Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i don’t disagree with this. it is a remarkably vague kind of claim.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s ultimately not the tech. it’s the degree to which applications are guided by, optimized toward profit maximization independently of other social goods that might once or in a better arranged society have been correlates of profitable (not necessarily maximally profitable) enterprises.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
prediction of human behavior analytics, in order to better profit from such behavior.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yes. and what would you say their best funded uses were?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think to identify the social coding of the tech (a pretty vague idea!), you have to weight the applications behind the money behind them. where was the money focused during 2010s AI/classification boom? if you wanted to pitch a startup, was it gesture recognition or predictive analytics?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(am i wrong to claim “ad tech” is right-coded?)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
no. i mean, maybe it’s coming to that. but it wasn’t always thus. google was left-coded for a long time. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s a recent development in a US context that identity as for-profit corporations maybe overwhelms the capacity of a collective to deliver social goods. we used to think in a mixed economy, for-profit cos could participate in ecosystems of overall flourishing. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
there used to be important distinctions between, say, Palantir and Apple. maybe we’ve let the logic of profit accumulation so overwhelm other goods that the distinction is becoming less tenable. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s amazing how a thing can become ever more contentious even while it becomes ever more boring.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
the classifiers that preceded LLMs are also right-coded, they’re the “analytics” behind surveillance capitalism. Palantir is right-coded.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
how many engineers at X will be diverted now to a project setting up a realtime somebody-else’s-voice filter for his sock puppets on spaces?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i don’t think the CEO and Xi got together for a private chat inaccessible to American officials. absolutely not.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(i gotta bolt! family movie time.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
visiting a plant in the company of an entourage is quite different from private conversations.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
We’ll see. A massive tide just came in for Nvidia. We’ll just have to see how it does when, eventually, the tide goes out. Everyone looks great when they are swimming in water this high. Again, I wish it well, and am not betting against it. My view is cautious.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I’m not saying they play fair. I’m saying they play effectively.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
it’s honda that i mostly admire, though i’ve a nostalgic attachment to nissan. i haven’t followed the firms enough to have too deep a view of them, other than i am a fan of honda’s products.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Not in China! They bring multitudes into the industries they deem strategic. We could learn something!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(i don’t know whether Nvidia will prove a flash in the pan. as i said, i wish it well. but it — like most great things — is a result of serendipity, and the casino capitalism now surrounding it might hurt more than help the task of building a durable *industry*.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
China favors firms on the front side, but structures industries to be ruthlessly competitive, which limits the social cost of the favoritism. I think that’s probably the best we can hope for in a fallen world. Distinguishing between nepotism and valuable soft information is not generally possible.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
your tenacity is admirable, but no. defense contractor CEOs do not typically meet independently with foreign leaders, particularly adversaries. yes, it’s products are dual use, but it relies on defense work, and should have precisely zero defense work with its current leadership.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if you want Americans to become scientists, you’ve got to kneecap the money hose thru finance, management consulting, and monopoly tech. Americans capable of doing science get faced with a choice of six years of lab slavery or $200K to start traveling around, meeting people, building spreadsheets.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i just haven’t commented on GM, Ford, what used to be Chrysler. i think they, especially Ford, are firms that have survived only by milking the chicken tax, and have made the US more dangerous and less efficient doing that. i’m not putting them on a pedestal. our industrial policy has been bad.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(i’m having a hard time deciding what i think about the Honda/Nissan merger. firms worthier of comment perhaps.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
You’ve got to shovel money to industries, not to firms. There’s no way to avoid corruption on the front end. You need competition to shave it away on the back. The structure of industries is a public concern, not a private outcome. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Nvidia right now is a flash in a pan, a niche GPU maker suddenly very special because it turned out its specialized chips were just what two important applications need. I wish it well, but we’re in a pretty fragile position, one Nvidia, one ASML, one TSMC. it’s a very dangerous industry structure.