Altman continued to meet with the Biden Administration, which had enacted a policy requiring White House approval for the export of sensitive technology. Multiple Administration officials emerged from these meetings nervous about Altman’s ambitions in the Middle East. He often made grandiose claims, according to those officials, including calling A.I. “the new electricity.” In 2018, he said that OpenAI was planning to buy a fully functioning quantum computer from a company called Rigetti Computing. This was news even to other OpenAI executives in the room. Rigetti was not yet close to being able to sell a usable quantum computer. In a meeting, Altman claimed that by 2026 an extensive network of nuclear-fusion reactors across the United States would power the A.I. boom. The senior Administration official said, “We were, like, ‘Well, that’s, you know, news, if they made nuclear fusion work.’ ” The Biden Administration ultimately withheld approval. “We’re not going to be building advanced chips in the U.A.E.,” a leader at the Department of Commerce told Altman. Four days before Trump’s Inauguration, the Wall Street Journal reported, Tahnoon paid half a billion dollars to the Trump family in exchange for a stake in its cryptocurrency company. The following day, Altman held a twenty-five-minute call with Trump, during which they discussed announcing a version of a ChipCo, timed so that Trump could take credit for it. On Trump’s second day in office, Altman stood in the Roosevelt Room and announced Stargate, a five-hundred-billion-dollar joint venture that aims to build a vast network of A.I. infrastructure across the U.S

I'm sorry but in any functioning country--let alone a functioning democracy!--these two paragraphs would be enough to not only remove the President but put him in jail for life

I mean, neither the US nor Russia could likely annex us anyway but more military spending--is a signal to allies that we can be relied to help them; it creates a more credible threat against small-scale incursions; it makes threats against us carry less weight in, say, trade negotiations...

I think there are good reasons for Canada to increase it's military spending. I think the 5% target is unjustifiable and deeply harmful

I am not opposed to increased military spending, or a big set of one time investments. But I think the 5% target is unhinged, unnecessary, dangerous and unethical

If we kept it that level, then part of my answer is here. But yes, I think the other answer is that it flows through into profits and jobs involved in the stockpiling of functionally unproductive war machines

Again, this is hard to grasp. It's not 1.5 the amount the government collects from the oil and gas industry. It's 1.5 times the entire net production of the entire oil and gas industry.

My numbers may have been slightly off. This industry group page suggests that oil and gas represent 3.7% of Canada's annual GDP. So we are actually planning to spend *1.5 times the GDP of our oil and gas industry on the military.*

In a pure monetary sense, much of the 5% of GDP diverted to defence will not actually be diverted. But that ignores the relevance of the institutional context of spending. There is a difference between taking your kids to a hockey game and taking your kids to the Tattoo. They center different values

But it's no laughing matter. The 5% of GDP we're planning to spend on the military does not need to be spent on guns and bombs. Much will go to re-coded civilian spending: health care (for and by service members), education (by and for service members), entertainment (by and for service members)

The Tattoo is one of Halifax's premier annual events, with thousands attending. It's basically a cabaret of members of Canadian and international armed forces. When increases in military spending has come up, I've sometimes laughed it off: "we'll probably have three Tattoos now"

The threat of this level of military spending is not just that it diverts money from other goods--less money for health care and education and, as taxes rise, for smartphones and cars, too--it's that it will place spending that was previously public or private into military spending

One way to grasp the eye-wateringly large amounts the Carney government is planning to spend on defence: it's equivalent to the entire annual value of Canadian oil and gas production. Okay, we don't want to be bullied. But we don't want to become a society organized around the military, either

Tonight in the ai reading group i was reminded of something that happened in 2006 after I dropped out of college, when I was living in a run-down old house next to jb alberto's in rogers park with a bunch of dudes.

it was, as you can imagine, not clean.

it's perfect

May the enemies of freedom everywhere waive white flags for eternity

I know this is more about Elon being a white supremacist than about Helen Andrews being one, but I think it's a bit of a Tom Holland Umbrella situation that whenever anyone mentions Andrews, they have to post this clip laying out just how deeply immoral a person she is

Okay, philosophy. This our moment: what are the most ridiculous philosophical positions that you think you could get seven philosophers to sign on for?

*Oh* I get it now, the OP finally came up in my feed. So this discourse was all sparked by never-Trump Republicans inciting Democrats to blame the left for the person that Republicans got elected
bsky.app/profile/theb...

Like, my feed is full of posts like this one that seem at first be full of spleen that campus Gaza protestors *did not continue their protests through 2 years of repression* but (apparently?) are actually mad that they were protesting at all?

Like the whole set of responses to my interventions in this thread (in fact, the whole thread) made clear to me that debates about Gaza protests are a proxy for a much wider set of positions over US politics to which I am not really a party

And somehow in all this whether you like brunch or have ever had brunch is apparently relevant?

As a Canadian I'm a bit befuddled by the tenor of debates about the US protests 2023-26. Some seem to think the campus Gaza protests helped Trump get elected and so...should not have happened? Others are mad that people protesting against Trump did not protest about Gaza? Not sure I get it

"Luddites" is a good term for those who oppose AI because the Luddites weren't against *all* technology, just forms of technology that they knew would pay workers less and turn out a shittier product

I also feel like this erases the thousands of people who have been beaten up, put their body on the line and in some cases actually been murdered trying to slow down the deportation machine. Daily protests in many cases! Just not on university campuses, so not of much interest to the NYT etc

the reaper of misery he bids thee welcome is shown Alt: The Mouth of Sauron says "the reaper of misery he bids thee welcome"

LinkedIn is this guy.

A lot of my sense of political life has been founded on opposition to Western military adventures in the Middle East. That's three decades or so of hating this, maybe not much but not nothing either. Even relative to all that - this latest war in Iran may just be the worst. Certainly the stupidest.

You might be right but it's an important reference point that the police, universities, various kinds of public authorities beat down those protests for two years and then the Trump administration literally started deporting and disappearing people who had been involved

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

with the slow, but sure unraveliling of the American century, dare we think about the unravelling of the transnational intellectual property regime as we've known it, which has historically benefitted US and Germany most.

all balls are in the air.

Iran didn’t close the SOH before, because if they did that they would have started the war and the entire international order would have been against them