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Biggest loser in the midterms might be Elon Musk. Not only did his personal expenditures fail to achieve any meaningful result, but his outspoken support of the outparty and high profile makes him an extremely high-value target. His companies are now based mainly in two states controlled by Democrats, who will certainly be under pressure to Do Something, and SpaceX is heavily into AI and datacenters, which lost catastrophically in every ballot measure and is about as popular as AIDS.
In his favor, SpaceX is still indispensible and the other companies provide a lot of jobs and tax revenue that it would be foolish to spurn. But the flipside is that hatred of the man as an avatar of CEO's, AI, datacenters, and conservatives, has taken on a life of its own and you have lots of people like Scott Galloway calling, literally, for blood. I think if Musk is not personally ruined the more radical elements are going to be extremely disappointed to the point of Kirking him.
Can we stop using SI now? Superintelligence already had a distinct meaning.
AI will be fine. The Democrats aren't going to go directly up against Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Nvidia... about half the stock market. They're not going to risk letting China catch up. Plus the military and intelligence agencies are very interested in AI superiority for its speed, targeting, information-processing/surveillance and mathematical capabilities with reference to cryptography, not to mention cyberespionage. They're hardly likely to welcome a slowdown.
Lots of things are unpopular but they happen anyway. Trump I promised to pull out troops from the Middle East but generals largely ignored him and cajoled him into doing what they wanted. Trump II jacked up huge tariffs, the markets revolted and he backed down from the extremes. He's still president until 2029 and will likely veto any anti-AI bills. There are ways to get around uncooperative planning environments for datacentres, Elon's pretty good at that. Or just bribing people.
The Iraq War became very unpopular but the US was still stuck in there due to sunk cost fallacy, the cost to prestige, the forces of chaos and destruction that were released by the destruction of Baathism sucked America back in.
Bernie's 'ban superintelligence' bill probably won't get through even with the new senators, unless there's a major crisis and by that time it might well be too late to matter. Even if it was passed into law it probably wouldn't work like it's supposed to, regulation of big tech isn't easy.
SI is nice as a tell you're dealing with a cultist, a moron, or someone arguing in bad faith. Like neopronouns or land acknowledgements.
To be clear, are you leveling this accusation at me?
Well...
But I should be kind. What is the justification for using SI over AI?
I believe it's what the companies who provide it are calling the thing that they are producing, which seems to be a value-neutral criteria. If they call their product SI, insisting on calling at AI is like insisting on calling "X" "Twitter".
OpenAI? Anthropic, which on its website says of itself "AI research and products that put safety at the frontier. AI will have a vast impact on the world. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation dedicated to securing its benefits and mitigating its risks."? Deepseek: "DeepSeek is an AI research company focused on building world-leading general artificial intelligence."
to be fair to @pusher_robot, this is from SpaceXAI wikipedia page:
I didn't know that Trump mandated SI instead of AI for federal agencies actually.
Yes, it's super annoying. It essentially forced not only agencies but also contractors and companies that sell to the FedGov as well. Now all my middle managers insist on using that word and correcting me when I say AI. Makes me want to reach through zoom and choke them.
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Hmm, perhaps I conflated things I read from those companies about superintelligence as a concept vs. superintelligence as a product. If so, mea culpa. I know I can't prove I'm posting in good faith, but I can only ask you not to report my post. I'll edit it ASAP.
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