fucking Youtuber has a tictac case clipped to their shirt collar. Your argument is that YouTubers being fucking morons somehow has a "different appeal" than Youtubers not being fucking morons because you get 'niche content' when the fact of the matter is, they'd do shit exactly the same way the studios do if they could only afford it.

"Here's a Tesla not murdering someone, therefore Tesla has perfected self-driving"

equals

"here's an interesting video with bullshit production, therefore production value is worthless."

You're effectively arguing that conditional, partial success is somehow as good as reliable, total success because an AI touched it. Which is the exact moving-of-the-goalposts I've been hammering on for a week.

But fiction writing doesn’t exist just to spout duck snakes at you; people get something out of it (symbolism, meaning, the human nature, …) that has to be more than a classifier can handle. That’s your point, right? Which I missed because I am not aware of what the last 20% is made of.

Naaah dawg we're talking pure quality.

- The QUALITY of Tesla's self-driving is such that you're amazed it isn't killing someone, rather than bored and ho-hum of a video of a car navigating among pedestrians

- The QUALITY of Youtube videos is such that you think you LIKE shit production value, rather than recognizing your choices are "shit production value" or "blank screen"

- The QUALITY of AI writing is such that you think grammatically-correct word order is all that's needed, rather than an actual engaging fucking story

Go up on the wall of Uruk and walk around,

examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly.

Is not (even the core of) the brick structure made of kiln-­‐fired brick,

and did not the Seven Sages themselves lay out its plans?

One league city, one league palm gardens, one league lowlands, the open area(?) of

the Ishtar Temple,

three leagues and the open area(?) of Uruk it (the wall) encloses.

I'm a storyteller and when I'm hanging out with buddies I often tell stories. But I learned in LA that there was one story I never shared with native Angelinos - I never shared the story of getting lost in the woods on a hike and having to orienteer my way out. I never talked about giving myself rhabdomyelosis. I never talked about legs swollen an inch around the elastics of my socks the next day, of hobbling into REI where they failed to sell me a GPS because they were too stupid to do more than point and read off feature cards. After the first few furtive attempts I learned to change the subject.

For me? Getting lost in the woods was formative and changed many things about how I regard risk. It was traumatic and changed my entire relationship with nature. But for the average Angelino it crosses the following null concepts:

- hiking

- woods

- failure to shop

You can literally watch their eyes glaze. They have no handle on any of this shit. I'm an engaging speaker and I'm good at stories but I had an easier time communicating my RAID5 ZFS rebuild than getting lost in the fucking woods because the average Angelino has a better handle on data loss than they do on "woods."

There is NO PART of fiction writing that benefits from any tools beyond transcription and there is NO PART of fiction writing that AI has a handle on other than "these words follow those words."

I can have conversations with non-native Angelinos and they would nod knowingly. There's just something missing there. They don't fucking get it. You can't make them fucking get it. They watch Alive the same way they watch Aliens - it's a story set somewhere else. They can fit the "fiction" of "lost in the woods' in with "pursued by alien monsters on a distant planet." They CANNOT adapt to the fact of "lost in the woods" particularly when they are required to form an empathetic bond with the storyteller. They don't fucking get it.

Because of how LLMs work, there are things they will never fucking get. Theoretically? If you gave the self-driving car enough LIDAR, enough speed control and enough algorithmic understanding of traffic lights, it'd never fucking kill anyone. This is why Google has never fucking killed anyone. Practically? If you go for the budget option you will overrun your sensors, your training data, your vehicle performance or all three. This is why both Tesla and Uber killed people.

You cannot write fiction without symbolic thinking and LLMs try to do everything with relational thinking.