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I would add supporting literacy programs to that list. Unfortunately, many Americans struggle to read beyond the sixth grade level.
Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
31–40 of 134 posts
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#32Title was: I argued with the father of open source for 2 years. Now the AI fight is the same — only bigger
Op-ed alt link: https://fortune.com/2026/07/03/open-source-ai-same-fight-as-...
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Redistribution can only get you so far. Creating new wealth is more sustainable.
Number one expense for SMB is healthcare, providing a nationalized healthcare service would likely unlock trillions in value (imagine what Americans would do if they got $200-500 more per paycheck?). Instead we are forced to watch some of the wealthiest companies on the planet burn money for fun because apparently the government is "wasteful." What a crock of shit.
Our healthcare system has its flaws (to put it mildly), but nationalized systems have their own. I know people who don't have primary care because they live in a country with a nationalized healthcare service and their government, in its infinite wisdom, chose not to allocate enough doctors to their town.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
But our publicly run systems are full of inefficient bureaucracy and red tape, too. Why shouldn’t we assume our public healthcare system would be operated the same way as the public school systems in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles? Moreover, there is a massive amount of overcare that americans aren’t willing to confront. My wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87 and was airlifted from rural oregon to a hospital in…
Frankly, dealing with healthcare claims as an American consumer is an excruciating experience and it is at the situation where “try anything else” is worth considering. Also, as your description of overcare is happening under the current system, a profit-oriented one at that (which incentivizes the ordering of unnecessary tests and procedures) it sounds like you would actually benefit from a non-market-controlled, mo…
> Also, as your description of overcare is happening under the current system, a profit-oriented one at that (which incentivizes the ordering of unnecessary tests and procedures)
Profit is part of it, but the legal system and culture are equally big parts. Malpractice claims are handled by jury trial in the U.S., and you can always get a doctor on the stand as an expert who will tell a jury that it was negligent not to order a million tests. The UK NHS avoids that by having the NHS set the standard of care. And malpractice claims have to go through an administrative system before resorting to court. And culture is big, too. Americans aren’t going to tolerate being sent to hospice before blowing through $1 million on heroic but futile end of life care.
> it sounds like you would actually benefit from a non-market-controlled, more modest (even austere), system!
I support such a system. My point is that there would be no political will to enforce modesty and austerity.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The U.S. spends more money on education per student than any OECD country other than Norway and Luxembourg. Yet it gets quite mediocre results. Why do you think the U.S. will be able to do public health care in a more cost efficient way than it does public education? I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of…
There is zero evidence we would pay more for healthcare under medicare for all, what a bunch of neoliberal nonsense. The idea that a for-profit system is more efficient than say medicare is hilariously out of touch. Medicare is one of the most popular programs in the country (like >80% from overall public, >90% from active users). There is no reason to deny such a program from the vast majority of Americans, unless y…
Medicare is cross-subsidized by private health insurance: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a5838016cf88191bce90f346ee16ab6
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what people said about operating systems, and databases, and compilers, and so many other big complicated categories of software that over time became increasingly dominated by OSS
OSS only dominates for software that is commoditized and the published computer science research for that software domain is close to the frontier. OSS struggles at being relevant when software is non-commodity e.g. office suites. In software domains like databases where the state-of-the-art computer science research is often unpublished, OSS struggles to be relevant at the higher end of the market on technical merit…
I personally expect token production to commoditized like mobile data. It's already happening.
See open weights gaining adoption, OpenAi talking about how 5.6 is cheaper than Fable, people are taking multiple approaches to reduce their token spend, expectations for progress in hardware and algos, and certain Ai leaders talking about how token prices should be 10-100x lower than they are.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#37[flagged]
Mothers are great at childcare and can easily provide much healthier lunches at far lower cost than schools. As for medicine, children are a small percentage of healthcare costs.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#38Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Redistribution can only get you so far. Creating new wealth is more sustainable.
So why did we stop doing that in favour of winner takes all weath centralisation?
Largely because enough American voters, contrary to all of the evidence, believed that Trump was going to grow a sense of duty, eviscerate corruption in Washington, deliver an economy that works for the working class, and not engage in any new wars.
Charlie Brown, Lucy, football.
Re: Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why did we stop doing that in favour of winner takes all weath centralisation?
Largely because enough American voters, contrary to all of the evidence, believed that Trump was going to grow a sense of duty, eviscerate corruption in Washington, deliver an economy that works for the working class, and not engage in any new wars. Charlie Brown, Lucy, football.
What country are our boys occupying now?