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As hard as it may be to fathom, there are people who know stuff, and still read this pathetic blog. Let\u2019s hear from a couple of them.<\/p>\n
Days ago Dr. Garth responded to a real doctor wondering if he should dump his medical professional corp and join the defined-pension pension plan run by HOOPP (Ontario\u2019s well-respected asset manager). We reviewed a few of the ways government is hoovering these corporations, and said going the DP route was a viable option to consider. After all, the feds want well-paid medical people to be taxed just the same as everybody else (like poor financial advisors), whether they\u2019re incorporated or not.<\/p>\n
Well, Jean-Pierre Laporte wrote me with what he thinks is a better idea. He\u2019s the CEO of Toronto-based Integris Pension Management.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas looking at your article that mentions that physicians who are incorporated in Ontario can now join HOOPP,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Doctors should not join HOOPP if they can set up a Personal Pension Plan for themselves.\u00a0 While HOOPP is well managed, it suffers from the \u2018actuarial gain\u2019 problem on death:\u00a0 your capital stays in the central pension fund to support the retirement of other doctors who are still alive, because HOOPP only guarantees payments during what is called the \u201cguarantee period\u201d which is normally 5 years from the date of retirement (15 if you are a single person and can\u2019t give your surviving spouse a survivor\u2019s pension).<\/p>\n
Under a Personal Pension Plan, the same surplus that arises because of an early death is controlled by your Medicine Professional Corporation who can pay it to the surviving children, or return it to the company, or if a family member still accrues service in the pension plan, continues to grow tax-sheltered for very long periods of time.<\/p>\n
JP has a valid point. We did not comment on IPP\/PPPs, which was an omission. For doctors (and other self-employed, incorporated professionals that other salaried Canadians love to hate) this is an option with legs.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s talk about AI. The Mag 7, billions (soon, trillions) in data centre spending, the Nvidia miracle and investor giddiness have propelled stock markets to multiple historic highs this year despite Trump, tariffs and Bad Bunny.<\/p>\n
But is it all a trap?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been enjoying your blog posts as usual, but I wanted to mention: you might want to consider being somewhat more skeptical about \u201cAI\u201d, because many of us in the tech industry who understand a bit about how it works \u2014 but aren\u2019t invested in it working\/aren\u2019t part of an AI startup \u2014 are *very* skeptical whether it can *ever* possibly do the stuff it\u2019s being hyped for (ie: replacing most human jobs),\u201d writes Raigan Burns who \u2013 among other things \u2013 is the Founder & VP at Metanet Software.<\/p>\n
Specifically: LLMs fundamentally cannot tell which statements are true or false. It\u2019s no different than autocomplete: it works in the realm of pure statistical correlation. It can judge how *plausible* a string of words is \u2014 how often it has\u00a0seen those words in that order in its training data \u2014 but unfortunately the truth isn\u2019t statistical.<\/p>\n
This is a fundamental limitation of the technology and it means that chatbots *cannot* ever be relied on to provide correct information \u2014 they\u2019re designed to provide plausible-sounding text. And they\u2019re very good at that \u2014 but not many useful jobs require writing that doesn\u2019t need to be correct.<\/p>\n
If you ask it about something you don\u2019t know very well, it sounds reasonable \u2014 but try asking it about something that you know *very* well, and you\u2019ll see errors. Not to mention, it\u2019s prone to \u201challucination\u201d (inventing things). This isn\u2019t something that can be fixed, it\u2019s fundamental to the basic way the technology works (statistical, non-analytical).<\/p>\n
This technology isn\u2019t in any sense true AI (now called \u201cAGI\u201d because the hypesters have co-opted \u201cAI\u201d), it\u2019s just the next evolution of machine learning\/\u201dbig data\u201d that\u2019s been going on since the 90s \u2014 and it has a lot of the same limitations. (I took a bit of \u201ccomputational intelligence\u201d (as it was called back then) at U of T.)<\/p>\n
It fundamentally cannot, and will not ever be able to, judge the truth of a statement \u2014 this means it can\u2019t correct itself, detect when it\u2019s wrong, or\u00a0even judge how likely it is to be wrong. This is a big problem when you consider how it\u2019s being touted as a valid replacement for human workers!<\/p>\n
There are a lot of hypothetical cool uses for this tech, and image generation is maybe one of them (images that look plausible but are fake are much more useful than information that sounds plausible but is incorrect) \u2014 but much like self-driving cars, the actual reality of how it will pan out is vastly different (and much less valuable) than what the marketing spin wants you to believe. It turns out that people typically want their information to be correct rather than merely plausible-sounding! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Anyway \u2014 I do think there is *something* useful that this technology can do, but sadly this is not likely to be anything as useful as how it\u2019s being hyped. And also it\u2019s incredibly\u00a0expensive and resource-intensive. Hopefully the massive crash when investors finally figure this out isn\u2019t going to be *too* devastating.<\/p>\n
Gulp. Let\u2019s hope not.<\/p>\n
The Magnificent Seven \u2013 massively engaged in the development and implementation of AI \u2013 now account for a third of the entire S&P 500 capitalization. That index so far this year is ahead 16.5%. Since the Trump-Liberation-Day disaster in early April, the market has climbed an astonishing 37%. During that time AI investment has climbed inti the hundreds of billions. The chief AI chip-maker, Nvidia, became the first-ever $5 trillion company. Even Apple passed $4 trillion.<\/p>\n
Investors have been snorfling up tech as never before. Well, not since the 2000 dot-com orgy. Back then, in less than two years, the S&P lost 49%. The Nasdq shed 77%. But that was then. This is now. We all learned a lesson.<\/p>\n
Right?<\/p>\n
About the picture: \u201cI left a federal crown at 53. Reduced pension, however thankful for the pension,\u201d writes Stuart. \u201cLeft 247 sick days on the table. Loved my job in the credit field. Recent experience with Service Canada: takes 6 months to change my mother\u2019s address. Even got a follow up letter to confirm it. Something\u2019s wrong. Here\u2019s a picture of a crowded couch at the Hunt camp.\u201d<\/p>\n