I think this is where government steps in for each country, go on the path of exploration that has no profit per se in it like space exploration, human body understanding. I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects.
Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a public utility and the profits of automation goes to fund infrastructure or grand projects via government.
We do not need to do menial work anymore and AI is helping us with it, what we can do exploratory work, and we need a visionary to get this rolling.
"I am drawing parallel to 1930s or 40s where great depression was smoothen because America embarked on to take many huge infrastructure projects."
The thing that ended the Great Depression was WWII and most those government projects weren't civilian infrastructure. In fact, during the time we were building civilian infrastructure, the Depression was continuing and deepening. Not saying we shouldn't have done those projects, but they didn't end the Depression.
There is absolutely zero will in the United States to invest money in unprofitable exploration or scientific research. There used to be such will generations ago, but today's wannabee-autocrats couldn't care less. Look at how they gleefully cut scientific research funding, undermine academic sovereignty, and strip-mine the public sector performing that work in favor of private enterprises. When the shit hits the fan and we're all broke because the corpos laid everybody off for Devin, Claude, and Clippy, there won't be much left besides surrogacy and plasma donation.
Patronage programs for people with advanced degrees is a woefully inadequate solution to the current economic pressures. Large segments of the first-world working and middle classes hollowed out by globalization had already turned against it before AI even came on to the scene. People are generally hostile to patronage directed towards people above them on the ladder.
Look into how much of that research money actually goes to research and how much goes to administration. And since that administration has a reputation for being to the left of Mao, perhaps then you can understand the unwillingness to put money there. It isn't that people don't want to invest in research, they have lost faith that the money allocated will actually get to the researchers.
> I think this is where government steps in for each country
People quite often lose the plot that "government" is "collective will". Governments will only do this if their constituents want them to. If the constituents would rather spend those recourses on free VR for every household and gatorade from drinking fountains, then that's all we're getting.
Thank you Tim Cook, as I am writing this on an iPhone.
Is this a golden opportunity to take on the software side of Apple, native apps like photos and messages, notes app? So much good data we give to Apple apps sit their idling, there is a play here to turn them into an independent playable artifacts and shared digital human network company. My friend emma has her snack Game on! I would like to get a snack list derived from her snack data. Yes, texting works but there is no programmatic way of accessing each other’s data. I believe this data needs be freed from Apple.
Apple’s privacy approach is stellar, that quest though is a prison where our data goes and does a slow death.
I am working on making grocery online shopping less overwhelming and more like a rolling list, you keep adding items as you see them (missing) in your household and it silently records it at the backend. When you are ready to pick up order, you push to qfc cart via api (a button) and boom your grocery shopping is done. No need of making lists and then one by one putting them on the cart. It works with any QFC or Kroger store because to my disbelieve they actually have an open sku and cart api. Grateful to Kroger to be tech forward. Free to use , here is the link https://www.ddisco.com/sonic/customer My wife is hooked on it as she had to take time in the week to sit down ask me what to order and then build the cart. Now it’s like just typing in what you need.
Next I am making the version for folks who do not make a list and just go with past orders , for them I am automating so the cart is made based on past orders like milk usually is ordered every 2 weeks.
Happy New Year HN! Grateful for the insights I get every morning from fellow humans through the comments.
This year I sold my company, for a while I thought I will die with it. This year has been brutal in some ways, tackling lots of daemons and getting through them.
Wishing everyone a great new year celebrations with friends and family.
Grateful for Meta to release models and give the GPU access for free, it has been great for experimenting without the thinking overhead of paying too much for inference. Thank you Zuck.
Lastly, OpenAI and Anthropic or any other frontier labs needs to be nationalized because they become a public utility and the profits of automation goes to fund infrastructure or grand projects via government.
We do not need to do menial work anymore and AI is helping us with it, what we can do exploratory work, and we need a visionary to get this rolling.
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