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The optimist in me sees AI as a path to fusion thus having the energy to undo at least some of the damage done via co2 sequestration etc. The pessimist in me sees every other outcome
How exactly is AI a "path to fusion"?
The federal government believes that the US will be locked out of the future forever if we are not first, or at least at parity, on AI with adversaries. They believe it is not a normal technology, but a singularly important one which will define national capacity. The federal government believes that if China achieves AI dominance and we are not competitive on either the industrial or cognitive stacks, the people and…
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
The optimist in me sees AI as a path to fusion thus having the energy to undo at least some of the damage done via co2 sequestration etc. The pessimist in me sees every other outcome
How exactly is AI a "path to fusion"?
2. Designs require advanced simulations which benefit from AI both in building the simulations and running them.
3. Material science benefits from models learning how particles interact and materials behave in certain conditions so we can predict which materials are worth producing.
These are odd the top of my head and I'm not a fusion physicist. There's probably a lot more examples.
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
> "The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housing, public transit, were all things that were fundamentally subversive.." Subversive to what? A winner-take-all, might-makes-right feudal mindset?
A left leaning politics of today might actually ask for more compute or intelligence to be accessible to all.
Nationalizing or demanding a democratized project for frontier level intelligence that's easily accessible to all Americans, for example might be an idea.
This would be in direct competition with frontier labs that are all closed source and heavily funded. It would give access to people otherwise gated due to monetary reasons. And further give individual American an opportunity to participate in a coming social/technological transformation.
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
So you think a philosophy needs to welcome all change in order to be coherent, and that there's an inconsistency to promoting things you believe are positive while opposing things you believe are negative?
The federal government believes that the US will be locked out of the future forever if we are not first, or at least at parity, on AI with adversaries. They believe it is not a normal technology, but a singularly important one which will define national capacity. The federal government believes that if China achieves AI dominance and we are not competitive on either the industrial or cognitive stacks, the people and…
This is a narrative framing from the tech companies who started and continue the AI race. The current administration is following this framing because the tech billionaires helped them get elected, so they are getting their pay back. It's crony capitalism.
But, I do not have that button, and I believe the thesis that for the US to thrive, or even survive, we have to win at AI. So, until we get a multinational pact to pause AI (which I would support), it needs to be all gas, all the time.
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
The economics and politics remain the same. Do we want to allow massive wealth disparity and fascist policies to prevail, while social safety nets and civil rights are dismantled? Technology doesn't change that.
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
Left-leaning politics has moved to very mild, not-even-social-democracy policies, taxation of wage income, a decreased focus on capital owners.
Left-leaning politics has thus been transformed beyond belief and has very little to do with what it used to. Most politicians have no idea about physical reality, which is the ultimate source of technology, but live sometimes in a world of administration, sometimes in a world of laws and sometimes in a world of politics only.
Left-liberals don't exist. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology: free trade, laissez-faire.
So I don't understand at all what you mean. What are the SocDems who have gone from being SocDems to not knowing what social democracy is and who now think about things like welfare and administrative stuff and living in a world of compromises attached to?
I can't see that they're attached to anything, and I think I despise them for it. At least someone who looks back to the past can look at it and critique it and see what ideas were valuable, what the real goals were, that led to different positive achievements.
"We believe that AI’s emergence shows the potential for state capacity to be oriented toward a different mission that centers the ambitious creation of socially useful green infrastructure like clean energy, healthy schools, libraries, social housing, and public transit." The basic problem that left leaning politics are refusing to address is that the above were radical propositions. Schools, libraries, social housin…
So you think a philosophy needs to welcome all change in order to be coherent, and that there's an inconsistency to promoting things you believe are positive while opposing things you believe are negative?
A left leaning politics does not just address the change, or accept change as is, but fundamentally invents the change. It is the revolutionary movement that leverage modernity, that is to say newness, your scientific revolutions, your enlightenment ideals, etc. to create new politics. Politics that are emancipatory.
The left is supposed to be a politics of historical invention. Using modernity to create new institutions, new rights, new publics, and new forms of collective life. Contemporary American left-liberal politics has become largely defensive and curatorial instead.
In other words the left generally invents the future, and dictates the changes in politics, that's what makes it 'progressive', that's why it's against reactionary politics.
So I'm saying the left leaning politics of today has fallen prey to closed, diminutive, reactionary politics, and there is new real new left politics that's inventing anything. At least not in America.
There was a glimmer with early technology, but the left rejected that politics in favor for stale institutionalism (the same ones from the 19th and 20th century), and ceded that technological ground to techno-fascists/rightwing/authoritarian/etc.etc. politics.