Very interesting Nick. I really do find it very interesting to follow your journey with AI. I have a knee-jerk horror to it that limits my ability to write intelligently on the subject. Enjoy seeing what your evolution looks like starting from a place of greater techno-optimism.
More techno-pragmatism. Thanks for checking out the piece. I collided with AI in my classroom last February and have been playing catch up every since.
Reading outloud those Zarakol quotes, they make Tammerlane and Theodossius et al seem more tinkerers and artists and actors in a play than say: the Tammerlane in Calvino's Invisible Cities...The Davids' Dawn of Everything book succeeds also at giving us a reboot, I read 20 pages of that book for the purpose. Before his ongoing hysterics Morris Berman was on the verge of experiencing governance in a Give unto Caesar kind of way, his approx'ly last sane words were " despise your own devotions' . Sounds/feels true that the most what we would have called sovereign commune now will wear their hybrid incomes with stoic acceptance, myself could walk into an Amish community and likely win a spot as a hanger on, but it would be only a game because in my scheme of affections they should want me to bring another aggravated soul , and in this stageplay I am sketching, two goyim in this fashion would be asking for trouble. I mean in the 20th cent we would have ised the word svrgnty, and that seems metaphysical and a rigid word for a brittle combative stance now. Dumb down our Devotions, Dears?
This is a minor quibble, but regarding “translation,” professional services firms have been using a version of AI (CAT tools: computer-assisted translation) for nigh on twenty years now. The “AI revolution” I think has been happening more slowly and consistently than most people think, and this discourse around AI is positing a sharp demarcation that I don’t think really exists.
I was worried that somebody would notice that! Yeah, I'm not great on the distinctions between LLMs, AI, text-predict, neural machine translation, etc. I'm using "AI" as kind of a catch-all for these models that exhibit plasticity. The language translation functions seem to be doing that. The Chats do as well. And I agree: the AI revolution has been happening longer than we realize. I think people assumed that text predict was more of a controlled input and didn't realize the power inherent in it.
Oh I think your larger gist is correct! It’s just that the case with so many “invasive” technologies is that — from a consumer/user standpoint — they’ve already arrived. How many years have we been subjected to talking to proto-AI customer service bots? And that’s one reason I’m super-bearish on AI. If it was going to make our lives hella more convenient, the dumb-AI could have actually done so much for us already.
I found the theories of "The perplexing Varoufakis" to be provocative. As an amateur historian, I think the transition from feudalism to capitalism was very complex and took a very long time. It was also uneven, which is why it would have been confounding to Marx that the first revolution using marxist "talking points" was in relatively backwards Russia instead of Germany.
AI is probably inevitable as a productivity enhancement, but I think increased regulation of the tech companies and increased corporate taxes is also inevitable. I think there will be a reaction against peak profit margin capitalism somewhere between the New Deal and Progressivism.
Thanks so much David. It's really nice to chat with you in the response to them! Yeah, I think for sure there will be much back-and-forth as history advances. I am intrigued by Varoufakis' basic analysis: capitalism exists as a parasite/supplement to feudalism but then becomes its own economic entity; cloud capital can evolve in a similar dynamic towards capitalism. Maybe this is too simple and overstates cloud capital? But it feels intuitively right to me.
Great piece. It is an important move to contextualize the rise of AI inside the large flows of capitalism. I have been in reevaluation mode regarding AI these days. Here is a recent piece that summarizes some of my more practical insights. I feel like they are congruent to some extent with yours, Sam: https://open.substack.com/pub/nickpotkalitsky/p/the-art-of-imperfection-why-human?r=2l25hp&utm_medium=ios
Very interesting Nick. I really do find it very interesting to follow your journey with AI. I have a knee-jerk horror to it that limits my ability to write intelligently on the subject. Enjoy seeing what your evolution looks like starting from a place of greater techno-optimism.
More techno-pragmatism. Thanks for checking out the piece. I collided with AI in my classroom last February and have been playing catch up every since.
Reading outloud those Zarakol quotes, they make Tammerlane and Theodossius et al seem more tinkerers and artists and actors in a play than say: the Tammerlane in Calvino's Invisible Cities...The Davids' Dawn of Everything book succeeds also at giving us a reboot, I read 20 pages of that book for the purpose. Before his ongoing hysterics Morris Berman was on the verge of experiencing governance in a Give unto Caesar kind of way, his approx'ly last sane words were " despise your own devotions' . Sounds/feels true that the most what we would have called sovereign commune now will wear their hybrid incomes with stoic acceptance, myself could walk into an Amish community and likely win a spot as a hanger on, but it would be only a game because in my scheme of affections they should want me to bring another aggravated soul , and in this stageplay I am sketching, two goyim in this fashion would be asking for trouble. I mean in the 20th cent we would have ised the word svrgnty, and that seems metaphysical and a rigid word for a brittle combative stance now. Dumb down our Devotions, Dears?
God you've read a lot. Impressed you made it through twenty pages of The Dawn of Everything!
This is a minor quibble, but regarding “translation,” professional services firms have been using a version of AI (CAT tools: computer-assisted translation) for nigh on twenty years now. The “AI revolution” I think has been happening more slowly and consistently than most people think, and this discourse around AI is positing a sharp demarcation that I don’t think really exists.
I was worried that somebody would notice that! Yeah, I'm not great on the distinctions between LLMs, AI, text-predict, neural machine translation, etc. I'm using "AI" as kind of a catch-all for these models that exhibit plasticity. The language translation functions seem to be doing that. The Chats do as well. And I agree: the AI revolution has been happening longer than we realize. I think people assumed that text predict was more of a controlled input and didn't realize the power inherent in it.
Oh I think your larger gist is correct! It’s just that the case with so many “invasive” technologies is that — from a consumer/user standpoint — they’ve already arrived. How many years have we been subjected to talking to proto-AI customer service bots? And that’s one reason I’m super-bearish on AI. If it was going to make our lives hella more convenient, the dumb-AI could have actually done so much for us already.
I love these Curations.
I found the theories of "The perplexing Varoufakis" to be provocative. As an amateur historian, I think the transition from feudalism to capitalism was very complex and took a very long time. It was also uneven, which is why it would have been confounding to Marx that the first revolution using marxist "talking points" was in relatively backwards Russia instead of Germany.
AI is probably inevitable as a productivity enhancement, but I think increased regulation of the tech companies and increased corporate taxes is also inevitable. I think there will be a reaction against peak profit margin capitalism somewhere between the New Deal and Progressivism.
Thanks so much David. It's really nice to chat with you in the response to them! Yeah, I think for sure there will be much back-and-forth as history advances. I am intrigued by Varoufakis' basic analysis: capitalism exists as a parasite/supplement to feudalism but then becomes its own economic entity; cloud capital can evolve in a similar dynamic towards capitalism. Maybe this is too simple and overstates cloud capital? But it feels intuitively right to me.
https://iweothers.substack.com/p/the-return-of-the-future-to-its-past
https://iweothers.substack.com/p/the-necropolises-of-ai