James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️
@provisionalidea
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founder. orgs. tech. cybernetics. ex-biotech. 🗣️ I have strong opinions; you will not agree with all of them. That’s a good thing. 📚 I share what I learn.
Toronto
Joined November 2014
this looks like massive handouts from the admin to american companies (particularly tech companies)
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the primary job of a CEO of an organization beyond a particular size is being a decision engine, which in most large systems amounts to cranking through emails
Anyone who knows how Jensen operates knows that he reads and replies to ungodly numbers of emails. Just do some basic research.
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I agree, with the addendum that well-functioning democracy is premised on an informed electorate, and we should seek to use these tools (and policy) to return to that ideal. The internet and globalization together placed immense strain on our decision loops, but we can adapt!
Great piece by @rreisman: "Democracy is not a thing to be automated and optimized by AI, but a deeply social human process to be augmented in its workings by AI." https://t.co/BMSQgHq9G9
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a little disingenuous to present in a manner analogous to AI safety folks’ notions of persuasion (as borderline mind control), particularly given the authors’ caveat.
Large scale-experiments in UK, US & Poland where people chatted with LLMs about political topics found AI is very good at persuasion, primarily by providing lots of fact-based claims Plus, AI is getting more persuasive as models grow bigger & persuasion effects lasted over time.
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but mostly, it’s just pages and pages of empty padding, with more pith than a pomelo and less fruit than a red currant
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it also says things that just aren’t true. (the cuts to American science and basic research are extremely well-known and documented)
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content-wise, it is aggressively anti-immigration, and against a notion of pluralistic, multiethnic liberal democracy, and explicitly asserts a return to the Monroe Doctrine.
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most of the document is just a repetition of campaign slogans, too, which makes me worry there isn’t much of a concrete strategy to recover America’s status in the world.
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it is very “a book report is when a student summarizes a book and describes their feelings on it. in this book report I will describe the book alice in wonderland and talk about my feelings about it. the book alice in wonderland is about a girl named alice in a place called...”
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I see why people like it — it is clearly and simply written, by and for a non-policy audience. it is also half the length of previous natsec strategies, with bigger font and line spacing, and spends several pages defining what a strategy is, instead of outright proposing one.
You should seriously read the national security strategy. It is lucid, honest, and sophisticated. Some of the sharpest prose I’ve ever seen in a government document, too. In short, it is a banger. Congratulations to all who had a hand.
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If you told people twenty years ago that the Blockbuster competitor that mailed people rental DVDs from a site on the internet would not only outlive Blockbuster, but go on to acquire Warner Bros and HBO, nobody would believe it. Market shifts are incredible, man.
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nothing shouts 'society in decline' quite like an economy of anxious workers with dwindling paycheques, payday loans, and everything turned into gambling
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not content being merely infotainment, CNN has decided to become a casino, too
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ah yes, I see legacy media has decided to get into market manipulation
CNN partners with Kalshi to integrate prediction markets into its global newsroom. The first major news network to embrace Kalshi prediction markets. A new era of media is here.
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I’m a very strong believer in the ‘public intellectual’ ethos, and the notions that (1) the better you can explain something, the better you understand it, and (2) that knowledge comes with a responsibility to diffuse and share it.
@sebkrier the ultimate goal should always be to find the most accurate possible analogies for the situation to provide the public the clearest possible intuition for the technology. we cannot fault others for assuming our analogies are accurate to infer on when we half-ass them.
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we need to find a cure for kurzweilian brain worms
I'm not calling for that. I'm calling to shut it down. Very concrete proposal. More people need to come out in support of it.
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meanwhile, a bunch of folks proclaiming hype and doom are filling the space with toxic waste, suppressing the right kinds of growth, and the system from reaching a stable equilibrium (there are positive signs that’s changing, though!)
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Séb is right, and this is one of the main reasons I’m such a hardass about being accurate in how we talk about how these machines work and what they’re actually good at the healthier and more accurate the information ecosystem, the more quickly and effectively diffusion happens
I think a particularly important skill is actually knowing when (and how) to use language models and when not to. Language models cheapen and reduce the barriers to producing a lot of text, and so it's easy to generate a lot and overwhelm people. Many people are already
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there is so much play-acting prometheus from people who’d make icarus blush
Everything else aside, “Our critics say our work will destroy the world” is an objectively hysterical way to start a sentence
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