rawb

they're not my direct co-workers, we have Anthropic people on-loan from Amazon who sit with us for a few months, then rotate back to their labs

the freezing light guy is hard at work

Spooky, hear me out. They do not actually believe this, but because they work for Anthropic they really need to upsell it, so whenever you are around they have to act like they think they are causing the end of the world

no, they really believe it

these are the researchers, not the PR people

lol

the Amazon PR people are the ones who tell us non-stop about AI-bro talking points and why we need to give AWS more money

I'm roped into the space datacenter thing xAI and Anthropic are trying to do to beat OpenAI

since OpenAI is pulling ahead again

which I remain convinced is a bad idea

but it means I get to play with big lasers

which is fun

I think the only way AGI will ever even be approached (and never actualized) is through building synthetic brains

Yeah

a ton of the LLM breakthrough methods apply to general machine learning so I have to pay attention to that stuff even if I find LLMs generally pointless

I am interested when the LLM craze dies down and people who do ML can get funding for not LLM machine learning stuff again, if we get anything really cool

At ICML this year there was a lecture about how optimization theory is kind of a waste of time in ML because the random breakthroughs rarely have any theoretical basis and kind of just work. ML research is weird.

What does Walmart need with a data centre?

AI that determines how much they can surge price you (individual) before you shoot the cashier

I only know folding@home cuz the flash game Platform Racing 2 gave you a special hat if you did it enough

Dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing for a supermarket is insanity. I thought it was bad enough on Ticketmaster

I might be an outlier but I have no problem with dynamic pricing.

I think the personalized stuff is a bit on the creepy side, but I can't articulate a specific ethics issue. The supply/demand stuff I actually support.

If I don't have to price-check whether a store is raping me while I shop, I'll put up with a lot

Take for example bread and milk. The store sells them at cost or maybe even at a loss, because if they get your feet in the door you might buy some 25% markup breakfast cereal or steak.

What products they choose to sell cheap changes from time to time. That's a low tech, low frequency form of dynamic pricing.

I have 4 major grocery stores near me, and I know people who will do a loop and visit all 4 to get the cheapest items from each

Retail has low overall margins because shopping somewhere else is basically zero work.

There's also little to no brand loyalty.

some people REALLY hate the idea that they are missing out on saving a cent

especially non-food shopping

where it's more about how good of an equity buy something is

"it was on sale for 75% off, I'd be stupid to not buy it"

I'm not going to shop somewhere if I know I'm being raped on prices compared to Amazon

but I'm not going to obsess over the margins

Well here's the deal. Your staple food might be bread. My staple food might be rice. Now the store can give me a better price on rice than what you pay. If you rarely buy rice, what do you care?

People sometimes only see the negative of big corpo's decisions.

dynamic pricing also helps them actually work through inventory

I'm a big proponent in prices dropping as food degrades in quality

or how scuffed a piece of fruit is

That's why I support it so much. I want these businesses selling a weekly food delivery in exactly one week.

I don't want them skimping and they're out of stock when I shop, or they only have old stuff because they have too much.

And the businesses want that too

yep, and you can get good PR by reducing food waste or w/e

since that's some people's pet issue

the new barcode system they're rolling out will probably help with that

they're replacing all legacy barcodes with QR codes starting next year

and they will be item-specific, rather than product-specific

I am probably more financially frugal than most people here, I won't gp out of my way an hour plus got a better deal, but I do just stock up on things when it is a good deal

my local grocery store stickers all their items between 40-65% off depending on how much they think they can get away with charging for it to sell it before they have to throw it out, so I get a lot of heavily marked down stuff and just freeze it

I also just go to my store semi daily (its a 5 minute walk) and buy absolutely nothing if nothing is stickered for a price I am willing to spend lol

I am 75% sure there is legislation against dynamic pricing in ontario

Either that or I have just not noticved it

they do it for gas I assume

since everywhere does

Gas yeah

grocery specific I meant

Every store I go to advertises their prices once a week, and that is the price it stays that week

and other than sales, I have not noticed prices change much week over week

we have weekly mailers too, but prices definitely change day-to-day, even the non-dynamic priced places

if the butcher is selling stock slower than expected, etc.

Yeah, I think day to day does not happen here, at least I've never noticed it

it's just less granular

and I am the prime person to notice it, because I do just go every day

and look at the same stuff every time I go

interesting if its really set for an entire week

Okay, there are bills in first reading banning it, it is not formally banned

I just think the stores I go to are doing it

not being allowed to adjust daily seems like an overcorrection (I think NYC is banning that too)

We also have pretty good consumer protection laws already anyways, since if the price you ring up does not agree with the price it was advertising, the store is legally obligated to give you the item free, or 10 dollars off, whichever is less money

but I'm with mtcdood, I don't see a real issue with it, until it starts to get ridiculous

Grocery stores are already price gouging all their products here, so I am against it

fuck you if you want to nickle and dime me more than your price gouging

and I think you could limit it to interday pricing being ±20% of the price at open

that would be a reasonable way to legislate it

Here, they'd have to make it so it is impossible for the price to change between you picking the item up and paying for it

otherwise it was cause lawsuits over compliance

wdym by compliance?