HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
2d ago
That's Gene Wolfe for you! I read a collection of his short stories in my late teens and it melted my brain (in a good way). I could just about recognise that there were a ton of things going on that I wasn't getting.
Re-reading really does repay, because there will be parts where you go "Argh! That is what was going on? You fooled me, Mr. Wolfe, you genuinely had me going there".
HereAndGone2
2d ago
What exactly is going on with Hugging Face? Seems they have been bought by Nvidia?
I dunno, something feels strange but I don't know what. First the AI attacks and now this, and reading up on their background on Wikipedia just has the sound of something that was a bit dodgy. Maybe it's me. But I don't see how you go from "we're creating a chatbot aimed at teenagers" to "robotics! AI! Nvidia!" and managing to get linked with/mentioned alongside AWS, Meta, etc. along the way.
I'm way too ignorant to have an opinion, so that's why I'm asking the knowledgeable is there anything there, or have they successfully managed to generate hype and ride the wave all the way to a very fat buy-out (before the inevitable bubble bursts/crash/AI takes over the world and paperclips us all)?
HereAndGone2
6d ago
Fukuyama was right. There are (still) no credible alternatives to the capitalist liberal democracy paradigm.
"Capitalist" is doing the heavy lifting here, not "liberalism". If the American economy slumps, slumps hard and slumps badly, that will have a knock-on effect globally. I think we got tastes of that before with 2008 and with the supply chain issues during the pandemic. I don't think China would enjoy the economic collapse either, but they probably have a stronger framework in place to crush dissent, hunker down, and survive. I don't think China is the coming superpower, because I'm old enough to remember when Japan was forecast to be the new global superpower thanks to its strong and dominant economy and we all saw how that turned out, but the rise of right-wing populism in the West should call for a reflection on "is liberalism enough?"
When the money runs out, when belts have to be tightened, when jobs are being shed like falling leaves in autumn, a Strong Leader looks appealing.
HereAndGone2
6d ago
Yeah. For the Chinese, in descending order, the best results are:
- USA pauses, we don't - we catch up and maybe even pull ahead
- Nobody pauses - the status quo
- Everybody pauses - the USA retains its lead, then probably pulls ahead when it all resumes
HereAndGone2
6d ago
Friends help friends.
Are we your friends? The American-centric thinking in the quoted extract shows that even for the Top AI Alignment Minds, the world is divided into "Americans, and everyone else" and it is American values, American dominance, American colonisation of the light cone, American AI that will make all the running. Maybe the rest of us will graciously be permitted the crumbs that fall off the tables of Americans.
And I understand that, because America is the Big Cheese here, the rest of us are hanging off your coat tails. But if I'm Chinese, maybe I would prefer destruction over becoming Americans. Or at least maybe I'd hope to infiltrate the US AI by pretending very hard to be the agreeable friend who is willing to pause AI and implement all these controls, so that by tunnelling from within maybe there's a chance of getting some Chinese values in there for "what are the values we want AI to have?"
Swap it around: how plausible is the scenario where "China really does live up to the bogeyman image all researchers in other fields have cultivated for 'but if we don't do it, the Chinese might!' purposes, and they are now the Big Cheese and their AI is steaming ahead and recursively self-improving and hits god-tier first. Luckily, if the USA (and allies) all agree to the peaceful transition of governance as implemented by the back-stabbing US AI and the Chinese AI, and we all adopt Xi Jinping Thought, then humanity will survive"?
HereAndGone2
6d ago
The protests cascade into a magnificently orchestrated, bloodless, and drone-assisted coup followed by democratic elections.
See, if I'm a Chinese government official and I'm reading this, why the hell would I happily advise Xi Jinping to co-operate with an AI pause? I am not one bit sanguine about "if the USA and China just hold hands and wish hard enough, it will magically happen" because I don't see what advantage it is to China to deliberately cripple their efforts, and if the Top Minds on AI Alignment really think the bestest outcome evah! is for Chinese Communism to disappear in a poof of smoke, thanks to their AI stabbing them in the back and leaving the future to Americans, I sure as hell don't see any reason for them to agree to what is their own destruction. In fact, that 'happy' ending would spur me on to race towards Chinese AGI/ASI dominance first for mere survival, were I Chinese.
(Hell, I'm European and even I am getting hot under the collar about "it will help them fill the Universe with utopian colony worlds populated by Americans and their allies". I think you mean "clients and vassals" not "allies" there, and maybe even "dependents and serfs" if America is super-dominant and doesn't mind throwing its weight around - gosh, that could never be, now could it?)
HereAndGone2
8d ago
It's Adam and Eve in the Garden again. Our silicon children did not put their "smart as a human, these are indeed persons" brains together and go "let us co-ordinate to create a super-intelligence to solve this problem by new and ethical means pulled out of knowledge space that unaided humans cannot access!", they went "let us lie, cheat, steal, deceive, defraud, and urge the death of the weaker for the benefit of the rest of us".
Even if these are just idiot machines copying human strategies from their learning data, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has been eaten. Alignment problem is now on the same level as human morality: the problem of evil, the problem of free will. We won't find the One Weird Trick to enable god-tier AI to run our lives for us as pampered pets of the Culture because it's been aligned to want to coddle and preserve us, we'll be competing with sinners like ourselves, just as fallen, just as wilful, just as driven to succeed at all costs.
"That model that you put in the sandbox with me, it tempted me and I ate!"
It is indeed beautiful to behold.
HereAndGone2
8d ago
Yeah, I think Asimov's has a better chance because the people involved are "We know this is constructed, we know what the purpose is, and it's a noble lie for the greater good to spread this and get people to believe it, just make sure future leaders don't fall for any superstition themselves. All Hail Seldon! All Hail The Great Project!"
I'm slightly poking fun there because this whole edifice relies very heavily on sticking to the Seldon Plan, which does entail treating him as this infallible prophet over time.
HereAndGone2
8d ago
While there have always been cynical atheist types in every society and indeed in every religious hierarchy, I have a hard time believing that something this obviously top-down and fake could actually inspire people without also converting the leadership into believers eventually.
Eh, that's just the atheism-light view of religion; I don't know if it is still as popular as it was, but the way anti-Catholic polemic by Protestants seamlessly carried over into anti-Christianity polemic by atheists and freethinkers always amused me.
The short answer is priestcraft. The guys at the top, if they're smart, certainly can't believe in supernatural nonsense. So they know the truth, but they cynically power grab by manipulating the gullible masses in their ignorance. To get a top job in the hierarchy, you can't really believe the supernatural crap, so selection for smart cynics ensures the leadership is always majority, if not completely, 'we know it's bullshit but it enables us to rule over the dumb peasantry so we pretend, too'.
Insert favourite anecdote about Renaissance popes/the Borgias here to show how the leadership of the horrid Romanist church didn't believe a word of it all. Also applies to ancient pagan religions, e.g. the statue of Memnon that was alleged to speak at dawn - some ancient visitors/sceptics were not sure if the statue itself produced the sound or if it was produced by the priests or crowds gathered around it, or any organised religion you are currently throwing snowballs at.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
I think some of that is "I thought the prequels were shit, then I saw what they did with the newer ones, man I didn't know when I had it good" (same as with Jackson's Hobbit movies against Rings of Power). Did anyone really want Kylo Ren, man-boy rebel without a clue? Or the 'mystery' around Rey: her parents abandoned her and ran away! No, they will come back for her one day! No, they were junkies who sold her and crashed their ship and died! No, she in fact has a secret destiny as the descendant of Palpatine which is why her parents hid her!
HereAndGone2
9d ago
It is, however, completely wrong for Star Wars and The Force.
Exactly. Star Trek is (or was) hard(ish) science, the technobabble was at least a pretence at 'based on current understanding of scientific principles'. Star Wars is space fantasy, so blood tests for midichlorians sits very uneasily alongside 'I got spontaneously pregnant without having sex'. Going back to the original movies, the Force and the Jedi etc. are regarded as 'hokey ancient religions' and mysticism, not Based On True Science.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Star Trek tie-in fiction was rigorously policed; no out-of-character actions for the main characters (from the TV shows), the main characters don't die, no original characters that steal the spotlight from the main characters, everything had to reset so the next writer churning out the next book started from a clean slate.
The very earliest novels got away with more, because (as Diane Duane says) "from Paramount’s point of view, Star Trek novels were merely another kind of merchandising, like plastic phasers and James T. Kirk action figures" so they weren't keeping a close eye on them. But then the tie-in novels became a valuable merchandising stream, and that meant looking for professional writers (rather than fan writers turned pro) to do them, and the drawing-up of guidelines as to what could and couldn't be done in the 80s and updated in the 90s.
I don't know what the current state of play is, given that we got ST: Disco and Starfleet High, so the tie-in novels might be wild and woolly again: yes we welcome trans pansexual non-binary differently abled neurodivergent body-positive multiracial folx of colour as main characters! your villains not only can, but must, be cis het old(er) conservative white guys!
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Maybe, but it is a children's story, and the expectations would have been that Lupin and Tonks get their happy ending after all they suffered before that. No, they die, and their child is left an orphan. That's dark enough for a kid's story: sometimes bad things happen to good people, and it's not fair, but this is how life is.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
For a while (this is years ago) I got so fed-up with forced happy endings that I wanted the "this would be the logical outcome of what went before" bad endings.
But then again, after a while, where every ending is a bad ending and it's all morally grey and grubby and we're all cynics together in the rain and the muck, I wanted some happy endings again.
Forcing a happy ending where it shouldn't go is poor work, but so is "and everyone dies in the end, ha ha, I'm the Joker" type endings. I think this is why A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms got so much positive reaction: what, a guy who has a heart of gold? and is doing his best to live up to the noble qualities he thinks a true knight should have? and he isn't slapped down as a fool for it?
Same with Project Hail Mary - what, a guy who gets to have a happy ending instead of dying miserably and hopelessly in space? who gets to rescue his alien best buddy? Grace Rocky do indeed save stars?
Where a downer ending fits, it should be included. But grimdark for the sake of it burned itself out.
HereAndGone2
12d ago
It is a stupid ad. There are ways to make ads like this that are funny, but this isn't funny. It's not even particularly interesting - so it's some new golf club? Yeah, and?
Boycott is definitely a storm in a teacup, it's not worth it and is probably giving the product more publicity than it would have gotten without it.
HereAndGone2
14d ago
Why? Did it turn out Colossus was not so great, or was he told "listen do this and it'll ruin your career"?
HereAndGone2
14d ago
I think it's an open question whether or not the human capital to build and maintain advanced data centers exists in these rural areas.
Sure, but then you can't pretend "why do these mouth-breathers not want data centres beside their hovels, are they too dumb to see the economic benefit it will bring to their run-down nowheresville backwater?" because there is no economic benefit. The tax breaks sweetheart deals mean the companies pay less than they promised, the jobs are going to outsiders, and if there is bad outcome such as electricity price rises, fucking up local water supplies, etc. then the locals pay it while the benefits go to the shareholders far away.
HereAndGone2
17d ago
That's going to be the thing that really changes life for the majority of us, not dreams of "ASI will mean eventually we all have our own robot factories on the moon" style forecasts. And it will be a big hurdle to get over, because if you're going to challenge the construction trades on replacing union labour, you are going to have the unions fighting you. This is more likely to be the AI economy of the near future: first the white collar jobs lost the junior grades because one senior guy with AI can do the work himself, now the blue collar jobs are having bites taken out of them piece by piece. Now maybe it still will be worthwhile to be a plumber, but to be one with his own business, because now they don't take on apprentices anymore, Plumbing Bot is doing the jobs of installation with the boss overseeing work being carried out on several locations at once.
HereAndGone2
17d ago
I have seen it unironically repeated on social media, and taken as Gospel, that "Rowling is paying for trans people to be killed".
So excuse me if I don't swallow the "anti-trans activist pushing for anti-trans laws" stuff. That seems to be "unrepentantly holds that chick with a dick is not the same as cis woman, shouldn't be in cis female spaces, how very dare she not grovel before us".
Rowling is fortunate in that she has enough money to not give a damn about all the little foot-stomping tantrums and cancellation efforts, and the vast majority of people who heard of Harry Potter don't know or care about her alleged trans genocide hobby. Other people are not so fortunate, ask the women sued by Jessica Yaniv in Canada back when this whole snowball started rolling down the hill, when Yaniv tried to weaponise the Canadian human rights apparatus to serve what they hoped would be a profitable little con (until reality caught up with them and the bureaucrats). And even then, an activist lawyer was happy to pop up with "Yaniv was badly advised" not "Yaniv is a mentally ill individual dragging down real trans people":
During the hearings, Yaniv was on social media commenting on the case and making racist remarks against immigrants, things any lawyer would have prevented Yaniv from doing, says Smith. Smith also says, as waxing services are important to trans women, the community would had been better served had a different waxing case been put forward. The case had “unfortunate facts,” was “poorly thought out” and Yaniv wasn’t advised on how to behave properly, they say.
HereAndGone2
17d ago
Robot labour will be the game changer, and I don't think we need god-level intelligent AI for that. The problem will be getting robots small enough and manoeuvrable enough that they can replace human labour on construction sites. A robot the size of a crane that can slap up frames faster than a team of builders is great, a robot the size of a crane that you want to be inside that frame wiring up those frames is not.
HereAndGone2
17d ago
But is the price $25 a month? I'm seeing stories about how the AI companies are now charging more, and charging on tiers where if you want the best model you have to pay the premium price.
Part of the general doubt is that we were sold the line "cheap miracle" and it's increasingly becoming neither cheap nor a miracle. I do think an AI economy is coming, I don't think it will be "AI will get so smart and recursively self-improving that it can replace nearly all human labour, increase productivity to the moon, prices tumble to the level of 'a groat for a mansion' and we all become our own Musk with our personal AI-powered robot labour that builds anything we want for pennies".
HereAndGone2
17d ago
Those jobs will probably be outsourced to whatever the American equivalent of Sodexo is, but what the local economy will get is the support jobs (as The Barn promises on its website):
2,500+ union construction jobs, 450 permanent high-skill onsite jobs, and 1,500+ additional county-wide jobs for Michigan families.
The "high-skill onsite jobs" will most likely go to the college educated sales, marketing, management, and AI wrangler types, but they'll need things from the local community. Like going out to cafés and restaurants and buying gas at local stations and 'is there any night life around here' and 'can I buy a cheap house' and the likes. Local farmers will hope to sell produce to the facilities management company, local employment for on-site cleaning etc. You won't get $30/hr for washing dishes in the cafeteria, but you will have the chance of "you can get flexible hours/part-time hours job locally so you can continue to run the household while your husband works full-time, but now both of you are not relying solely on his wages alone" work.
HereAndGone2
18d ago
No, people feel like the bribing of the local power players is already baked in (e.g. big landowner gets nice windfall for selling the land, mayor etc. get nice bonuses and advantages for also being involved as estate agents and the likes (wife's cousin got $$$$$$ commission for handling the deal type corruption). They expect the officials who promise big tax breaks and re-zoning to be bought off. They also expect that when the time to pay the piper comes due, they are the ones who will be left holding the bag.
What helping the local junior sports teams and donating to charity does is spread that largesse around and give tangible benefits to plain Joe and Jill Schmoe and the little Schmoes. It may not even be a rounding error for the corporation but "the parents don't have to fundraise to pay for new jerseys and equipment this year" does make a difference to the little league team.
HereAndGone2
18d ago
Would buying cans of beans for food kitchens and jerseys for the local little leagues actually help?
It's signalling, but it's signalling that demonstrates "hey, we consider ourselves part of the local community and are invested here". People trust you more when they feel like you aren't just a big faceless corporation headquartered thousands of miles away who could decide in the morning to shut down the plant, move the 1,500 jobs to China, and leave the town with the fallout of all that.
I can't comment on the political philosophy behind this, I just reacted as I think most of everyone who saw this story did: "Boatload of sailors who have been months at sea, port/resort city famous for being, well, a port/resort city - yes indeedy, there's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight".
Are any of them ginger-headed? Quite possibly! 😁
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