Here's my personal take on what I'll call the new realm of "AI art". Whether it's prompting a music model or an image model, there is a huge space for creative output, limited only by the human imagination. Sure, tossing in a single prompt and letting the model crap out something will produce "slop". But if you pour your heart into exploring the high-dimensional landscape of the model, you can find truly amazing stuff. This is no different than exploring the creative landscape of music, photography, and other forms of art in the pre-LLM era.
I find that people who rush to negative judgement of LLM-generated art are not going far enough in the creative process to properly judge just how much juice there is to be squeezed out of those 50-billion-dimensional spaces.
This sounds like my office, but we're a bit more tilted toward Codex. I personally use Claude Cowork for drudge-admin work, GPT 5.5-Pro for several big research tasks daily, and the LLMs munge on each other's slop all day as I try my best to wrap my head around what has been produced and get it into our document repository -- all the while being conscious that the enormous volume of stuff I'm producing is a bit overwhelming for everyone.
We are definitely reaching the point where you need an LLM to deal with the onslaught of LLM-generated content, even if the humans are being judicious about editing everything. We're all just cranking on an inhumanly massive amount of output and it's frankly scary.
No matter how smart your large language model is, if you can’t find the energy to power it, it won’t run. I could imagine Google winning merely because their chips are more efficient. Of course, the other labs are capable of making chips, but Google has been doing it for years.
Fabulous idea. LLM-assisted mediation is brilliant because it has the potential to bring the benefits of mediation to the masses. The addressable market is all of humanity. Even if all you did was focus this app on co-parenting arguments, you could help millions of people every day.
Am I being paranoid in questioning whether the CPC would have something to gain by monitoring coding sessions with Chinese coding AI models? Coding models receive snippets of our intellectual property all day long. It's a bit of a gold mine, no?
There's nothing anyone can do about state-level espionage anywhere, using any cloud-hosted service. That being said, there is a very big difference between the legal situation in the United States vs. China. Chinese internet companies are required to have CPC interaction and since the rule of law does not strictly exist in China, the state can compel surveillance cooperation regardless of what might be written down. If a three-letter agency is compelling Anthropic to open up its queries for inspection, that kind of surveillance would be authorized by law and if Anthropic violated the law in cooperating, they would suffer the consequences in civil court. Maybe not immediately, but at least the possibility exists.
In China, there's no recourse at all. Surveillance must be presumed.
> the rule of law does not strictly exist in China, the state can compel surveillance cooperation regardless of what might be written down
While I agree that China is obviously worse in this regard, it's naive to claim this is unique to China, when literally a couple of months ago the US got into a fight with Anthropic about them not removing safeguards which were already just enforcing the letter of the law.
When American citizens are being gunned down in public on cameras by US federal government agents, you are telling me that the US follows the rule of law?
Before you start to offer more propaganda, just tell me where is the killer of Renée Good, has that killer been arrested or charged yet? Keep your censored version of rule of law to yourself and your kids.
oh, btw, the current US President did got convicted for criminal offences, he walked away for free just because he got elected as the president. nice rule of law! what did he do recently - authorised illegal war against another country in which over 100+ school children got killed. Surely your fancy US rule of law is going to do something about this?
It is understandable to feel frustrated when justice fails (and I wholeheartedly agree that justice failed all of us many times in relation to Trump), but I think it's a mistake to confuse those specific failures with a total collapse of the rule of law. The rule of law in the United States does not guarantee a perfect or utopian society; what it does provide is a crucial framework for accountability and transparency that simply does not exist in an authoritarian nation like China.
This difference is clear when we look at how the systems handle tragedy and power. In the U.S., the killing of Renée Good by an ICE agent led to a public release of video, intense scrutiny from an independent press, public condemnation by local officials, and a family using legal tools to seek justice. In China, that event would be immediately erased from the public consciousness, and those who dared to talk about it would face arrest. When the U.S. military bombs a school, human rights groups and journalists _can_ investigate, and members of Congress _can_ publicly demand answers (even if half of them are reluctant to question anything Trump does...). In China, military operations are complete state secrets. Furthermore, while it boils my blood to see Trump evade prison due to complex legal and constitutional questions, the fact that he was indicted and convicted by a jury of ordinary citizens proves that a functional legal apparatus exists outside of his direct control, something not utterly impossible under a dictatorship like China.
Day to day, the rule of law very much exists in the US. Doesn't mean we can just sleep on it, but compared to China, I take comfort in the level of institutional reliability that still exists in America (and I'm not even American).
you are defending a failed system purely based on your prejudice. let me get it straight to you -
1. Renée Good's killer is still free, never got arrested never charged. you can't just ignore such facts and cheap talk to prove the system works. the system completely failed to bring justice even after large scale public unrest. that by itself is the evidence - the failed system answers to no one.
2. Trump evade prison, everyone in the Epstein file evade prison. again, this happened in front of the entire world with extensive media coverage. you need to be extremely innovative to defend such systematic failures of the justice system.
how would you openly argue against such facts? just because you love the US and its systems? lol
There are legal protections, and those companies have more to lose by breaking those laws than following them. Same probably not true for Chinese companies.
Legal protection, only if you're a billionaire and US citizen, for everyone else there is no protection.
Does US actually follow laws? They literally kidnapped head of another state and bombed another state and you are expecting legal protection from them?
You don't have to be a US citizen or live in the US to file a lawsuit against an American company in the US court system. Federal courts explicitly allow it under the "alienate jurisdiction" clause.
“Japan’s liberal land use regulation makes it straightforward to build new neighborhoods next to railway lines, giving commuters easy access to city centers. It also enables the densification of these centers, which means that commuters have more places they want to go.”
This is the most important paragraph in the article. It can’t be overstated how ingenious Japan’s system of zoning is and how much this has benefitted their society in ways we can only dream about here in the West.
"West" when we talk about urban spaces, walk-accessible cities and public transportation is, IMHO, the wrong category. Europe and USA are very far apart.
Europe and USA are both huge places so it depends what you mean. If you compare major east coast cities - Boston, DC, and NYC to European metros like Paris/ Madrid/ Lisbon the biggest tax on the citizens is the same in that it’s impossible to build anything so a huge % of income needs to go to housing.
East coast cities were built before modern building codes.
Something that, for some reason, people in the states don't want to accept is that - when given the choice - the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.
May be an assumption on my part, but the language "people prefer to live in dense urban environment" is typical of urbanism-boosters - who definitely push a lot online that leads one to believe that anything less than inner Tokyo is unacceptable.
It's a very US-centric perspective to assume that density = cities.
Almost every town in the US, at one point, was dense enough to support a vibrant main street. Many (most?) of them even had tram lines and other forms of public transportation.
It's not an either or proposition. You can have cost-effective infrastructure through relative density without having to deal with all of the trappings - good and bad - that come from a city.
>the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.
The vast majority of people REQUIRE to live NEAR their employment which happens to be in cities.
Look what happened to NYC real estate rent when you gave people the choice of NOT doing that. Look what happens when you force them back to the office, they come back, but not by choice.
It takes under a minute to find reputable sources which say that something on the order of 3 out 4 people prefer a suburban city environment. The remainder splits between preferring rural or dense urban.
Granted I’m approaching it from the perspective of a tourist or business traveler, but 6/6 of the European cities I’ve been in were fully navigable for my purposes via transit. I’d probably guess half or less in the US.
Even in NYC or SFO, the metro areas are so large it really makes the success rates low depending on the trip.
One thing that is critical is that the country hasn't turned home ownership into an ever growing financial asset that is meant to carry the majority of one's wealth into perpetuity
Well, it did at one point, it’s just that the crash that resulted was so nasty it disabused anybody of that notion.
At the peak of the bubble era, just the land underneath the Imperial Palace had an estimated real estate value larger than the entire state of California.
10% is the bog-standard minimum, so you're more hoping for 12-15%, and the houses in Japan are knocked down and rebuilt between essentially every occupant, so they're pieces of garbage meant to last a decade or so, and about as environmentally unfriendly as one can get.
So yeah, it's extremely rough when there's nothing valuable to invest your money in.
I live in Japan by the way. It’s no where as dire as you make it sound. The houses are mostly knocked down because of the cultural attitude towards them and people’s lack of DIY knowledge when it comes to renovations. Many young people in the country side a slowly changing attitudes but the bones of many of their houses are no less garbage than anywhere else in the world. If your house costs $6k USD, then it leaves you a lot of left over money for renovations.
I’ll agree it sucks you can’t have a really cheap house an 15% return on your money (which seems like an exaggeration). But with some ingenuity I think people could make the lower property and house prices work for them a lot more than they do.
My internal Brandolini's Law alarm is sounding loud and clear from this post.
If you think real investors should make 12-15%, you are essentially bankrupting the next generation. (Even 10% annualised would do it.) That is enormous intergenerational wealth transfer, ensuring the next generation cannot own a home before they are 50 years old or they rent forever.
Outside of central Tokyo (the most central ku's surrounded by Yamanote train loop line), there is almost no capital appreciation for homes (and apartments) because NIMBYism does not exist (quite literally through the national building code). As a result, they build enough for the demand, and home prices are relatively stable, roughly rising at the rate of inflation. France is pretty similar outside of central Paris. Before post-COVID inflation got out of control, Germany was also similar.
The center of Tokyo and Osaka are a bit special because they are the largest job centers in the whole country, and there is very (insanely?) high demand and not enough land to maintain low capital appreciation for homes. That said, there is still constant tear-down/rebuild projects in Tokyo to build denser housing. It is hard to walk 10 mins in central Tokyo and not see a tear-down/rebuild project. Fortunately, they have incredibly strict noise controls at construction sites, so you rarely hear it, but you see it.
> the houses in Japan are knocked down and rebuilt between essentially every occupant
This is absolutely untrue. This is a near-perfect Internet Brain/Terminally Online type of comment. Houses are normally only knocked down in Japan when they are 50+ years old. (The "30 year rule" from the 1980s just won't die on the non-Japanese Internet.) The stuff that I see knocked down looks like it is from the 1950s -- pure wood, rotted to the core, and paper-thin windows. It makes no sense to restore these homes when there is no legal restriction for tear-down/rebuild. There are lots and lots of second hand single family homes that change hands between owners. All of the people that I know who own single family homes bought them second hand. There is a whole segment of the real estate construction market that does home restoration. It is pretty common to buy a second-hand single family home, then do X currency amount of restoration. Sometimes, these companies buy the used homes themselves, do restoration, then sell at a price for profit. Apartments are similar in wider Tokyo area.
> they're pieces of garbage meant to last a decade or so
Again: Internet Brain/Terminally Online type of comment.
> So yeah, it's extremely rough when there's nothing valuable to invest your money in.
Have you seen the Nikkei 225 stock index in the last 10 years? (How does the total return compare to your country of residence?) Also, Japan does not enforce capital controls, so regular people are welcome to invest their money in foreign stock markets, such as the S&P 500 stock index. They can do so using numerous domestically-listed mutual funds and ETFs.
Agree, most homes have been built to strict codes since the 80s, due to earthquakes and typhoons, which means by default, they're not "rubbish". There are many places with a crap finish, poorly insulated etc, but as I said in another comment, they're not by default trash.
Source? I've always thought of Tokyo as a rare example of abundant and affordable housing among major world cities. Their rent to income ratio is like 0.3 while most major global cities are 0.35-0.4
I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith: is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive? My bias/priors are that the simpler and truer statement is: it can't be overstated how beneficial more permissive zoning laws are to a society.
There are other aspects beyond simply being more permissive. I recall reading for example that property transfer tax is remarkably less on bare land, enough so that when travelling in Japan you will regularly notice bare lots for sale, as it is beneficial for the seller to tear down a lot before they sell it. This sort of thing encourages churn of housing, and coupled with liberal zoning, enables an accelerated increase in denser building. Tbh it probably encourages lower construction costs since more people are doing construction.
IMO in this whole conversation, whether discussing any jurisdiction not just japan, impacts of zoning is an over emphasized and tax policy under emphasized (ie. almost never discussed).
Property taxes on land zoned for residential use are 6x more expensive if left bare. That’s why Japan has an akiya plague, because even a dilapidated building will keep taxes down.
I couldn’t find a more general article so here’s an example from a generic small town council.
Leaving aside your mistake, you raise a great point. Why are there so many empty lots in central Tokyo for sale? It makes no sense financially! Maybe they assume they can tear-down the existing structure and sell it faster than the tax penalty will hit?
I have a hard time believing that a tax code that incentives destruction in any capacity is a good thing.
If the land is more valuable without a structure the current owner has natural incentive to do that, or someone else has incentive to buy, demolish and re-list.
Not really the same thing. They're much larger already than most stores you'd see in urban Japan.
Think more in terms of small convenience stores ("Spätis" with daily necessities) everywhere. Typical distance to a store is maybe 500-1000m in Germany. In dense areas of Japanese cities it's closer to one store every 100m-200m.
So in Germany it'd be a 10 minute walk, while in Japan most of your "walk" would be getting downstairs.
The flipside of that is that selection is going to be limited compared to what you'd find in Germany.
I see. What you describe does seem to match what I experienced in NYC, Portugal, and Spain? Small supermarkets everywhere with a bit of a random selection of items
I also wonder how much the pressure filled culture of not standing out has something to do with this. My impression is Japanese are under a lot more pressure to not abuse the permissiveness of the zoning laws.
While size does matter in practical terms when we think of zoning it’s really about noise, smells, pollution etc. So when I say abuse I thinking because of cultural norms and pressure of not standing out there is greater incentive to not disturb others. The argument and question on my end is does this zoning work because folks are pressured to also not stand out. They try to not disturb others.
You will see countless threads on Reddit about bad neighbors in the US. Folks playing loud music, causing disturbances at all hours and will not stop. This applies to zoning as well. If the law allows it, people will do it so there is much more consideration in the US. I don’t know if it’s the right solution but certainly different cultures play a huge role in this.
I'm not meaning to take a dig at you, but the fact that you (and presumably many others) can genuinely ask that question serves to illustrate the parent's point quite nicely.
To spell it out, "abuse" here means to engage in behavior that is socially undesirable or disruptive or would generally be expected to upset otherwise reasonable neighbors or whatever while nonetheless falling within the bounds of the law. An alarmingly large amount of what goes on in the US falls into that category IMO.
The other responder called it out well but to add. Abuse would be anything that disturbs others and out of the norm. Smells, pollution, noise etc. Japanese culture is much more considerate than a lot of western culture because of the social pressure to not standout.
> I'm only barely familiar with it so I ask this in good faith: is it really ingenious or is it just more permissive?
Let's start from the glaring problem: The purpose of the US zoning system was institutionalized racism to keep the "undesirables" out rather than anything having to do with development management. Once you realize that, all of the misfeatures (NIMBY, excessive permitting, sclerotic bureaucracy, public participation) make obvious sense.
Practically every zoning system would be better than that.
This is a fair question. In short: Permissive. If you want to learn more, talk with any LLM about it. There are a bazillion YouTube videos and blog posts discussing the matter to no end.
Dallas-Area Rapid Transit (DART) member cities all had to develop 25-year plans for denser development around station sites as a condition of their membership, if that’s what you mean by “natural”.
I don't think you can have Japanese zoning rules without Japanese culture. They have a lot of respect for other people and their property. Not always, but I just I can't think of many other places in the world where it would work.
In New York, property values go up as they near transit lines. People want the option to use the public transit because it can dramatically improve access to the rest of the city.
I live a 3-minutes walk from a busy train station in Switzerland and I don't even hear the trains. I also happened to live just next to it (my windows facing the rails) and that was horrible. So it's just a matter of some space and noise barriers.
> So it's just a matter of some space and noise barriers.
And guess what's often hotly contested. Noise barriers tend to draw complaints because they ruin the sightline, are either ugly from the start or end up being "decorated" not by good art but quick throw tags. And landlords are often too much penny-pinchers to install decent windows unless you legally require them to, which is often impossible for already constructed buildings. The landlords don't have to live with the noise after all, and in overheated housing markets people are forced to live in what they can get.
This is my major problem as a renter in the US. The minimum code really is too minimum. The city ordinances also enforce high limits on walls in ways that preserve a baby boomer childhood era view of suburbs.
It'd suck less if it felt like E.G. noise and environmental pollution ordinances were ever enforced. (Break up those parties and stop people from doing trash burns / crappy fires during burn bans which are pretty much always...)
I do strongly agree about specific kinds of relaxing.
* Clear and concise approvals process
* No more NIMBY BS
* Impact based assessment (similar to Japans)
* Possibly goals to encourage desired types of use (but not hard LIMIT beyond disallowed!)
While at the same time, the quality of built items should be increased. That is the minimum code should reflect a value that produces a good quality of life for those in the buildings at a reasonable expenditure of resources over the lifetime of the building.
Generally, deregulation in housing would lead directly to improved quality. Right now, almost all new housing is built to minimum building code, because we are so supply constrained that there's no incentive to differentiate.
If you allow anyone to build (aka if you let people build on their land even if they're next to houses), you create space for quality differentiation in the market.
Note: land use code and building code are almost always different parts of law. You can simply delete land use code without having any impact on building quality.
Your citations do not back up your claims. For example [3] was talking about immobility and poverty, but not about living near noisy traffic infrastructure.
Yeah there are all these studies but then the end result is that the Japanese are healthier overall so when the studies and the reality have opposite results you gotta go with the reality.
> Fight densification wherever someone tries to push it.
What do you really mean? On that basis, we all would live on isolated farms on the prarie.
Humans are social animals that live in groups, just like other primates. Humans like living in dense cities so much that they pay far more for much smaller spaces in the most dense cities.
That doesn't make all density good but 'fight all densification' is not a real solution. When is it good and when bad? How much desnity in those situations? Those are some of the real questions.
I threw my sales deck at it and asked it to implement our brand guidelines (attaching that as a PDF). It did a great job and then began giving me internal server errors... I'm going to assume this part of their model farm is totally overwhelmed.
I find that people who rush to negative judgement of LLM-generated art are not going far enough in the creative process to properly judge just how much juice there is to be squeezed out of those 50-billion-dimensional spaces.
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