Thanks for sharing this. I wasn’t familiar with this channel, not I’m liking it.
I just read that this guy was part of Nebula and was forced out. It’s remarkable that he’s forced out for speaking openly and defending his beliefs when Isaac Arthur is tolerated despite having much more onerous politics but having them in secret. Smh.
Amen. It drives me fuckin’ nuts anytime – in business as well as in sci-fi and general discussion – when people envision a society made perfect because it’s run by a genius computer.
For pretty much every challenge society faces, the major obstacle is not that we’re unsure what to do or lack the intelligence to solve. We already have all the solutions, it’s just that our decision making systems are completely disinterested in employing any of the solutions that we already have.
It’s like, if you could get everyone to agree to listen to a computer, why not just skip the computer and get everyone to agree to listen to a combination of popular will and expert advice? Popular will and expert advice are like the supercomputer that runs society that we already have.
This article doesn’t really answer most of my questions.
What subjects does the AI cover? Do they do all their learning independently? Does AI compose the entire lesson plan? What is the software platform? Who developed it? Is this just an LLM or is there more to it? How are students assessed? How long has the school been around, and what is their reputation? What is the fundamental goal of their approach?
Overall, this sounds quite dumb. Just incredibly and transparently stupid. Like, if they insisted that all learning would be done on the blockchain. I’m very open minded, but I don’t understand what the student’s experience will be. Maybe they’ll learn in the same way one could learn by browsing Wikipedia for 7 hours a day. But will they enjoy it? Will it help them find career fulfillment, or build confidence or learn social skills? It just sounds so much like that Willie Wonka experience scam but applied to an expensive private school instead of a pop-up attraction.
I was trying to explain what AI alignment is to my mom, and I ended up using the behavior of companies like OpenAI, and how they’re distorted by profit motive as an example of a misaligned decision making system. And I realized that late stage capitalism is basically the paperclip maximizer made real.
This is a very good article. I think AI models have more to teach us about epistemology than people want to believe right now.
That sounds like some very cool engineering. I hope it sees as little use as possible, but I’m glad you’re prepared.
I’m concerned that this would require a continuous supply of water at a flow rate that might not be realistic.
I don’t think it’s secret. A lot of OpenAI’s business strategy is to warn of the danger of their own project as a means of hyping it.
OpenAI, despite having produced a pretty novel product, doesn’t really have a sound business model. LLMs are actually expensive to run. The energy and processing is not cheap, and it’s really not clear that they produce something of value. It’s a cool party trick, but a lot of the use cases just aren’t cost effective at this point. That makes their innovation hard to commercialize. So OpenAI promotes itself like online clickbait games.
You know the ones that are like, ‘WARNING: This game is so sexy it is ADDICTIVE! Do NOT play our game if you don’t want to CUM TOO HARD!’
That’s OpenAI’s marketing strategy.
I still use Jerboa. I’m a fan.
They start at $70k. And they are actually still losing money on each sale.
It’s largely marketed as a recreation/sport vehicle. It’s for going camping and off-roading.
That isn’t too say that it can’t also get you to and from work, or even be used for constructive uses. But at the price and feature set, I think anyone would agree it’s designed to be a fun luxury first and foremost rather than a practical tool.
Whew. I’m glad he’s happy with his purchase. I can’t ever imagine having enough money that I could drop that kind of cash on a toy, no matter how neat I think it looks.
Haha a bike.
I hold out hope, actually, that as the right-to-repair movement continues to grow, eventually repairability and control will become more common consumer interests, in the same way that vehicle safety wasn’t something people thought about when buying a car before the 70s, and now it’s one of the main influences when buying a car.
Once people start caring – and again, I believe this is the direction we’re heading – it will become something manufacturers have to design for.
This is modestly interesting. My brother worked here before they had layoffs about two years ago, and had a generally favorable opinion of the company and leadership.
Fundamentally, while I think RJ seems like a sound businessman and technologist, and I like the company’s taste a bit, I will never be able to reconcile his views with mine. He very openly views cars as computers and software and services that happen to move you around, and I would like it to be a machine over which I have as minimal a relationship as possible with the manufacturer after I acquire the product.
Still, I wish them luck.
You know, for a guy with the username “Sunzu”, I feel like you’re demonstrating a remarkable lack of vision of power dynamics.
First, I’m not a Democrat. I’m not invested in holding up that party.
Again, I’m talking more to any audience than you in particular: when someone says that any attempt to use power creatively is a waste of time, I think that is either ignorant or in bad faith. The SIZE of any given effect or the use of resources in one place or another can be certainly debated, but the logic of the revitalized antitrust movement is very, very sound. Power has been left unused, and now people like Khan and Jonathan Kantor are learning how to use it again, and showing others.
The logic you’re outlining runs in contradiction to what we might call “The Bork consensus”. A lot of the issues we face WERE developed through regulatory capture rather than legislation, led by Robert Bork under Reagan. If you don’t want to use that power for anything, feel free, but I’m going to evangelize using every tool available. And these are pretty big ones.
If I can be frank, I’m reading from your tone that you’re not here for polite, factual persuasion. But if I’m wrong, or someone else sees this, I gotta drop a fact check on the ‘Lina can’t win cases’ myth:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/out-with-a-bang-as-ftc-beats-the
More practically, this loss discredits the main argument from Wall Street. Dealmakers, and thinkers like Larry Summers, have often said that while Biden antitrust enforcers are aggressive, if corporations are willing to go to court, the government is likely to lose because judges won’t let them rewrite the law. This narrative was so strong that Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter were questioned in Congress as to whether they were even trying to win. It’s always been a narrow and bad faith critique, but this victory, plus, the win in the Fifth Circuit over Illumina, should put that narrative to rest. Antitrust lawyers will tell their clients to go to court at their peril.
It’s kind of a deep dive, but it’s worth it.
While I don’t traffic in such forceful language, I can answer what @criitz means:
Bernie Sanders raised millions of dollars on the promise to lead a political revolution. For many supporters, that proposition was taken literally. They thought that his campaign was not simply a vehicle to give him the power of the presidency, but was the organizing structure for a persistent movement of activists reengaging with democracy each and every week BETWEEN elections. And when he dropped out, a lot of those people lost their connections to social and organizing structures that were giving them hope and an outlet for meeting like-minded people to find ways to make their communities better. So when he ended his campaign and all that money and infrastructure got instantly packed up and taken away, they felt like they’d been misled.
Some found their way into activism through the DSA or climate groups, but for many, the way in which he disbanded his campaign without following through on the implied promise to transform it into something durable was a very unexpected and painful surprise.
Pete needs to go mayor some more. He had a few good ideas during the primary, but as Transportation Secretary I’m astounded at his lack of ambition.
There are a handful of administration officials – Lina Khan first among them – who’ve learned to use their power assertively to make changes to broken systems. And Pete… he seems like he just pops up when another piece of infrastructure breaks to let us know that he’s on it. Maybe he’s doing something more, but if so he’s doing it very, very quietly.
I like Porter. AOC needs a rest, I think.
I used to be really captivated by her leadership, but in the last few years, I think things have gotten complicated. Perhaps I’m being too forgiving, but during Biden’s presidency it seemed like she lost her nerve to stick her neck out for what she believed in more and more. Maybe I’m inventing things, but I get the sense that January 6th scared the fucking shit out of her. I think her life flashed before her eyes, and afterwards she felt like being among the most progressive voices while trying not to rock the boat too much or draw too much personal attention from the right was enough, and that challenging Democrats on their bullshit was too stressful and risky.
If that’s the case, I don’t blame her. I still admire what she’s done, but she does not have the spark she once did.
I agree with you… but I don’t disagree with @john_mcmurray.
The fact that Biden actually participates in genocide at all is just ghastly. I honestly struggle to find the words for it. And once he crossed that bridge, I will never ever try to argue with someone who assigns him equal moral equivalence with Trump.
It’s like debating whether someone who killed one of your children is better than someone who killed two. Mathematically? I think so. Conceptually? Those are who child murderers. The difference is negligible.
There are still Palestinians alive right now, though, so we can’t give up, no matter how heartbroken.
You messed up the format.
The caption should be “Why would Socialism do this?”