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The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

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Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#651
post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm reminded of a comic about global warming, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?": https://climateactionreserve.org/blog/2012/08/31/environment ... The people who've made the biggest contribution to creating a better world over the last 50 years have been the Chinese; powered largely by coal and petroleum. And in one of the most ironic results in the 21st century, they're now the lea…

Something that has been largely forgotten about is that it used to be routine to see pictures of smoggy Chinese and Asian cities, this was a problem for them that they solved. I can't help thinking we can't get this kind of preventative action on any large scale, we need to have severe issues first and that's not accounting for longer term/cumulative effects.

The US had the same issue and fixed it through federal and state environmental regulation. It just happened in the US 100 years before it happened in china Heavy pollution is what lead to the environmental movement that started back in the 60s and that led to the creation of the EPA and whole slate of state and federal regulation that dramatically improved air/water quality in the US. It was a slow process that took a ton of work to build a movement of support, but it can be done.

We can actually address problems when we want to. It's just pretty slow and requires people to actually give a shit and put in the effort to build support.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#652
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standards are not higher for self driving cars. Musk lied a lit about capability and safety of self driving, creating impression that it is safer then humans driving. So far, they are not.

I have no idea where you get this impression. Tesla is no where close to the majority (or even plurality) of fully autonomous self driving miles. Waymo is dramatically safer (less injuries, not quite enough data yet to be certain about fatalities, but they are lower than average, we just can't yet claim statistical significance) than human drivers. I haven't seen good stats on Tesla (they are less transparent than Wa…

I have a suspicion that, once self-driving cars make up the lion's share of driving, accidents caused by humans will actually increase on a per-mile driven basis.

I think humans will eventually fall out of practice of driving when they use SDVs for most travel. And then every once in a while they'll take their ol' 2026 classic car from highschool out for a spin and find they have forgotten how to drive!

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#653
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happening quickly too. Far too quickly.

It is a little bit old https://www.amazon.com/The-Revolt-of-the-Masses/dp/B0934PV37... , but yeah, I agree that it has been crazy lately.

Yes the theory is old - but the last decade has really sped it up.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Researches at top AI labs don't consider EY to be a kook even though they may not necessarily agree. EY concepts/terminology appear in Anthropic safety papers. Geoffrey Hinton takes him quite seriously and mentions him in his interviews.

And people working on the metaverse endlessly referenced Ready Player One despite it being ludicrous fiction. Yudkowsky is obviously read a lot by some people working in AI. That doesn't make his ideas prescient.

Ready Player One was completely misread and misunderstood by people who thought they could make a lot of money with VR.

It wasn't a homage to 70s/80s/90s nerd culture and a hopeful glimpse of what VR tech could be.

It was a warning for people to get off their fucking phones and to work together at improving the real world, versus ignoring it and living out unrealistic fantasies inside a digital ecosystem that makes us all a bit less human.

The whole point of the book is that VR and addictive tech is a red herring. It was deliberately misunderstood by Zuck and his ilk.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cartoon was drawn at the very end of 2009. BYD had release the first plug in hybrid the year before. The Beijing Olynpics had made air pollution a hot topic in China in 2007-8. Wind power had accelerated after their 2005 Renewable Energy Law. Solar panel production rose around this time, taking over the market from European manufacturers when the Financial Crisis hit and they pulled back investments. So China at…

Many people in Europe want to see green energy transition. But no transition is happening in China. " “We see addition, not transition,” said Yasheng Huang, a professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School. “China is building alternative sources of energy as well as fossil energy sources, simultaneously. In terms of the global footprint on CO2, China is emitting twice as much as Europe and the U…

What an embarrassingly ill-informed thing to say. But when the guy wrote a book in 2023 about the fall of China, he kind of has to say that doesn't he, even as he lives through the fall of the USA.

He's called out in the sub-head as an "expert" but what is he an expert in? Renewables? Energy policy? No, he's an expert in saying that China is too state-led. Why would an expert in that want to downplay their success, apart from all the obvious reasons?

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the war on drugs.

At the time the war on drugs looked unwinnable. Which is why the joke about the war on drugs was that it was always a losing war. And then at some point in 2000s we ended the war on drugs. In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.

>In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.

LOL, no, we've never even been in a winning position. Were we winning when the CIA used cocaine to finance weapons for Iran? I guess we were winning when we put a lot of black people in jail for decades for possessing crack while white wall street folks were getting slaps on the wrist for getting caught with the same amount of coke? Our country having the highest percentage of people in prison sounds like we were winning too. Lots of winning.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yudkowski is a clown, the local crackhead in your street is probably more accurate and less insane than him.

Being an insane clown (posse optional) with less accuracy than the town crackhead doesn't seem to be a barrier to success in tech anymore.

Certainly makes you qualified to be CEO or Spokesperson.

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people in Europe want to see green energy transition. But no transition is happening in China. " “We see addition, not transition,” said Yasheng Huang, a professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School. “China is building alternative sources of energy as well as fossil energy sources, simultaneously. In terms of the global footprint on CO2, China is emitting twice as much as Europe and the U…

What an embarrassingly ill-informed thing to say. But when the guy wrote a book in 2023 about the fall of China, he kind of has to say that doesn't he, even as he lives through the fall of the USA. He's called out in the sub-head as an "expert" but what is he an expert in? Renewables? Energy policy? No, he's an expert in saying that China is too state-led. Why would an expert in that want to downplay their success, a…

" For Beijing to achieve those goals, Climate Action Tracker says China needs "clear targets for coal consumption reduction" in its new 5YP. However, the economic roadmap released in March was not "explicit about how fossil fuels will be constrained," said China analyst Qi Qin of the Finland-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Though Chinese President Xi Jinping promised in 2021 to detail a reduction in coal energy use in the 2026-31 plan, it contains "no clear phase-down plan, no clear fossil fuel cap," said Qin. "The language is much more conservative than many people expected," she told DW. One reason is the continued influence of the powerful coal lobby on Chinese government policy. "

https://www.dw.com/en/china-five-year-plan-energy-transition...

Re: The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization

#660
post #30

Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are the standouts, but the main question for me is, why is this a war? In their own context China has greatly benefitted from this. They shored up their gpu design and manufacturing expertise. If this really is a war, trump is kneecapping the country with his lawlessness and eroding America’s good will. If the world cannot trust China with their data and they cannot trust the U.S. to prov…

> the main question for me is, why is this a war? It's a war because the hinted promise behind the hype that the first organization to reach some as-yet-entirely-theoretical AGI that can bootstrap itself to godlike capabilities will then Install Planetary Overlord* and rule the world as near-deities themselves, with the rest of the (surviving) human race as their slaves. I think it's a nonsensical idea, but that's th…

It doesn't have to be that extreme. Even if rather than "godlike capabilities" it just boosted your economic efficiency by 2x over other nations that would still be a serious geopolitical threat. (I'm not necessarily saying that's a realistic outcome either, but it's certainly more realistic.)
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