I had always thought this is where the term “bug” came from, but the log says “First actual case of bug being found”, which to me implies misperforming routines were called bugs prior to the “bug” being found.

Senior developer here. It is hard to overstate just how useful AI has been for me.

It’s like having a junior programmer on standby that I can send small tasks to–and just like the junior developer I have to review it and send it back with a clarification or comment about something that needs to be corrected. The difference is instead of making a ticket for a junior dev and waiting 3 days for it to come back, just to need corrections and wait another 3 days–I get it back in seconds.

Like most things, it’s not as bad as some people say, and it’s not the miracle others say.

This current generation was such a leap forward from previous AI’s in terms of usefulness, that I think a lot of people were looking to the future with that current rate of gains–which can be scary. But it turns out that’s not what happened. We got a big leap and now are back at a plateau again. Which honestly is a good thing, I think. This gives the world time to slowly adjust.

As far as similarities with crypto. Like crypto there are some ventures out there just slapping the word AI on something and calling it novel. This didn’t work for crypto and likely won’t work for AI. But unlike crypto there is actually real value being derived from AI right now, not some wild claims of a blockchain is the right DB for everything–which it was obviously not, and most people could see that, but hey investors are spending money so lets get some of it kind of mentality.

I think it is way more likely they just bought imagery from existing sources. There are tons of high res imagery out there that you can purchase. Price is usually determined by how old it is. This seems way more likely than an insurance company hiring a drone operator and going door to door. Secondly, companies never share the details of things like this. Wherever the source, they are unlikely to share it. Companies don’t give details because they don’t want to fight you. They just want to cancel your account and move on.

That isn’t to say this is right.

Do we want insurance companies peering into our backyards from imagery? I don’t. Regardless of if it’s a drone or not.

Exactly. But I think the farmer actually did want to agree and lock in the price of the flax.

Only reason they were looking for a way out was because flax had skyrocketed and they wanted to sell to someone else.

Three times prior they replied with “Looks good,” “Ok” and “Yup.”, and then delivered the flax per the contract. It was only when the price went up they wanted to say they were not agreeing to it.

In either case the judge was pretty specific that this was not a precedent for the thumbs up emoji, but just that in this particular case it sure looked like consent based on past actions.

Wow this article on this subject has the least info. And the judge did not rule that it is always the case that a thumbs up would be binding, just that the context in this case it was.

The other party sent over the contract with he text: “Please confirm flax contract.” They then responded with thumbs up.

3 times prior to this, this exact same exchange happened. In each of these times the farmer replied with “Looks good,” “Ok” and “Yup.”. After which in all 3 instances the farmer then delivered the flax.

In this particular case the farmer replied with thumbs up. Then after 3 months the price of flax skyrocketed. And of course the farmer now wants a better price.

In this case the three prior contracts being agreed to with only a “Looks good,” “Ok” and “Yup.” and then being delivered seem to point that a thumbs up is pretty much along those lines.

Oh here is a version of the article that has a little more detail:

https://fortune.com/2023/07/07/canadian-judge-rules-thumbs-up-emoji-binding-contract/