bilbo0s

but seem unlikely to surpass the companies that are training these models from scratch

Then why is it a problem?

Another serious question.

Trying to get my head around what the root of the objection is here. There must be some fear, but if that fear is not a fear of being surpassed in the market, then what is the fear?

Why?

Serious question.

I'm from the US, and I think it's hilarious.

None of which would have happened if we had not gotten so complacent about defending our democracy through vigorous enforcement of the Constitution, and voting in a fashion more informed by wisdom than emotion.

At the root of all you lament is not lack of trust, it is complacency. Decades long complacency.

Lack of trust is what our republic was founded on, and the entire reason it was structured the way it was. Our republic is specifically designed to function in a trust-free environment.

But no republic, nor any other organizational construct, no matter how well designed, will survive complacency.

The entire point of the Constitution was to not trust each other. We wouldn't even need checks or balances if trust were a reasonable governing philosophy. Nor a Bill of Rights, nor any explicit admonition against slavery.

The reason we need these and many more is that we don't trust each other. And it's wise that we don't.

This doesn't mean trust is bad, only that the founders, rightfully, knew that it leads to complacency.

What's landed us where we are is not a lack of trust. (We've lacked trust from day one, that's how we got the Constitution in the first place). What's landed us here is complacency.

Together, both comments make a good example of the reason one should not trust what one reads on the internet.

It sucks. But there's just too much astro-turfing.

trustworthy search makes a huge difference

That's the rub. Today on the internet, no one can validate that there exists any "trustworthy search". If we don't control the servers and validate the software on it, then we are taking someone's word for it. Most often that someone is a marketing person at the hosting organization. Occasionally it's a random comment on the internet behind a pseudonym we know nothing about.

People are becoming more and more, justifiably, cynical. And it's good for society that they are.

Just Devil’s Advocate, but couldn’t you ask these models about controversial topics in US or Chinese history. Like, what happened at Tiananmen? Or what happened during the Tulsa riots?

In the U.S. this seems highly unlikely

Aren't these the same guys who won't even let us have Chinese cars?

I'm not as confident as you that they will keep allowing us access to technology as strategic as AI models out of China and elsewhere that undercut US models in the market.

To everyone reading, download open models from anywhere as soon as they are released. You really have no guarantee at all that access to those models won't be cut off in the future with the stroke of a President's pen. Those downloads are your insurance policy. You'll always be able to access whatever you've already downloaded.

People move towards places with growing economic opportunities.

I hope people aren't expecting data centers to provide "growing economic opportunities". That's not really what data centers are about.

Data centers are infrastructure in the same way nuclear plants or canals are infrastructure. Water infrastructure carries the Colorado to Phoenix and other areas in the West. Unfortunately, this does little for people in Colorado. The idea is that the benefit of feeding water to people throughout the west is worth the cost of building and maintaining extensive water infrastructure.

AI infrastructure should be thought of in the same manner. If you're going to have a requirement that data centers provide all these jobs in the places they're built, then data centers are never going to be able to get out from under the PR hammer. And most citizens are going to continue to be disappointed. Because they're thinking about it wrong.

Even then, it still sounds stupid.

We have a home in Houston. Over by the big gates down Sunset.

I have no particular objection to building datacenters there.

All that said, I think you're being real hand-wave-y here. The climate in Houston is materially different than it is in Dallas. So there's likely a reason these companies have been locating their enormously expensive assets where they have been locating them.

Houston floods. Often.

Houston gets hit by Hurricanes.

Houston is hot and humid with relatively high ground water tables.

Don't even get me started on the power and the durability issues arising from the use of sea water.

There's a lot to work out there. You put what you can afford to lose in Houston, but you don't bet the farm on coastal Texas. You just can't do that if you want resilient infrastructure.

This.

The Jedi Hand Wave-y nature of the way people talk about AI these days is going to make reigning in the AI superpowers nearly impossible. Because there are people out here who believe models of this quality are easily replicated or reverse engineered. Neither is really doable on any reasonable timeline by people who are not AI experts. Real AI experts. Not TF/PyTorch monkeys or Agent Slop Slingers.

And those people are already highly incentivized to not make anything performing better than SOTA models open source.

In fairness, I mean, if the people collecting the data sell it on the open market, then you can't realistically expect it to be private.

The only solution in that case is to make it illegal to sell the data. And that's never gonna happen in the US.

As ever, if you want to know where much of the expertise has gone, look to China (and South Korea)

Good news!

You don't need to worry about that anymore! I can guarantee you, as the article implies, money from big tech is being funneled to people perfecting models for in-betweeners as we speak.

/s

I think we may be entering an era where we really have to start thinking about how to organize work at a fundamental level. Because if you think the present where the "1%" refers to the group of people to whom the lion's share of resources in society accrue is bad; imagine a future where the "1%" refers to a group that are the only people any given government and steward class need to keep everything running.

they just use platforms like aws bedrock, there are too many restrictions on Anthropic's own platform

This is actually the only way that what Anthropic is alleging would make any kind of sense. And, as a matter of fact, is exactly what every enterprise does to train models.

This kerfuffle should be interesting to watch.

But, as always, everyone (in the US) should fully download all the Chinese models while you can. I suspect this may be the "Phantom Menace" they use to render illegal our use of Chinese AI tech just as they've rendered illegal our use of Chinese cars. Only difference is, we peasants may need the Chinese AI tech to have any chance of competing with Big Tech in the future.

And even with the Chinese tech, as Big Tech spreads their AI out into more and more niche areas, we'll likely still not be able to build startups that can compete with them.

It's just that without Chinese AI tech, we'll have no chance at all.

Not sure you can “unplug” from things that affect you that you cannot control? Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with that issue. I do think you can “unplug” from things that do not affect you that you cannot control.

For instance, if you’re an immigrant, and ICE is rounding up immigrants in your neighborhood, you can go ahead and mentally “unplug” as you like. But you’re going to have to deal with the reality of your situation when you get to the immigration detainment facility. And if you’re actively dealing with that reality, are you really “unplugged”?

At the same time, whether or not Trump turns the white house into a cage match spectacle for his birthday, I mean, it won’t really affect most people. So I would think that’s a lot easier to “unplug” from since it’s not affecting you.

also, i stepped over a homeless guy on my way into the grocery store last week.

This.

The evidence that it's possible is all around us. Right in our faces. That people believe that, somehow, other people will start caring when it's me who doesn't have water is a bit naive. Why would people not just step over a hypothetical "homeless me" on their way to get a Starbuck's?

It's even easier to ignore if the vast majority of such people are not on the streets, but safely hidden away in crappy parts of town struggling to afford their rent and food. That way the privileged don't have to see them.

Not saying it's good or right, just kind of saying, I mean, of course it's possible. It's the way things work right now.

If the poster didn't notice it works like this, chances are, they were always one of the people in the caravan who had the water.

Not to be a jerk or anything, but that only matters for the guys and gals left holding the bag.

I don't think that will be Musk. He'll probably pull out significant resource from all this financial engineering relatively quickly. Probably via more financial engineering.

In fairness, there are a lot of Japanese people who feel they were not consulted on the scale and scope of "Japanese peoples' expectations". So many such people that they could get a Prime Minister elected. I wouldn't assume that living according to the laws that exist currently means that you're living in accordance with "Japanese peoples' expectations". That's the whole reason the laws are being changed at the moment.

That said, as a foreigner right now the best thing to do is to watch the legal environment as it shifts so that you don't fall afoul of it. And to be extra mindful of adhering to Japanese customs, which boils down to being nice along with things like realizing some places may not look on your tattoos the same way those tattoos are looked on in the West.

I'm pretty sure they didn't think this through in a comprehensive fashion.

Because making it esy to find all the rich people just seems like a very bad idea given the direction things are going.

When it was broad, the only thing you could do was locate, say, large minority groups. Blacks and latinos for instance. And even that led to problems. I can't imagine what will happen when we can drill down and tease out immigrants from citizens. Gay from straight. Rich from well to do. And so on.

Well, SpaceX is supposed to be more about AI than low cost orbital launches. At least that’s what their roadshow is claiming.

But either way, yeah, I’m not willing to bet much money on USD4.3T unless we can get some serious financial engineering, (read “circular deals”), going.

A sturdy stick makes a decent enough baseball bat

Right around the 80’s and 90’s the idea of zero-tolerance youth crime policies swept the US. Right around the same time the popularity of baseball began a decline in the US. It went from being a universally played ‘pickup culture’ sport, to a sparsely played ‘pay to play’ sport.

Now I’m not gonna say the need for 8 or 9 boys to roam around a neighborhood with a giant stick looking for a place to play was the reason the ‘pickup culture’ games died. But I will say that it was probably a lot safer for those boys to just go to a basketball court and wait their turn in a ‘pickup culture’ game that did not require a giant stick or bat.

Don't have kids huh...

I'm a grandparent.

people like you who don't have kids and know nothing about the education system

You know when I did my student teaching stint to certify? 1993.

PS: You know why they say tracking works? Because we throw out data from after high school graduation. Ever wonder how those, uh, "gifted", kids who got "A"s in high school Calc typically do in Calculus streams at the University level? I can assure you there are many many professors out there dealing with the results of our tracking system, (that being where the proliferation of "gifted" programs came from), who would not say that it is "working".

I think I should also gently suggest here that the issue could also be expectations. The idea that you put 30 random children in a class and that therefore there must be some who are "gifted", and there must be some who are "slow".

I don't know man? I'm just saying that sometimes sure, all the kids in your neighborhood could be above average. But most of the time, all the kids in a class are just average. And now the poor teacher has to explain to irate parents that their kid's not any more special than the other kids in the class. (Only we don't. We acquiesce to their insanity and label average at best kids as "gifted" and then have everyone be shocked when those kids don't gain admission to Ivies. Ma'am, that kid was lucky to get into his/her state flagship. And even at that state flagship, s/he probably ain't gonna be majoring in ChemE or anything if you want my honest opinion.)

Sure, you can have slow kids in a class. But, really? 30 random kids? Is it statistically likely that any are "slow"? Or is it more likely you're dealing with no good parents who don't work with their children at home? Then those same parents come to berate the teachers for not doing enough to teach a fourth grader addition and subtraction. With absolutely no reflection on why a fourth grader, with no learning disability, doesn't understand addition and subtraction.)

I don't envy teachers because these are the attitudes they have to deal with.

Public Service Announcement: No people, your children aren't "gifted". And it's very unlikely that your kids are "slow". Your kids are very likely, (horror of horrors), just average. Every one of them.

If we can just get past those things we can start looking at some of the real issues.

This.

A math test is a math test is a math test.

What's the math teacher supposed to do?

I hate to be that guy, but I think it should be pointed out that asian boys don't seem to have much of a problem. If there's a gender bias, why do they succeed?

This is exactly what I was saying.

It doesn't matter if you measure LNG in litres, gallons, or cubic inches. The market is going to pay you the precise amount for whatever you delivered measured in cubic meters. So what you measure in is irrelevant. Or more precisely, only relevant insofar as you want to have some idea how much you are going to be paid when you reach the market. And even then, it's only relevant to you. The market doesn't care what you measure in, because the market measures what you deliver in cubic meters. And the market has its own definition of "cubic meter".

So market participants, no matter where they may be, are incentivized to ensure whatever unit they're measuring out for delivery in will relate to the "cubic meter" as defined by the customer in a precise and verifiable way. If not, they could lose money. Thus, every freight measurement standard, would, again, effectively be set by the customer. Because no matter what units you deliver in, s/he is only paying you for the amount measured in his/her own measurement standard. So your standard has to conform to that standard in a fashion that is well defined, consistent, and well understood by you.

In ancient terms, this means the trader in Mohenjo-daro would have calculated that conversion factor out in a precise fashion. So they would walk around Mohendro-daro with a standard weight for measurement that was based on what they would expect to happen in Sumer. All the other traders in Mohendro-daro would eventually discover the same conversion factor. So everyone lands on the same weight for measurement, but no one collaborated. Because everyone, (every trader anyway), only cares what they can get for that weight in Sumer. It's not that everyone uses Sumer's units. It's that Sumer's units define what everyone's understanding of their own unit is through trade.

I did some work for Halliburton in a past life.

Most of the people selling LNG for instance, do not have any control over the definition of a "cubic meter". Even so, none of them cheat, because the US for example, very much does have its own definition of a cubic meter and it isn't going to pay you a penny more, nor a penny less, than what that cubic meter is worth.

All that to say, you could probably try to cheat the system, but I'd imagine the people in Sumer and Akkad had what they considered to be a precise unit of weight with which to measure your delivery. It doesn't matter what someone in Mohenjo-daro said, you were only going to get a certain amount in trade for your freight in Sumer. So I could see a centralized authority for weights, (the customer), at the same time as having no one in charge of that unit of weight in Mohenjo-daro.

I could see people agreeing to it essentially because that's all you're getting paid for. Because I saw the same behavior long ago at work with Halliburton.

In this case though, the nerds are in charge of it. They created and own it.

I mean even the lawyers are subordinate to them at this point.

nor evidence that Russia or China have solved the engineering problems related to it.

Absence of evidence, especially when dealing with China, is not evidence of absence.

I would rather our planners take China having that nut cracked as a base operational assumption at this point.

Not to be that guy, but you know this is gonna hit Iowa and Iowa State in the recruiting department. Athletics was part of the way some of these schools thought they’d make up for cuts in research and declining revenue elsewhere given increasing costs. “We’ll just get rich off football and basketball!!!”

realistically though, the rest of the B1G is definitely going to negatively recruit against this. Just like they are being told to negatively recruit southern states around the voting rights act stuff. Not that Iowa State cares about the B1G but they are generally going after the same guys. Now the B1G schools have wayyy more money, and the recruiting high ground.

It’s gonna get ugly in college sports.