Paul Cantrell
I strongly object (with peace to @KimPerales!) to that first sentence.
This is self-destruction. This is NOT how the US “ensures the US maintains a leading role in the AI race.” Even if you are all roses and rainbows about AI, this isn’t how any kind of leadership or innovation works.
This — every part of this — is destroying the very things that put the US in this tech leadership position in the first place.
Paul Cantrell
This piece from @mmasnick that does a magnificent job of explaining this. The longstanding US strength in technology and innovation is coming to a rapid and catastrophic end right before our eyes. It’s self-inflected, it’s immoral, it’s horrifying, it’s stupid, and it’s utterly preventable.
2/2
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/17/fascism-for-first-time-founders/
Jenniferplusplus
@inthehands @KimPerales that very much depends on what the purpose of AI is. If it's to codify, reproduce, and shape what things are knowable and expressable, and to put that power in the hands of specific people, then this seems right in line with that.
Paul Cantrell
@jenniferplusplus @KimPerales
I mean, yeah, sure, if “leadership in AI” means “leadership in techno-authoritarianism,” then it’s spot on.
Jenniferplusplus
@inthehands honestly, I struggle to find any other uses for the things we're calling AI.
People are very quick to defend the component elements of the technology, for some reason. But as it exists in the real human world with real social and political dynamics, that's what AI does.
Paul Cantrell
@jenniferplusplus
Under current conditions, I generally agree. We differ slightly: I don’t try to argue that positive uses can’t possibly exist. That’s an argument that’s too easy to endlessly poke at, and I don’t strictly believe it either. Does •some• positive use exist? Sure. Maybe. Whatever. The negative uses and the costs, especially under current conditions, so •vastly• outweigh the positives — by orders of magnitude! — that the positives are no real defense.
Fossil fuels in the 1920s might be a comparison. Fossil fuels if we had widespread public clarity about climate change and lead poisoning even at the time.
Люблю хлеб
@inthehands @mmasnick “Here’s what the “just let tech bros run everything” crowd fundamentally misunderstands about how innovation actually works: It requires exactly the kind of chaotic, unpredictable, open ecosystem that authoritarianism systematically destroys.”
Rudolf Rocker’s “Nationalism and Culture” is a fantastic deep dive into this very topic. It definitely was a perspective changing book.
Paul Cantrell
@KimPerales
Understood! What I meant by “peace to Kim” was that this is not a criticism of you, but of the language wherever it might come from.
Kim Perales
@inthehands
I was simply summarizing the article.
I disagree with the Tech leaders' authoritarian & dystopian AI plan for world domination.
Jenniferplusplus
@inthehands I'm also not claiming that there are no positive uses, except in the narrow case of the actual products that come to mind when we talk about AI. Large language models definitely have some positive uses. Likely many uses that would more than justify their creation, if it were not so extractive and resource intensive, which is very possible. ChatGPT, the privately controlled plausible fiction generator, does not.
Paul Cantrell
In the fable of the goose that lays the golden eggs, the greedy people kill the goose because they want all the gold at once.
The thing that really gets me about •this• moment is that the oligarchs aren’t even doing that. They’re killing the magical goose because they don’t like what color it is, and besides they think it has an uppity attitude.
Yes, there’s the fantasy stories about infinite AI prosperity, but that’s BS and they know it. Once the goose is dead and it turns out there’s no gold inside, once US economic and tech success is just torn scraps and memories, these people are 100% going to say “well at least that damn goose is dead.”
3/2
Marsh Gardiner 💡🐝🔧
@inthehands … and they already claimed an an unfair share, so why not stop the game while they have a high score?
Finite vs infinite thinking strikes again.
Paul Cantrell
Not at all! Just doing quick summaries of news articles, that’s all.
Becca 🌳🚀🛀
@inthehands
Is
@KimPerales a bot? Reading through the timeline it feels like it...
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