The End of the Computer Age
manhattan-institute.org
The End of the Computer Age
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Re: The End of the Computer Age
#2Re: The End of the Computer Age
#3"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense.
Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications that people seem to talk about are using large data to sort of monitor people, know more about people than they know about themselves. And in the limit case, maybe it can solve a lot of the sort of Austrian Economics type problems where you can know enough about people that you know more about them than they know about themselves, and you can sort of enable communism to work, maybe not so much as an economic theory, but at least as a political theory. So it is definitely a Leninist thing. And then, it is literally communist because China loves AI; it hates crypto. And so that, I think, tells you something."
AI is literally communist. Thanks Peter.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#4That introduction is a guillotinable offense.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#5"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…
Thanks, I was wondering if I should read it or not and this gives me some good tidbits to help decide.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#6Thiel's talk starts around 10m40s, after the throat-clearing intro.
This is not his most articulate talk, fwiw. Thiel's smart and sometimes very clear, but not here. This feels off the cuff, where he's falling back on pot shots and sound bites.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#7"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…
Maybe not so elegantly put, but there's no question that China has embraced AI as a tool for spying on its own people. For whatever reason, spying seems to be a consistent Orwellian feature of communism. It was a central feature of the Soviet Union and China just seems to be taking the franchise to new heights with its approach to AI.
I don't know what to say about the Harvard quote, but with the recent admissions scandal implicating that rich people are buying their way into premium universities and into higher SAT scores, there's some nugget of truth to criticizing the current situation.
I wonder if universities aren't suffering Goodheart's Law: "Once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure." That is to say, once we measured that a university degree lead to higher incomes, better life outcomes, etc. and then we started pressuring everyone to get a four year degree...did it cease to be a good measure for quality employees, creative thinking, problem solving skills, etc?
I think there's something to that. When everyone is obsessed with getting the degree, and they're not worried about the practical application of their knowledge, they are doing the world a disservice. And we're all suffering for it, through higher debt and inflated expectations.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#8"And so, if we were to rightsize the scaling for our intellectual life, you should describe Harvard, not as one of the thousands of great universities, you should describe it as a Studio 54 nightclub" is really all you need to take away from this. Not for what it says, but for the desperate attempt of those words to make any real sense. Although don't miss out on gems like: "But in practice, the main AI applications…
I'm not sure what's unclear about what he's saying.
a) Harvard is a pure signaling mechanism that doesn't provide education as much as exclusionary credentials.
b) AI/Big data is a way to solve the economic calculation problem that was once seen as one of the main theoretical hurdles against communism. That a country like China favors AI and punishes crypto tells you something (that it's a communist dictatorship).
It's pretty straightforward.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#9It’s amazing how much the output of Serious People pontificating about AI is coming to resemble that of the AIs themselves.
Re: The End of the Computer Age
#10Wait.. I thought I read a "how to recognize snake oil in AI/ML" posting just yesterday...