Of course recordings are to be used against those that threaten the people in power, while those in power enjoy a cone of silence. Same as it ever was.
Power is silencing other people. Follows from the problem of coordinated action. Foundation of asymmetric law enforcement, a cornerstone of tyranny. Even in a society ostensibly governed by the "rule of law".
What's new is how concentrated the reins of power have become. Paradoxically, could lead to a period of major instability. The year of four emperors.
'you shall have no other gods before me'. operationally, a warning. false worship is dangerous. we get what we worship (value above all, orient towards, optimize for). heaven or hell, read it immanently or transcendentally, personally or collectively. either way, choosing the right worship is paramount.
the conundrum: what is the right objective? puerile attempts, eg "maximize flourishing" or perhaps "minimize suffering" are trivially countered by paperclip machines fulfilling the letter while laying utter waste
'mystery of the person'
given the context, some keywords for orientation: free will, rejection of temptation, the cross
this is the business model bet. the codebase is a big ball of mud that only a superhuman ai can comprehend, therefore everyone must use superhuman ai make changes in the codebase. the selling point is iteration speed, especially early iteration speed
cf. SV conventional wisdom: he who ships first wins the market
in fairness, there is real value in iteration speed. i'm not holding my breath on human comprehensible corporate code bases moving forward. a slew of critical foundational projects, mostly run by the big names, may still care about what used to be called "good engineering practices".
copyright laundering machine. which could poison the very notion of ip / copyright, either open or close source. the only code that can't be laundered becomes code hidden behind a server api
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
There are ~10M cows nationally. The average energy consumption is ~1000 kWh/cow annually. Summing up, the entire dairy industry consumes ~10TWh. That is less than 10% of the national data center energy burn. [edit: was off by a factor of 10]
"have scientific journals disappeared" -- ironically, in the AI field most of the action is on arxiv / github / twitter. journals have been obsolete for decades, and the '10s obsoleted conferences too. the only function journals / conferences still serve in the AI field is to stack rank researchers and provide signal for hiring / funding decisions.
there must be a fallacy name for 'more of a good thing is always a good thing' line of reasoning. almost every good out there is good in a certain range. outside of that range it becomes detrimental, possibly deadly. there is even a Swedish word for it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom. a few examples.
material:
- water: too little => thirst, too much => drown
- heat: too little => freeze, too much => burn
- food: too little => starvation, too much => obesity
spiritual:
- courage: too little => cowardice, too much => foolhardiness
- diligence: too little => slothfulness, too much => workaholism
- respect: too little => disregard, too much => idolatry
Power is silencing other people. Follows from the problem of coordinated action. Foundation of asymmetric law enforcement, a cornerstone of tyranny. Even in a society ostensibly governed by the "rule of law".
What's new is how concentrated the reins of power have become. Paradoxically, could lead to a period of major instability. The year of four emperors.