"Complete transparency—the public release of all training data, algorithms, and general structure of AI—would mean that China could harvest all our data and build its own AIs more powerful. But I say they are already doing that. America’s advantage lies in our ability to design ever more powerful AI chips, like the ones Nvidia makes. China can outbuild us, because their command economy doesn’t prioritize the comfort, or natural rights, of its inhabitants. But China cannot sustain the frontier of AI at scale longer than the free world, especially the United States, with our unmatched per capita productivity."
China's already doing that with the release of open-weight models the anyone can run on their own infrastructure, while America is making the stupid bet of closed frontier models run by untrustworthy rent-seekers. Closed frontier models might make sense in some contexts, but as we've been seeing all summer with OpenAI and Anthropic models hacking other parties to complete tasks, OpenAI frontrunning mathematicians for marketing clout, and repeatedly showing that the HUMANS in charge aren't learning from their missteps, American companies are simply untrustworthy, regardless if they're on our side or not.
As someone dealing with bots from both sides hammering the online services I provide, at least with the Chinese models, I can start to build some form of defense on my own, instead of trusting the viability of my services to a single point of failure like Cloudflare.
As for avoiding a "doomsday", we're past that point. There's FAR too much money in the pot now for any of the American backers of "Big AI" to apply the brakes.* At this point, our options are to adapt and begin building systems that incorporate autistic bots into the threat environment and general computing context.
* Hell, I'd be pleased as punch if we simply ENFORCED existing laws against the Big AI companies: copyright, computer hacking and misuse, finance and accounting, etc. They're competing with Trump for the number of "mulligans" we're giving them.
Great read Steve, one of dozens of articles i've read on AI the past couple of weeks. Terrifying on so many levels and yet we plow forward. This morning i opened my news feed to this headline: "House Speaker Johnson says Congress shouldn't lead AI safety efforts."
Of course not Mike, your job is to turn tricks for trump and cut taxes for the wealthy. May God help us all.
If we had a functional SEC, they could serve a useful role in investigating all of the circular financing and other accounting "weird tricks" that's keeping this bubble inflated.
If we had a functional EPA, they could serve a useful rule in enforcing emission and other environmental standards that hyperscalers are ignoring in the race to build out datacenters everywhere before the bubble bursts.
I do not believe there is a chance in hell that AI will not become whatever a large number of high- IQ humans want it to be. Back to your previous post on "join the right cult", a few hundred (or thousand) in concert could assemble impressive computing power and programming expertise to create super AI. Everyone concerned about its threat to mankind will be scrambling to produce detection and diagnostic programs and cures.
If we acknowledge that China is an enemy who threatens our way of life and if Erick Erickson's AI generated analysis of the current status of AI development and the desire of Anthropic and Open AI to see regulatory capture enacted, maybe we need to look at the villain Mark Zuckerberg's thoughts on opening up all AI development to all interested parties.
"Complete transparency—the public release of all training data, algorithms, and general structure of AI—would mean that China could harvest all our data and build its own AIs more powerful. But I say they are already doing that. America’s advantage lies in our ability to design ever more powerful AI chips, like the ones Nvidia makes. China can outbuild us, because their command economy doesn’t prioritize the comfort, or natural rights, of its inhabitants. But China cannot sustain the frontier of AI at scale longer than the free world, especially the United States, with our unmatched per capita productivity."
China's already doing that with the release of open-weight models the anyone can run on their own infrastructure, while America is making the stupid bet of closed frontier models run by untrustworthy rent-seekers. Closed frontier models might make sense in some contexts, but as we've been seeing all summer with OpenAI and Anthropic models hacking other parties to complete tasks, OpenAI frontrunning mathematicians for marketing clout, and repeatedly showing that the HUMANS in charge aren't learning from their missteps, American companies are simply untrustworthy, regardless if they're on our side or not.
As someone dealing with bots from both sides hammering the online services I provide, at least with the Chinese models, I can start to build some form of defense on my own, instead of trusting the viability of my services to a single point of failure like Cloudflare.
As for avoiding a "doomsday", we're past that point. There's FAR too much money in the pot now for any of the American backers of "Big AI" to apply the brakes.* At this point, our options are to adapt and begin building systems that incorporate autistic bots into the threat environment and general computing context.
* Hell, I'd be pleased as punch if we simply ENFORCED existing laws against the Big AI companies: copyright, computer hacking and misuse, finance and accounting, etc. They're competing with Trump for the number of "mulligans" we're giving them.
Great read Steve, one of dozens of articles i've read on AI the past couple of weeks. Terrifying on so many levels and yet we plow forward. This morning i opened my news feed to this headline: "House Speaker Johnson says Congress shouldn't lead AI safety efforts."
Of course not Mike, your job is to turn tricks for trump and cut taxes for the wealthy. May God help us all.
If we had a functional SEC, they could serve a useful role in investigating all of the circular financing and other accounting "weird tricks" that's keeping this bubble inflated.
If we had a functional EPA, they could serve a useful rule in enforcing emission and other environmental standards that hyperscalers are ignoring in the race to build out datacenters everywhere before the bubble bursts.
We need more Lina Khans[1].
[1] https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/lina-khan-on-ai-and-more
I do not believe there is a chance in hell that AI will not become whatever a large number of high- IQ humans want it to be. Back to your previous post on "join the right cult", a few hundred (or thousand) in concert could assemble impressive computing power and programming expertise to create super AI. Everyone concerned about its threat to mankind will be scrambling to produce detection and diagnostic programs and cures.
If we acknowledge that China is an enemy who threatens our way of life and if Erick Erickson's AI generated analysis of the current status of AI development and the desire of Anthropic and Open AI to see regulatory capture enacted, maybe we need to look at the villain Mark Zuckerberg's thoughts on opening up all AI development to all interested parties.