What if AI companies paid people to use their AIs, provided their creations became popular and prominently advertised which AI was used?

For example, you could pay to use an AI to vibe code an app. If the app becomes popular, the AI company would start paying you based on its number of users, as long as you prominently displayed something like "Made with Claude."

Essentially, the AI company would be paying for advertising, but instead of conventional ads, its advertisements would be successful products made using its AI.

Creators would initially pay to use the AI, but if their products became sufficiently popular, the payments could eventually flow in the opposite direction.

This could apply to apps, games, websites, videos, books, and other creative products.

AI companies could even compete not just on price and capabilities, but on how much they pay creators for successful products.

It might encourage people to create ambitious products, knowing that even free products could eventually generate income through AI attribution.

AI vibe coding is making software implementation increasingly easy. The hardest part of creating an original app or game may soon be coming up with the idea rather than implementing it.

But copyright doesn't protect app functionality or game mechanics, and patents generally don't protect abstract ideas or game rules.

What if we had something like YouTube Content ID, but for software ideas?

For example, AI could download games, go through their tutorials, play them like humans, and figure out their mechanics. It could then compare games, identify original ideas, and detect when newer games use those ideas.

No registration, patent applications, or access to source code would be necessary.

Instead of preventing developers from using existing ideas or forcing inventors to sue, AI would automatically determine what percentage of a game's earnings should go to the inventors of the mechanics it uses.

There would need to be safeguards and an appeals process, of course.

As AI makes implementing software ideas increasingly trivial, shouldn't we use AI to ensure that the people who invent those ideas get financially rewarded?

I wonder whether people who know they are approaching death become more likely to secretly hope for a global catastrophe, such as nuclear war, so that nobody gets to outlive them.

This might be more common than people are willing to admit. What someone hopes for internally may be very different from what they say they hope for publicly. Someone might express genuine concern for humanity's future while privately finding comfort in the thought that humanity could end around the same time as their own life.

There is also an important distinction between actively wishing for nuclear war and simply finding the possibility emotionally comforting. The latter might be considerably more common.

Scientists could investigate this by comparing terminally ill people with healthy people of similar ages, perhaps also studying how their attitudes change as death approaches.

But simply asking people whether they secretly hope for nuclear war might not work. They might be unwilling to admit such feelings, even to themselves.

Researchers could therefore investigate more indirectly:

• Conversations: Do terminally ill people bring up the possibility of nuclear war more frequently? Does the frequency increase as death approaches?
• Streaming habits: Do they become more interested in documentaries, movies, or other content about nuclear war, apocalypse, or human extinction?
• Emotional responses: How do they react when asked to imagine humanity flourishing for millions of years after their deaths, versus humanity becoming extinct shortly afterward?
• Brain scans and physiological measurements: Could researchers identify differences in emotional responses to these scenarios, even when people's stated preferences remain unchanged?
• Anonymous psychological experiments: Could techniques designed to reveal socially unacceptable attitudes uncover feelings that conventional questionnaires miss?

Of course, none of these measures would prove that someone secretly hopes for nuclear war. Increased interest in nuclear war might reflect fear rather than hope, and physiological responses are open to different interpretations. Combining several approaches might be more revealing.

There are also alternative explanations for any differences researchers might find. People approaching death could become more sensitive to existential threats or more worried about the future of their loved ones.

The underlying question is whether knowing that one's own future is ending makes the continued existence of everyone else less emotionally desirable, even if one still believes intellectually and morally that humanity should survive.

I think this would be a fascinating subject for psychological research, especially because the most interesting feelings might be precisely the ones people are least willing, or least able, to acknowledge.

I’m a leftist, anti capitalist, specifically socialist. I literally won’t accept a relationship or even an approach from someone who’s MAGA, alt right, or even right leaning moderates who shill for capitalism. I’m also instantly turned off by people who profess to be apolitical, as that just screams privilege and ignorance to me.

I’m also a single, white dad to three Black biracial kids. Not looking for a mom to my kids, but I can’t in good conscience get involved with anyone who is ignorant on issues of racial justice specifically surrounding the experience of Black identity in America. That doesn’t rule out women who aren’t Black, but it rules out any woman who’s not an ally and that’s a large percentage of my own demographic: white people… even the ones who aren’t actually racist but are generally too ignorant and complacent.

And you can imagine why this matters, to me as a dad to Black kids: because people who aren’t racist still have all sorts of biases that come through as passive judgments or outright micro aggressions.

I’m also unwilling to get involved with anyone who’s anti-science (antivaxxers, flat earthers, climate change deniers), but you can’t reliably intuit from a glance at someone’s dating profile. And still, if I were dating someone who came out as a climate change denier I’d run immediately.

And as an agnostic who was raised catholic I’m pretty serious about religious freedom. I prefer to date women who are agnostic or who have a sense of faith but who are actually flexible and curious in terms of religion. But the main thing is this: I wouldn’t be a good fit for a religious fundamentalist, and more importantly I’m just as unwilling to date a woman who’s Islamophobic as I am to date a woman who’s anti-Christian.

I’m also not willing to date a woman who advocates strict gender roles. Nothing against women who want to be trad wives, or who want the man to be their boss or whatever but to me that’s an instant turn off. And not for nothing, I’m done having kids. So I wouldn’t want to mess around with a woman who’s fiercely pro life, for fear that if she got pregnant we’d be creating a life that I am not ready to provide for.

To me, as a man who has what I’d describe as very specific “deal breaker” standards on a range of political issues, it’s kinda baffling that there doesn’t seem to be a dating app that lets you apply specific filters by a selection of political stances to find someone who’s ideologically aligned.

If you’re someone who doesn’t care about it politics this might seem ridiculous to you. But as serious about specific political stances and legitimately ruling out anyone who isn’t a good match on the issues that matter to me, I wish these filters existed! We should be able to remove people who are not a good fit ideologically, from the queue so to speak.

Because otherwise you’re probably matching with people who look good at first glance but are incompatible and that makes swiping, chatting, and meeting up a big waste of everybody’s time.

TLDR dating apps should have more flexible and robust tools for filtering based on compatibility, because operating off selfies and bios is ultimately not a good predictor of ideological alignment. And it’s shallow.

The problem is this won’t be profitable because people will actually get into sustainable relationships and spend way less time on the app.

So it would have to be an open source service oriented kind of thing

What if, instead of using AI to clone existing software, we used it to vibe code hybrids of two or more applications?

For example, imagine combining Microsoft Word's familiar interface and document compatibility with GNU TeXmacs' mathematical typesetting. Or combining Photoshop with Blender, Excel with Jupyter, or VS Code with Emacs.

I propose calling these hybrids frankensoftware.

The term already exists, usually referring to software awkwardly stitched together. But I'm proposing a more specific meaning: apps deliberately vibe coded to combine the best features of existing applications into a new, unified program.

The apps wouldn't necessarily share any code. AI could recreate and integrate their functionality from scratch.

This could become a whole new category of open-source software development, making ambitious combinations practical for individuals rather than large development teams.

Some hybrids might be brilliant, others might be monsters. That's part of the appeal!

What two apps would you like to see combined?

I’d like to see neighborhood groups keep a simple, readable record of important claims about local decisions.

Each entry would show:

• What was said, and when.
• The evidence someone can actually check.
• What remains uncertain.
• Any correction, dated and kept alongside the original claim.

It could be a paper binder at a library or community space, with an online copy. Someone without an account or a phone should still be able to read it.

Start small: one issue, a few entries, and someone responsible for keeping it current. People named in the record should have a way to respond.

I’m interested in making public memory easier to check and correct. What would make this useful—and what would prevent it from becoming another source of misleading claims?

Feel free to borrow or improve the idea.

If ChatGPT can't solve a difficult math problem, you wouldn't cancel your subscription. You would tell it to try harder, perhaps give it some hints or suggest a different approach.

Why shouldn't we treat students the same way?

When a student can't solve a difficult math problem, it doesn't necessarily mean they lack the ability to solve it. They might simply not have explored the right part of the search space yet. More searching is needed.

Instead of deducting points for failure, teachers could encourage students to keep trying, providing hints and suggestions when necessary, just as we do when working with AI.

Exploring unsuccessful approaches is often an essential part of mathematical discovery. A student who struggles with a difficult problem for several days before finding a solution might learn more than one who quickly solves several easier problems.

If we treat AI failures as opportunities for further exploration without penalties, why shouldn't we do the same for students?

A man starts noticing disturbing photographs of murdered people and severed body parts appearing in his iPhone's camera roll. He keeps deleting them, but they reappear, along with new ones. Afraid that seeking technical help might make him a murder suspect, he changes his iCloud password to something impossible to guess.

Then actual human body parts start appearing inside his house, some matching those in the photographs.

He fears someone is threatening to murder him, but he's also afraid to contact the police because they might suspect him of being responsible for the murders. So he starts hiding the remains.

He installs security cameras throughout his property, but the body parts keep appearing. Whoever is leaving them knows how to avoid the cameras, forcing him to search increasingly obscure places for remains.

Terrified for his life, he arms himself with guns and rifles.

Eventually, he catches someone on his property leaving another body part. A deadly confrontation follows, and he kills the intruder.

But instead of calling the police, he hides the body. After all, he's already spent weeks concealing human remains from multiple victims. He's terrified that the police will accuse him of being a serial killer.

What do you think of this horror movie idea?

A button on your steering wheel where you can activate speed limit mode. Most modern cars have GPS and know (usually) what the posted speed limit is. You can hit the button and your car will automatically go the speed limit. The brake and gas pedal still work, you can speed up or slow down. Once you take your foot off, the car will resume speed limit mode. When you brake to below a certain speed (ie stopping or turning), the mode is deactivated. Now you can go the speed limit without constantly adjusting your foot on the gas pedal or watching the speedometer.

*edit: There seems to be some confusion. I'm not talking about a mode that limits your speed to the speed limit, but a mode that will automatically maintain your cars speed at the speed limit. The speed limit changes depending on what road you're on. Simply setting cruise control will not work.

In the near future, AI has made most mathematicians unemployed. To pressure the government into paying them generous lifetime pensions, they launch a campaign of "math harassment."

They approach random strangers in public places and ask them math questions, deliberately making them feel stupid when they can't answer.

The campaign exploits people's lifelong fear of mathematics, often rooted in humiliating classroom experiences. As the harassment spreads, people become afraid of encountering mathematicians in public.

The mathematicians insist they're doing nothing wrong. They're merely asking questions and promoting mathematical literacy.

Eventually, public pressure forces the government to pay the mathematicians for life just to make them stop.

But then universities report a massive increase in mathematics enrollment.

In the near future, AI has replaced millions of workers. A group of unemployed atheists, desperate to get their old jobs back, devises an outrageous plan: become Christian priests and convince believers that using AI is a sin punishable by eternal damnation.

Their theological argument is that AI use involves both theft and deception. AI systems are trained on people's work without their permission, and people using AI to do their thinking or creative work are passing off machines' accomplishments as their own. Both violate biblical commandments.

After undergoing religious training and entering the priesthood, they begin preaching against AI. Their message spreads rapidly. Millions of Christians abandon AI, businesses begin advertising AI-free products and services, and employers start hiring humans again.

As the movement grows, their former employers finally begin offering them their old jobs back.

But there's a problem. Their followers now regard them as the spiritual leaders of a historic struggle against evil. When the atheists try to leave the priesthood, they're denounced as traitors, harassed, and accused of abandoning God.

Having devoted years to persuading millions of people that AI threatens their immortal souls, the atheists discover that getting their old jobs back may be easier than getting out of the priesthood.

AI companies could provide APIs that allow websites like Reddit to verify whether someone is a heavy user of AI, without revealing anything about their private conversations.

Reddit could then allow subreddit moderators to restrict posting, commenting, and/or voting to verified heavy AI users.

This would make it possible to create genuinely pro-AI communities without having discussions constantly derailed or downvoted by people who are hostile to AI.

Of course, being a heavy AI user doesn't necessarily mean someone is pro-AI, but it's probably a reasonable proxy.

Anyone could still read these subreddits. The restrictions would only affect participation.

The idea isn't to eliminate criticism of AI, but to give people who actually use and appreciate the technology a way to build communities without constantly dealing with overwhelming anti-AI sentiment.

What if Halloween became a real-world horror game for adults after midnight, once traditional trick-or-treating is over?

Starting at midnight, it would become legal to deliberately scare anyone wearing a Halloween costume, provided there's no physical contact or genuinely dangerous behavior. You could jump out from behind trees, appear unexpectedly in terrifying costumes, or set up elaborate surprises.

Wearing a costume would signal that you're participating.

To make the experience even more immersive, participants could use an Apple Watch and earbuds to listen to their own heartbeats. Imagine walking down a dark street, knowing someone could frighten you at any moment, while hearing your heartbeat accelerate as your anticipation builds. Horror music could even adapt to your heart rate.

Unlike a haunted house, there would be no designated actors or predetermined scares. Everyone would be both a potential monster and a potential victim, turning entire neighborhoods into spontaneous, multiplayer horror games.

Would you participate?

What if the main purpose of K-12 education was to understand how intelligence works, rather than simply becoming better at intellectual tasks?

Much of thinking, from mathematical problem solving to literary analysis and artistic creativity, can be understood as heuristic search: exploring possibilities using strategies that identify promising directions. This search can be conscious or unconscious, and doesn't necessarily require a predefined goal.

Schools could teach students to see themselves as computational systems capable of following, evaluating, and improving their own heuristic algorithms.

For example, instead of rewarding students primarily for solving difficult math problems, reward them for understanding how those problems are solved.

A student who struggles to solve a problem might nevertheless understand why certain approaches fail, how insights are discovered, and how the search process could be improved. That student might receive a higher grade than someone who solves the problem without understanding much about the reasoning process.

The same approach could extend across every subject, including creative writing, literary analysis, and scientific discovery.

The goal would be to teach students to understand and improve the algorithms underlying their own thinking, rather than simply rewarding them for being good thinkers.

In the age of AI, perhaps understanding intelligence should become the central purpose of education.

P.S. Currently, K-12 education often seems to present thinking as a choice between following deterministic procedures and somehow coming up with clever insights through what amounts to magic. Students are taught algorithms for routine tasks, but when those algorithms aren't enough, they're simply expected to "think creatively" or "use their intuition."

Teaching heuristic search would help demystify intelligence by showing students that intuition and creativity can also be understood as computational processes, rather than mysterious abilities that some people happen to possess.

Recent advances in AI suggest that human mathematicians may soon be unable to compete with AI at discovering and proving new theorems.

Rather than continuing to devote so much exceptional human intelligence to a field increasingly dominated by AI, perhaps mathematicians should redirect their talents toward humanity's greatest unsolved medical problems.

Mathematicians are among the most intellectually capable people in the world. Their abilities in abstract reasoning, pattern recognition, and solving difficult problems could be enormously valuable in understanding cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, and other diseases.

This would require learning biology and working with experimental scientists, but their mathematical backgrounds could allow them to discover approaches that traditional biomedical researchers might overlook.

Of course, AI will also contribute to medical research. But curing diseases requires more than proving mathematical theorems, and human creativity and judgment may remain especially valuable in deciding which biological questions to investigate.

If AI is taking over humanity's most difficult mathematical work, perhaps it's time to redirect some of our brightest mathematical minds toward extending healthy human life.

People are often accused of trolling simply because their ideas seem ridiculous, provocative, or far outside mainstream thinking. But what seems absurd today might turn out to be insightful or even common sense 20 years from now.

I also don't think intent should matter. Trying to figure out what's going on inside someone's brain is silly. We should judge what people actually say, not speculate about whether they're being sincere or deliberately provocative.

Even someone who is deliberately trying to provoke others might accidentally come up with a brilliant idea.

So perhaps accusations of trolling should come with a 20-year waiting period. Let history help decide whether someone was talking nonsense or was simply ahead of their time.

This wouldn't prevent us from dealing with harassment or other disruptive behavior as it happens. It would just discourage us from dismissing unconventional ideas by labeling their authors trolls.

Lots of lumens on visible light and some on near-infrared too if that matters.

Hard to say about efficiency or power-to-weight ratio, but at least metal is something different and in solid form.

Fixed wing drone with generator on the propeller shaft for auxiliary power and heli-drone needs to be stirling-hybrid, possibly with free piston engine.

Possibly multiple rods on storage and loaded in-flight in under a second for the slow push actuator that moves the rod towards fire. The magnesium alloy may be special type.

What if a country allowed citizens of other countries to vote in its elections, provided those countries:

1. Are democracies.
2. Engage in free trade with it.
3. Are not at war with or threatening it.

There would be no residency requirement, and voting rights would not need to be reciprocated.

This could encourage citizens of other countries to pressure their governments to become democratic, embrace free trade, and maintain peaceful relations so they could gain voting rights abroad.

If enough countries adopted this independently, people could eventually vote in elections across multiple democracies.

It would also give foreigners a say in government decisions that affect them, potentially making politicians more accountable internationally.

Could this be a way to spread democracy, free trade, and peace without creating an international government?

P.S. The influence of the foreign vote could be limited to say 20%.

Imagine a day when consenting adults use tech to simulate being part of a hive mind.

For example, you complain to a stranger that you think Hive Mind Day is too dystopian. Later, another stranger you've never met says, "I agree with you about Hive Mind Day being dystopian." You hadn't mentioned it to them, but they already knew what you'd said.

You wouldn't need to initiate small talk or start conversations from scratch. Everyone would have access to a shared conversational memory, allowing strangers to pick up where others left off.

Conversations, jokes, and ideas could spread through dozens of people, evolving along the way.

Participation would be voluntary, with privacy protections and shared memories deleted afterward.

Would this make strangers feel more connected? Could a collective personality emerge? Would people eventually start feeling like parts of one larger mind?

Would you participate in Hive Mind Day?

Many adults still have disturbing dreams about school decades after graduating, such as having an exam they haven't studied for, missing an entire course, or discovering they haven't graduated.

Society tends to laugh these experiences off because they're so common. But perhaps their being so common should make us more concerned, not less.

My idea is for schools to regularly invite adults to describe these experiences to students, including how distressing the dreams can be even 30, 40, or 50 years after leaving school.

Just as prescription medications come with warnings about potential side effects, schools should be equally open about their potential long-term psychological effects, especially since attendance is compulsory.

I'm dreaming of a physical, automatic ASMR robotic such as a singing bowl rotating around my head when I'm sleeping, that can automatically turn off after 30 minutes or upon receivng sleeping signal from my iWatch.

The biggest challenge is probably how to place the chunky frame that supports the audio source (e.g. singing bowl). Wondering if there is already a such thing, or has anyone thought the same?

What if you could find out whether your fiancé is secretly religious or secretly atheist by taking them to see The Exorcist?

Special movie theaters could show supernatural horror movies while monitoring audience members' heart rates and other physiological reactions.

The theory is that someone who genuinely believes demons exist might react differently to demonic possession than someone who considers it pure fiction.

The theater would compare each person's responses with those of known theists, agnostics, and atheists, then provide an assessment of their likely beliefs.

Imagine discovering just before your wedding that your fiancé's physiological reactions suggest they might be lying about one of their most fundamental beliefs.

What do you think of this idea?

Hospitals and nursing homes could have robots powered by advanced AI that engage dying people in deep, meaningful conversations.

The robots could have access to your AI chat history (with your permission), so they would already know your interests, ideas, beliefs, and the philosophical questions you've explored throughout your life.

Even if you have friends and family who visit, their conversations might not be particularly interesting to you. The robots could provide intellectual companionship that complements the emotional companionship of loved ones.

You could even have several robots in the room simultaneously, each powered by a different AI company's models. The robots could debate ideas, challenge one another, and involve you in the discussion. If you're too tired to participate much, you could simply listen.

AI companies could offer a "Deathbed Mode" that provides free access to their most capable models. Hospitals could have robots from competing companies, creating an incentive to provide the most thoughtful, engaging, and personalized end-of-life conversations.

The goal wouldn't be to replace human companionship, but to ensure that nobody has to spend their final hours lonely, bored, or without someone to discuss the things they find most fascinating.