Thanks for the response. I believe many forms of AI will be huge industries (of course, they already are, but they will be bigger in the coming decades):
* consumer products
* AI as a service, like more advanced search engines
* AI for businesses, like data analysis
Of these, my favorite is AI as a service, because for a lot of reasons I believe that will be first kind of AI to be very disruptive (primarily, if you do it as a service you will have access to more computational power, and thus could do more sophisticated AI).
I am actually somewhat interested in finance, so a hedge fund would be great if it somehow involved AI. However, I believe that fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, so if the hedge fund is part of a bank, I would probably not be interested (and they probably wouldn't hire me, since I've written articles in public about this).
I live in the midwest now, but I'd be willing to live pretty much anywhere in the developed world.
It goes without saying, but the field of "AI" is kinda massive, with lots and lots of subfields (or, disciplines that used to be subfields but at this point are massive enough to be called fields on their own, such as for example NLP and ML). So, much like in any other discipline, you will find yourself specializing in no time.
The reason I asked about hedge funds is that there seems to be a small army of people with doctorates in Physics working for hedge funds (not necessarily part of a bank). They are mostly in NYC and Greenwich, CT. Various forms of AI (NLP - sentiment analysis, ML - statistical modeling, many others that they keep under wraps) are in wide use.
And, of course, you could always get a job at Google Research.
That's a really cynical view, isn't it? Implying that the people, through their democratically elected governments, can't ever improve upon things that have come before.
Government isn't effective, democratic or otherwise. But I'm not a cynic. I have high hopes for humanity, long term. The sooner we get rid of the institutionalized use of force (government) the better.
I don't normally press people for alternatives, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If we were to get rid of "institutionalized use of force", what would we replace it with? Can you give me a single example of a large-scale society without effective government that hasn't devolved into a nightmare scenario?
You wouldn't replace it with anything. You'd need a cultural change where people recognized that stealing is always wrong, even if they call it taxes and declare it legal. Police and courts would be businesses like any other and not funded by force.
As for examples, America was founded in liberty. Unfortunately the nightmare scenario is playing out in real time as the US evolves from the tiny government of two centuries ago into the police state of tomorrow (today?). All libertarian societies I'm aware of eventually give way to the nightmare of the state. So, nope, I can't give you any examples of a libertarian society that lasted indefinitely. But brief liberty is better than none.
The only way I can see liberty playing out in a sustainable way is if the entire planet becomes libertarian so that there are no giant concentrations of force capable of taking it over and turning it back into a state. And I think this will eventually happen since it would continue the slow but steady moral advance of humanity.
Are you really making the claim that we have less liberty today than we did two hundred years ago? Maybe if you're a white male landowner. For everyone else, things have been getting progressively better over the last few hundred years.
Things have gotten better for most people because of moral advances and technological advances. But government has gotten worse and has slowed down progress.
The way I see it, when I read the constitution, it is fairly clear that the government was engineered to be a sort of anti-government. Something put into place to fill the power vacuum to prevent other "real" (defined as pretty much every other government they were familiar with at the time) from moving in and taking control.
Of course, I'm an anarchist, so I might be projecting... I think they also failed miserably though, because they forgot about human nature. Noble attempt, worthy of some praise, but ultimately it failed. Neat parallel to those who say communism failed because it forgot to consider human nature I think ;)
So founded in liberty? Basically just describes the mindset of the designers. What they were going for.
Of course, I'm an anarchist, so I might be projecting..
You're totally projecting. The constitution is pro-liberty and anti-tyranny, but it isn't really anti-government. One example: Patent protection is in the constitution, not exactly an anti-government stance.
>Can you give me a single example of a large-scale society without effective government that hasn't devolved into a nightmare scenario?
Of course not. Any time it has been tried (e.g. Spain, some of those under Lenin), other governments have recognized the danger and responded immediately to destroy the movement before it can take off.
The cynic can only take pleasure in saying "I told you so," but can never take credit for any improvement, which does occasionally happen against all odds.
Warning US-centric Content. If you're not from the US, then you might not know this.
Patents are the only thing that are specifically addressed in the US Constitution besides the form and function of the Federal government. It was and is a pretty big deal.
Debt isn't good or bad in itself. Whether a given debt is bad depends on some factors:
* What is the debt as a fraction of GDP?
* What is the interest rate on the debt?
* What is the growth rate of the economy?
* What was the debt incurred to finance?
If a large public debt finances critical public infrastructure that will promote rapid economic growth and interest rates are reasonably low, the country will be in a situation where the economy is growing faster than the debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio is going down. That's a good situation to be in.
I would wager that just because the next big thing will start out looking at a toy does not equate to everything that looks like a toy will become the next big thing.
Indeed, payments/currency/money seems to be one of the holdout areas yet to experience a major global disruption by the internet. That doesn't mean the "great new thing" necessarily has to be bitcoin, obviously. But it could be. It also could be that computer security theory and practice first has to be improved for it to be feasible so it'd still be some years away.
Perhaps, but it's coming. Paypal set out to revolutionize payments and finance, and it was a bit before its time. Peter, Max, Luke, et al. wanted to be an online currency, but struggled to stay afloat when the government (understandably) back-lashed against them. They were, after all, trying to destroy the government in many ways.
So Paypal changed their vision, and sold out. Oh well. All's well that ends well. And things certainly ended well for them. But online currency is inevitable. It's just going to take a little longer.
Funny. I just disabled my account this week and don't have plans to go back. Facebook never made much of an impact on my life and I've finally decided the loss of privacy is no longer worth staying on.
Edit: Now after having read the post I realize it is sarcastic. So maybe I'm not so different after all.
I found out my blatantly fake account was disabled this week, after more than a year of using it. Oh well, (almost) nothing of value was lost. Wondering if I can make a new one (also fake, of course) with the same email.. probably not I'd guess.
Interesting. I have a fake Facebook account, but I never like or recommend anything using any of the Facebook tools on every website these days. I've bee using the same account for years and all the information is completely inaccurate.
I'm wondering how much longer I can go before I get cut off.
Krugman prefers the dollar, which has a supply that is constantly inflated by the central bank. But if the dollar is so good, why do people have to be forced to use it? (You have to pay your taxes in dollars, and you have to accept payments for debt in the form of dollars.) And how come bitcoin adoption has radically grown even though no one is forced to use it?
