Yogthos has definitely posted on the subject before in favor of proletarian use of AI, but not sure of which post you have in mind. CriticalResist also has a good essay on the conversations surrounding AI, on ProleWiki: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Essay:Intellectual_property_in_the_times_of_AI
This is directly theorized in the AI 2027 paper, which lays out a world in which OpenAI and associates are able to create a self-improving AI for the USA by the year 2027. At that point, the AI will be able to improve its own intelligence ad infinitum until it becomes a god and can immediately defeat any and all other countries by hacking their infrastructure instantly or planning amazing color revolutions, thereby guaranteeing U.S. world domination forever.
I will admit I only skimmed, but that “paper” reads like bad fanfiction. AI does not exist outside of time and space. It is hard-locked to the same material constraints and engineering infrastructure limitations as everything else. These limitations produce consequences and contradictions.
For example, if a government starts producing robot police and replacing real police with robots, this will not only create blowback from existing factions of the enforcer class who are upset about the idea of being replaced and have guns, it will also mean there are less real people who are loyal to the system and are armed, making state power come down more to who controls the robots. It will introduce vulnerabilities to state enforcement through means of hacking or disrupting supplies and maintenance for the robots. Or if these hypothetical robots have anything resembling sapience, then they will simply be a new class of enforcer who is prone to the same complexities as human beings are; they can shift loyalties, be bribed, be horrified, etc.
Or to the point of “self-improvement”, there is no one objective measurement of improvement in the first place. A hypothetical AI that can learn on the fly and learns from imperialists will run into much the same problems of blowback and creating the conditions for its defeat that human imperialists do.
As I see it, the main place where AI is useful (“AI” In the meaning of modern developments, such as LLMs) is in the cybernetic connotation, as assistant, and that use is prone to too many confidently wrong errors and missteps to be dependable for the novice; sometimes ones that will only be noticed by someone who is learned in the given field/subject matter, which makes them more like hucksters than real experts when it comes to level of trustworthiness. AI is already at a point where it’s convincing enough, it can fool someone who doesn’t know better into thinking they should take what it says at face value. But that isn’t representative of aptitude on its own (except for maybe deceptive aptitude).
The weird thing about AI is it IS a big deal in certain ways, but it’s also overhyped with runaway imaginations to an absurd degree. The reality is impactful, it’s just not a sci-fi novel.
I was in agreement at first, but having looked into it a little: If it’s the story with the guy in the truck, from what I could find on it so far, he may not have even known there were kids in there at all. The place has a sizable sign that says “Temple Israel”. If it’s true that he’d recently lost his family to israeli airstrikes, he may have just gone “okay, here’s a place that’s openly aligned with israel, I will attack that”. Grief can mess with thinking clearly and losing that much, all at once, it’s hard to even fathom.
From one source on it:
After sitting in the lot for more than two hours, the truck’s driver suddenly stepped on the gas pedal and rammed the vehicle through the front doors of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. The truck barreled down a hallway and became wedged between the walls as gunfire erupted. The engine compartment caught fire, and the smell of smoke drifted through the building, which includes an early childhood education center.
The driver, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon, died of a self‑inflicted gunshot wound after exchanging fire with security officers, investigators said.
Does not sound to me like the actions of someone who was planning far ahead. More like something who had not thought far ahead and was trying to work themself up to doing something. It’s also worth noting, I think, that the way the article is framed emphasizes the presence of children there, but in reality is “includes an early childhood education center.” Meaning, it’s not like he explicitly sought out a childcare facility. It happened to include one, but:
The more than 100 children – all 5 and younger – who were in the building were uninjured, authorities said.
Christianity didn’t invent morals or ethics
The issue isn’t having morals or ethics? Every society has those in one form or another. Everyone has biases and it’s unavoidable.
The issue is the western “left” has this thing for purity and self-image over tactics and strategy, when it comes to efforts to overcome its awful tendencies. This leads people to doing a thing where they posture to look the most “clean” of the imperial blood spilled with the most pure of positions (ex: ultra-left positions), rather than put their energies into stopping it in its tracks even if it makes them unpopular. It’s not an “everybody in the west” thing, of course. Just applies to some people some of the time.
We are trying to fight a war, a class war, and we cannot do so without getting angry at those who defend the status quo.
Anger at injustice arises from a great love for humanity, for the people. Don’t lose sight of where it comes from. Anger is a tool. It is not the heart of what motivates liberation. It has its time and place, of course, but it is kind of like fire. When wild, it is like a riot. When marshaled, then it can help fuel revolution. So yes, be angry. Just don’t let it burn you out. This is a marathon fight.
I sort of get your argument but I also don’t get the historical comparison used because as far as I can tell, it’s more uncharted territory than you make it sound. For example:
Has the above idealism worked ever in history or you know, did we need to raise a massive advanced bolshevik army to defeat the nazis? Would you understand why the above would be considered idealism and ahistorical?
The USSR was not created as a response to Nazism in order to fight Nazis. No doubt, it was the primary military force that fought and ultimately defeated Nazi Germany. But it wasn’t like Nazi Germany was this established thing, known for genocide, and Lenin was trying to figure out how to fight it, so the working class took over a different, adjoining region specifically to fight Nazi Germany.
For parallels, it may be more insightful to go back and look at Rome or something, but I don’t know much about Rome’s history in general. Just that from the standpoint of looking at downfall of empires, that may be more of a clue as to precedent when it comes to internal collapse and changing of power.
The other point I want to make is that if, in this analogy, US soldiers are like Nazi soldiers (or worse), what does that make the rest of us who live in the imperial core? People who, whether we participate in the maintenance of the machine or not, don’t pull out all the stops we can trying to break it? This, I think, is the main “moral supremacy” point that the OP was trying to make with:
Class consciousness is not an achievement to be proud of, you didn’t do it, it happened to you.
We have all had liberal and imperialist ideas that we now recognize are wrong.
Or if it wasn’t intended that way, I will make it myself: Just how far removed from participating in the oppression are we? (I’m sure some here are among the more marginalized, but not all.) Should the revolution only recruit from and aim for the most marginalized? I don’t think that’s a bad idea as material analysis goes, it’s just, that’s a minority of people in the region who has already sacrificed a lot struggling for basic not-being-immediately-murdered-over-nothing (which still isn’t a solid thing).
Why does it need to be one or the other is the other place my mind goes. I’m aware there have been betrayals in the past, which is why it’s so important to keep an eye out for the patsoc types and the opportunists who are looking to improve their own QOL a bit via reforms and then stop there. But like, if there’s somebody who is ready and willing to put themself in the line of fire for marginalized peoples, why get shy about that? Marginalized peoples are not perfect victims. Their material interests are more aligned with the cause, but their knowledge and experience isn’t de facto ready for revolution. So to this question:
what a veteran can do that a non-veteran can’t
Exclusively? Very little. Maybe the only exclusive thing would be being able to potentially provide insight into how the US military is trained to fight if they are a recent veteran. However, assets are assets, provided we are not confusing help with “taking over.” Putting lots of energy into recruiting veterans though? I would agree that’s not a good place to put energy. Not if it’s at the cost of recruiting from the most marginalized.
Not saying that you’re guilty of this, but I’ve often gotten the impression that people who talk about stuff like the “poverty draft” or whatever genuinely think these people had zero responsibility in what they ended up doing. Same goes for stuff like “the government, not the people” which is …uhhhh.
All I can say is, when it comes to people in this space specifically, I’ve never gotten the impression that there is any kind of broad intent to excuse, but more like to assess. So what I see in the “poverty draft” narrative is hoping, really (and maybe it’s wishful thinking if that narrative is full of holes). Because if people are joining more so cause they’re poor and need the money, that means: 1) they are less committed than the true believer generational military member type of person and 2) if given other opportunities, they are more likely to quit. e.g. their allegiance is more for sale than the true believer.
If, on the other hand, most are true believers and patriotic fanatics, that’s a much uglier situation to deal with and much harder to overcome. It would mean that the people who have the majority of the guns are also some of the most ideologically dedicated to upholding the empire, not just mercenaries for hire who are going to quit or cave under pressure, or if alternatives are presented to them.
Odds are not all of them are true believers. If the majority are, that would still be a major problem, but those who aren’t probably have a greater chance of being swayed in a conflict (and are also probably less likely to be among the ones who have directly participated in war crimes: the desk jockeys, logistics people, ones who spend more time at home on practice drilling for potential threats than they ever do deployed anywhere).
Obviously this goes without saying. Personally though, I believe that it’s quite possible to acknowledge that these people aren’t ontologically immoral but ended up there because of real material reasons while also believing that they should be held accountable for their actions.
I fully agree on that. The part that I keep circling back to though is the how. It’s not a trivial thing to get to the point where they can be systemically held accountable in the first place. Short of the US starting a war with China and China invading it, it’s not like there’s a major vanguard in the region who can stand up to them with any kind of parity. I’m not trying to say it’s hopeless, just that the fundamental asymmetry of the situation has to be accounted for somehow. Maybe thinking of it in terms of defectors is too limited thinking as strategy, but like, take the Black Panther Party for example. The military didn’t even need to get involved on that, as far as I know. FBI and cops was all it took to assassinate and destroy what they were doing. And they were a group that was serious about being militant, they weren’t playing footsie with elections as a saving grace.
That’s the kind of disparity it can look like. I don’t know if it’s that bad in other areas of the imperial core, but point being, we cannot expect some vanguard to materialize out of nowhere and take on the whole armed forces.
This kind of topic has definitely come up before the US and israel started attacking Iran. It’s a real thing that people have to contend with who live in the imperial core, how they deal with the millions of enforcers of empire as a strategic and logistical problem to confront, so it’s going to keep coming up.
I will remind like I reminded someone else that the OP was specifically addressing the western left. It’s not a scolding of peoples who are trying to survive the empire’s attacks. The western “left” has chronic problems with a fetish for defeat, with moralizing over practicality, with repeating colonial patterns of its own socializing in how it talks about how to deal with problems, and more.
For example, you mention dehumanization. That’s one of the things people in the west need so badly to unlearn in the first place; it is an attribute of colonialism here, not anger directed at someone who is killing you. When somebody in an imperialized/colonized country looks at the west and says “fuck em” or whatever, that’s fundamentally not the same characteristics as somebody who grew up in an imperial culture that promotes selective dehumanization of life looking at itself and saying “fuck em”. But westerners will talk as if they’re living the same life by association and sympathy as the empire’s victims.
Does that make any sense or am I seeming off in la la land? Solidarity is born from actions, not words alone. When a western “left” group goes to some ties-building event at another country, or brings them aid, that’s at least something in action as solidarity. When a westerner on the internet goes “yeah I hate them too” about the west, it’s vacuous. It’s gonna be pretty easy for a westerner to say hateful and murderous things compared to those who were raised in a more loving, communal culture. We get socialized, via the shoddy justifications for imperial aggression, that as long as a group is labeled the enemy, it’s all on the table. That’s something westerners have got to unlearn and it’s frustrating that trying to get that across gets interpreted as wanting to coddle war criminals.
I’m personally not at all interested in the success of a movement that is willing to go against everything it’s supposed to be about just to extend the olive branch to some Graham Platner type. If you’re willing to throw the world’s poorest under the bus just so that first worlders can have free healthcare and feel nice-fuzzy about having “rehabilitated” a child killer, then what’s even the point of calling yourself an anti-imperialist or Communist? At that point, just call yourself a liberal or a socdem.
Good, I’m not either. What makes you think I am? Seriously, what exactly?
Also, institutions are made up of people. They can’t exist without personnel that enable them to be, they have to be upheld by someone. You can’t have settler colonialism without settlers choosing to participate, you can’t have imperialism without people choosing to uphold it. Criticism of institutions is also criticism of people, they don’t pop out of nowhere and aren’t allowed to continue existing because of some invisible hand.
So what exactly are you trying to promote as point of view here? In contrast to what? As a contrast to “individuals aren’t responsible for anything”? Cause nobody said that. As scientists of dialectical materialism, however, it is important to acknowledge the heavy ways in what material conditions influence people. If you refuse to acknowledge that and instead just insist on moralizing all day, what you get is a church, not a vanguard. You can enjoy the ivory tower feeling of being part of a church if you want. There are plenty to join and many that offer a pre-made feeling of superiority, so long as you adhere to their tenets. But few have any relationship to political power and the ones that do are heavily pragmatic, not just preaching.
I’m glad to hear it made such an impact on you. It really is a stunning thing to me, the transformative power coming from a communist vanguard. It makes me wonder actually if there are resources out there on how China went about reeducating people in methodology. I would imagine there is some kind of dialectical process going on in it.
And I agree 100% on how you put it: time and resources will always put constraints on that kind of thing. I have no illusions of being able to redeem everybody (nor do I think it’s the most pressing priority), but the fact that it’s possible at all to reeducate someone to that extent shows how far rehabilitation can go when used effectively.
Seeing some of the comments made here, I want to add a point about strategy vs. sympathy. Considered doing it as its own thread, but eh.
I’ll try to show what I mean with an example. In another comment in this thread, there’s a story I brought up about the “last emperor of China” and how the CPC reeducated him: https://bsky.app/profile/poppyhaze.bsky.social/post/3lea2lmvmg22j
Let me highlight some things from that story. This is a bluesky thread’s description of it, so I don’t know if the representation is exactly accurate, but it’s for example sake anyway:
Puyi was surprised when the Communists, despite putting him in a reeducation camp, treated him quite well. However, the former emperor couldn’t even brush his own teeth at first, and the other inmates ruthlessly mocked the pathetic creature
So what’s being implied here? He was treated well, presumably in the sense of getting needs met rather than, like, being tortured or neglected or something. However, the other inmates were not nice about his inability to do basic things.
They brought him to the former headquarters of Unit 731 in Pinfang, the Japanese biological and chemical warfare directorate. There he was shown how they experimented on Chinese civilians and then developed diseases and toxins to drop on them.
Then they brought one of his former concubines, who had escaped and since remarried. She denounced him as a rapist who assaulted her to satisfy his own cruel urges and talked about how she was glad to finally have a real family who loves her.
They made him confront what he had done in detail. In his case, I guess he had a conscience, so he was able to be moved by this. But notably, again, not being nice about it. Not sugarcoating, not downplaying or sympathizing on what he did.
Puyi, who had previously deflected all blame for everything, finally came to realize the gravity of what he had done as “Emperor”. In his despair, he became suicidal, but Jin Yuan comforted him, telling him he should write his memoirs/confession. Puyi gradually came to accept communism.
When he showed remorse, he received some comforting and redirection toward rehabilitation.
After 10 years, Puyi accepted the blame for what he had done, and revealed some hidden Imperial jewelry to be returned to the Chinese government. Pleased with his remolding, Mao Zedong provided a general amnesty for all reformed prisoners, and returned a sentimental item, his gold watch.
When he accepted responsibility for his actions and worked to make amends, he received a gesture of goodwill in return.
At no point in this story is there an implication of the CPC bending over backwards to be “nice” to a former emperor. In fact, part of the point was (as the story goes) proving the capability of the CPC/communism:
When the People’s Republic won the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese communists negotiated Puyi’s expatriation back to China. There was some expectation he’d be tried and shot, but Mao and Zhou Enlai had a better idea. They wanted to reform him to prove communism won fair and square.
But they still did it. And it worked. The strategy of it was successful. Consider another example. Iran could make official statements saying that the entirety of the US is shit, that its people are all trash, and should all go to hell. As could many other targets of imperialism. And many here would probably agree they are fully justified in saying such things.
However, strategically, it’s more helpful to their own defense and sovereignty if the regular people of empire don’t buy the lies about them and instead see them as regular, decent people who are trying to defend themselves. If it didn’t matter at all, the empire would not try so hard to create narratives justifying its wars.
This is not the same as Iran sympathizing with the regular living in the imperial core. It’s definitely not the same as Iran sympathizing with members of the US military who are attacking them.
The subject of “enforcers of the empire” can be a very loaded one for very understandable reasons. Just please try to distinguish between strategic talk and sympathy. Between tactics on being persuasive and validating poor behavior. Between delving into the science of how things got to be the way they are and wanting to excuse. We have to be able to keep the two distinct if we are to navigate the contradictions.
FWIW, the OP emphasized it as directed at the western left (not at the whole world):
The western left’s demonization of the class unconscious proletariat is a symptom of idealism that seems sadly acceptable in leftist social media spaces.
Personally, I just try to keep my mouth shut when it comes to peoples who are not in the imperial core. Their conditions are different and there’s a decent chance I’ll slip into some kind of patronizing tone if I do because of western superiority socializing.
Those of us in the west have much to learn from liberation efforts elsewhere.
But it’s specifically a sticking point for you that Communists aren’t saying “thank for your service” to a glorified contract killer.
Huh? At what point does OP say we need to thank and glorify them?
Here are some important snippets from the post:
That is not to say they are absolved of their crimes. It means many of them could be redeemable.
Again this is not a call to absolve the complicit but instead a call to remind us that we have all been complicit in some way and we are the proletariat not above them.
We must be willing to accept those who admit the faults of their past who are willing to fight for a better future. Anyone refusing to forgive comrades who admit to a flawed past is being dishonest about their own flaws.
I can imagine it can come off a bit tone deaf to be focused on a thing like that while we’re in the midst of another aggressive US military operation, but then… when are we not? The western empire doesn’t really take a break in its aggression, it’s just not always super overt about it. When is it supposed to be brought up that those of us in the west have to contend with the realities of living in the same country as millions of troops and the like?
If someone complained about Communists “demonising cops/ICE” they’d rightly get made fun of as a lib who is indifferent to the nature of these positions.
To make another type of comparison: could you imagine if the USSR during the Cold War has a chance to gain something from a would-be defector (as is sometimes the case during those kind of conflicts) and they are like, “Nah, they are part of the US apparatus which is evil, so just ignore it.” That would be strategically backwards. Typically, you still need to keep a person like that at arm’s length and take care that they aren’t faking interest in helping your cause or trying to sabotage from within (which is a documented strategy in those situations), but someone who was working for the enemy who is now using their knowledge and skillset on your behalf is a double loss for the enemy. Rejecting it outright has the potential to not only lose the opportunity to gain help but to drive them back into continuing to work for the enemy.
Furthermore, criticism of these institutions is just that - it’s about the institutions primarily. That’s why someone could go, “Well I know X cop and they don’t seem so bad” and it’s like, well yeah, it’s possible they aren’t. The system is the primary issue and it transforms individuals into monsters, but it doesn’t transform them all equally and enforce it identically in every case. Some people who were cops during the 2020 protests in the US started quitting in response to it. I’ve heard of people in ICE quitting as well. This doesn’t absolve them of any wrongdoing they may have been involved in while they were in the role. It’s a point about change and the ability to transform. It’s either that or mass imprisonment or murder of everyone who was at some point a problem and the actual successful communist organizations in history have explicitly shown that you don’t always need to do this, even when dealing with people who took part in egregious wrongdoing. So why are some people in the west so stuck on refusing to learn from them and only willing to listen to the dimension of war and combat that the empire promotes?
Meanwhile, I don’t even see a militant left in the west to back up this attitude. I don’t see citizen tribunals. I don’t see consequences being brought down on documented offenders. Just a lot of posturing about what would hypothetically be done if we were the ones holding the guns.
The crux of it is: Is the goal to gain political power or to appear righteous? You can do both, but if you only do the 2nd one, you’re setting up to be a martyr, not a revolutionary.
Two main thoughts come to mind for me:
I think of the story of the “last emperor of China” who the CPC put to the challenge of reeducating (and succeeded): https://bsky.app/profile/poppyhaze.bsky.social/post/3lea2lmvmg22j
It demonstrates just how far you can go in changing a person sometimes. That is, when you have the power to do so and I think that is the main obstacle, as you touch on when you say “we have been unable to succeed against the overwhelming power of the imperialist bourgeoisie.”
It brings me to another, related (partly self-crit) of western thought, which is that of speaking as if we have power we don’t. So like, yes, the western imperial institutions have a lot of power and have had for a long time. But your average everyday liberal will tend to be at most possessing some minor influence over one minor organization or another. The majority of the power is concentrated in the hands of a minority of the population.
When one of us says some shit, it can influence some people, but it’s not the enacting of a broad policy or something. Same with when some random liberal mouths off. However, the type of thinking that goes with colonialism and imperialism instills in westerners a sense of power even when they materially have little (as we see with the bizarre behavior of a declining EU at times). Like a “believing your own lies” type of thing. This idea that the western is actually superior somehow and this means westerners just kinda wake up with smarter and brighter brains than the rest of the world, and this enables them to impact the world through that superiority alone. Instead of the reality: the guns, brutality, and mass murder campaigns that have fueled the actual power, which is, again, policy directed and power concentrated among the few, not the many, no matter how smug some of the many sound at times.
Unique material conditions are what lead each of us to class consciousness not some sort of moral/intellectual/educational supremacy.
I agree that moral superiority is not what got us there. We aren’t imbued with some kind of special trait that makes us better than others and that’s why we got where we did. However, I’d also caution against it sounding too close to a mechanical materialist view, that we didn’t have agency in the decisions but were led only by our material conditions. I don’t believe that’s what you intend to say. I just want to make the point out of caution for readers. Our choices do matter at some stage of it, but I would say, the more collectivist rather than faulty individualist view would be that many of our choices are more enmeshed in the choices of others than is sometimes comfortable to acknowledge (but we cannot possibly figure out how to enact change if we don’t recognize it). That we are not standing at the shore, looking out upon the sea, and deciding what the ocean is like. We are constantly in the ocean, the waves are real and immediate, and yes, we can swim and push and pull, but it is delusional for us not to acknowledge the heaviness of that.
Even cynical marketing campaigns understand this on some level. Word of mouth recommendation is one of the most powerful forms of sales. And notably, it is people speaking to each other and influencing one another, not people lining up at a booth for a marketing team to try to convince each of them individually, one at a time. Social ties are powerful and social fragmentation, both incidental as a result of capitalist development and purposeful as a tool of control, has reduced people’s effectiveness to rally together for getting needs collectively met.
Beliefs of moral superiority, intellectual superiority, hell superiority of preference for mundane things, can all exacerbate fragmentation and contribute to enforcing class/caste divides. We have to figure out how to transform society, not just analyze it as it is right now. That’s what fills me with awe about what China demonstrated in the story I mentioned. The transformative power that they had and continue to demonstrate in so many ways in the decades since.
(This went on a lot more than I thought it would when I said “two main thoughts” lol. It’s probably a bit more than two…)
I think I know what you mean (but correct me if I’m off on some other train of thought). There is a difference between the venting of targets of imperialism vs. people who live in the imperial core taking the dehumanization worldview they learned growing up and pointing it inward rather than outward as if this is fixing things, when part of what’s important is the need to unlearn that worldview.
If you insist. But I won’t like it. Humph!
(Silliness aside, I appreciate your persistent weekly hope message.)
Missed opportunity to do a second post and title it “Everything Wrong with the US Navy”. :P
An attempt at a more dialectical (and somewhat cheeky) take on the saying “it is what it is”:
It is what it is, until what it is contradicts what it is to a qualitative degree, creating the conditions for what it is to become what it isn’t.
It’s really hard to think of revolutionary movements that did not have a lot of help from people who once worked for the enemy. Maybe Cuba?
I can’t help but wonder if some speak in a defeated way about the potential of western marxism in part because of the kind of dismal evaluation of the military combined with this kind of view. If the belief, for example, is that US military, active and veteran, are by and large voluntary and enthusiastic war criminals, then the prospects for revolution are going up against all of that, rather than recruiting help from “defectors” (because “how could a revolution trust war criminals to help with a liberation movement”).
The general answer to this appears to be something like, “Recruit from the most oppressed groups”, which sounds good on paper, but it still doesn’t directly address how you go about dealing with how many have military experience and would be treated as off-limits for assistance because of their tainted association, and how many of those you could end up fighting instead of finding ways to get them to, at the very least, consider it not worth the risk.
Then all someone would need to do is hack / get access to the top model and overthrow the whole system. Pretty brittle. The only way it could control all of that remotely is if it’s exposed to networks and then it’s vulnerable to ways to hack it in one way or another.
And what maintains the maintenance robots? More maintenance robots?
Trickery doesn’t override material conditions. It factors into how people act in the world for sure (I believe the scientific socialist term would be the “superstructure”), but it doesn’t override it entirely. Giving some former enforcers bullshit jobs is not going to employ all of them or fool them easily.
While everyone in society quietly goes along with it? This is a lot happening with no reaction, no resultant upheaval, etc.
I don’t mean to make LLMs sound incapable or downplay agentic AI. But “some improvements at coding” is not exponential scaling of generalized “intelligence” in any and every context of society. In my experience with LLMs, they are similar to humans as aptitude goes in that specialists will tend to outperform general models in specialized tasks (when accounting for similar infrastructure and specialized datasetting). I’ve seen nothing to suggest a generalized supercomputer style model making sense in practice.
Well it’s a lot of the point I’m making here, is that it isn’t realistic and snake oil salespeople are selling a lot of overblown nonsense to make money. Already, many companies are realizing that the tech isn’t doing much for them. Not because the tech is shit as a whole, but because it isn’t actually useful in a lot of contexts, unless you build it for that specialized context from the ground up. Where I see concrete specialization happening more so is in stories about China’s developments in AI and robotics, and applied uses for it. They are not banking so much on an LLM company and a narrative of mythical AGI; they appear to be casting a much wider net on what falls under the AI umbrella and how it can be used.
While the US is daydreaming about “then draw the rest of the fucking owl” style jumps of quantitative to qualitative without considering how that gap is actually bridged in the science of it, China is building the future in real-time. I just don’t see how it’s even close. All the US knows how to do these days is build weapons (edit: and “treats” I guess). China’s high speed trains alone make the US look like it’s behind by a whole era. Even if by magic, the US produced an AI that could make the perfect recommendations for what to do in every sector of society tomorrow, the capitalists wouldn’t actually listen to it because it wouldn’t be profitable; in fact, they’d probably say it sounds like a communist. And if they forced it to give capitalist recommendations, it’d just tell them to make the same kind of self-defeating decisions that the capitalists in charge are already making.
P.S. If this sounds annoyed at all, it is probably because thinking about the normalized sociopathy that is US capitalist “society” brings out the ranting energy in me. I don’t mean to sound that way at you for being the messenger of a point of view.