mateus de sousa

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. What Lewis is proposing, by contrast, sets up the government for failure, by assigning it a task that it is guaranteed to perform conspicuously worse than the private sector. No true friend of socialism should endorse such a scheme.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
By contrast, if government focuses on doing things that it’s genuinely better than the private sector at doing, like providing health insurance, infrastructure, pensions, and education, this tends to build support for the public sector, because the state is not just subsidizing production, but actually creating value, above and beyond what the private sector is able to provide
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
Thankfully, they no longer curse the government every time their flight is delayed.)
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
This tended to improve public perception of government services. As a general rule, when consumers compare the experience they have interacting with a public service to the experience they have in a modern retail environment (e.g. how long did you have to stand in line? was the employee courteous to you? was the organization respectful of your time?) the public sector tends to suffer from the comparison, which in turn fosters hostility toward government.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
So what happened, beginning in the 1980s, is that the state began to get out of sectors in which there were no real obstacles to the operation of a competitive market, in order to focus its efforts on areas in which there were genuine market failures. This had a number of beneficial effects, one of which was to stabilize state finances, which had been careening dangerously out of control.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
As any student of socialist economics knows, this is typical of organizations facing a soft budget constraint.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
The first argument wound up being defeated by the realities of public management, which led to the airline failing to achieve lower costs than its private competitors, and indeed, managing to lose a great deal of money.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
Lewis’s reactionary idealization of the 1970s welfare state, accompanied by a refusal to acknowledge the many ways in which late-20th century restructuring (often described as “neoliberalism”) strengthened the public sector. Both of these problems were on display in his perverse insistence that the Canadian federal government become deeply involved in the grocery business.
Naomi Klein’s husband doubles down on public grocery stores
This is what made me so full of shit. I took left-wing utopianism and plugged it into the slot that heaven had occupied in the Christian worldview, but without having given any serious thought to how worldly salvation might be obtained. I held on to the intensely moralizing condemnation of society, even though I had no understanding of why anything was the way it was. Nor did I have the faintest idea how to fix any of it. Yet none of that stopped me from condemning it, and condemning others, based on a sense of moral superiority that was, in retrospect, entirely unearned.
On becoming less full of shit - by Joseph Heath
What I find extraordinary about Klein is that she has the exact same worldview that we all had, back when we were 20-year old left-wing undergraduates, and yet she has somehow managed to sustain those beliefs into adulthood.
On becoming less full of shit - by Joseph Heath
During the height of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, the idea that humanity was living in a fallen condition, destined to destroy itself, sounded entirely plausible.
On becoming less full of shit - by Joseph Heath
With new housing, though, “we like it in the aggregate but we don’t want it near us,” Epstein said. “The public opinion about data centers is different: We don’t want them anywhere.”
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
Tech giants and other data center backers have been caught off guard by the rapid rise of public opposition, arguing that the hubs are essential for modern digital services and to keep the United States ahead of China on AI.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
skeptical of promises that data centers generate good local jobs and technological advantages,
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
data center activists said they’re wary of politicians and powerful corporations asking people to sacrifice in exchange for economic revitalization that may never arrive.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
This week, New York became the first state in the nation to impose a temporary pause on large new data center projects.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat vying to flip a Senate seat in a closely watched race, has run advertisements accusing his opponent, Sen. Jon Husted (R), of recruiting data centers to the state at Ohioans’ expense. This spring, residents of Festus, Missouri, voted out incumbent city council members over their approval of a data center project.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
But many elected officials say they know that the tide has turned against data centers, and they’re rushing to show that they’re listening to residents’ concerns — or facing a political price.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
But experts and activists say that the intensity and breadth of the data center backlash reveals something bigger: Americans’ disgust with political and economic systems that feel stacked against them. Data centers, often backed by technology giants and advancing at the speed of AI, may be tangible symbols for a fed-up public to push back against powerful and unaccountable interests.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
In a recent Gallup poll about 7 of 10 Americans said they would oppose a data center being built near them, and many express concerns about the projects operating in secret and gobbling scarce land, water and electricity.
How data centers became a symbol of Americans’ rage - The Washington Post
Rather than redistribute resources from a narrow roster of tech companies, the government would impose heavier levies on all companies through higher, across-the-board corporate taxes, capturing the upside of the technology both from A.I. builders and from A.I. customers.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
Even under bullish assumptions, in other words, the public wealth fund would be miles from offsetting the fallout from any A.I. jobs apocalypse.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
The fact that Intel’s stock has soared is seen by the administration’s sympathizers as a vindication of its decision to take an equity stake. It could also be seen as a red flag signaling cronyism.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
Around the time of that investment, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly began pressuring tech leaders to award contracts to Intel.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
There is a better option to socialize the benefits of A.I.: The government should simply tax companies instead.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
Mr. Trump and corporate chief executives are nevertheless contemplating an even larger — and more economically perilous — idea to mix the government’s interests with those of private businesses: having the public hold shares in artificial intelligence companies to build popular support for A.I.
Opinion | It’s the Wrong Way to Address A.I. Job Loss. Trump Loves It. - The New York Times
Last week, preliminary findings from an in-progress study validated what the terminally online have already discovered for themselves: AI tools consistently intensify work, rather than relieve people from it.
AI power users can't stop grinding - by Celia Ford
These students aren’t anti-technology, in the same way that the luddites weren’t anti-technology. They are anti-technology-without-solution and anti-future-without-hope.
Is AI Going to Destroy our Lives or Not? - by kyla scanlon
The company is backing a bill in Massachusetts, the first in the country to mandate third-party reviews for models.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
The US granted the UAE expanded Nvidia chip access after the Gulf state aided US military operations against Iran.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
President Trump criticized it as “a terrible decision.”
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order enacting the nation’s first statewide one-year moratorium on hyperscale data center construction over 50 megawatts.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
What’s easiest is to enjoy this fascinating time we’re in … what’s best for the species is to take a step back and ask themselves: where is this all headed, if each company is largely left to its own devices?”
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
“Amodei described AGI as ‘a country of geniuses in a data center.’ But who is the ruler of this country? Is it the AI company who owns the data center? The AI itself?”
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
Some criticized it for being milquetoast and lacking in specifics of what, exactly, should be done.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
Moonshot almost certainly trained its latest model using American chips, and probably relied — at least in part — on distilling American models.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
It should certainly try to be competitive on open weights — it is a shame that no American company has an open K3 equivalent — but accelerating further is unnecessary and needlessly risky.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
Xi’s speech today, meanwhile, emphasized the need to tackle AI risks — even more speculative ones like loss of control.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
as we saw earlier this year, once capabilities threaten national security, even the most deregulatory governments suddenly change their tune.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
Once China reaches an actually dangerous level of model capabilities — likely in the next six months — it will face extremely similar incentives to the US.
Open-source Kimi K3 model is no reason for China panic
And unlike LLMs, the data they need — ideally, first-person videos of mundane tasks — is much harder to come by than text. This is why startups are paying people to strap cameras to their foreheads and film themselves cooking and doing laundry.
Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn't enough
In a more recent study, researchers demonstrated that even after training transformers to near-flawlessly predict turn-by-turn New York City driving directions, its internal representation of the city was filled with nonsensical routes and impossible physics.
Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn't enough
World models exist on a spectrum, though. At the most basic level, they predict how the world will appear, given some description or action.
Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn't enough
The holy grail for AI researchers is a model that can resolve both of these problems: AI systems that can learn from experience, and not much of it.
Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn't enough
AI researcher Rich Sutton called it the Bitter Lesson: general, brute-force computation usually works better than trying to recreate our own thinking from scratch.
Scaling works. These researchers are betting billions it isn't enough
What is the underlying belief or value that links these communities? I would say it is something like entertaining possibilities and ideas that are far outside of most people’s personal Overton Windows. It is a willingness to entertain the possibility that the future could be far stranger than most people are able to conceive of.
Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs - Sarah’s Substack
We should aspire to make Congress, political parties, labs, media, and philanthropy itself behave more like wise, capable institutions. AI governance will depend on this whole ecosystem, not on one agency or one bill.
A Long Sequence of Small, Correct Decisions
The uncertainty over the pace of AI capabilities, and the second, third, fourth, and nth order effects of that progress, mean that we should bet on AI policy moves that increase option value, are robustly good across as many timelines as possible, and preserve societal and individual agency.
A Long Sequence of Small, Correct Decisions
Democratizing the future means building new sites of imagination and collective power.
The End of the Future
These corporate actors seek to ensure that the future is imagined to their benefit, reserving them and their projects a central place.
The End of the Future