You’re not going to beat the Americans at their own game. It’s a society that does not respect the rule of law, does not believe in true market competition and does not believe in democracy.

If you think I am acting out, consider the following point: recently Meta was found to have directly (in a premeditated manner) promoted scams/frauds that netted them $16B in commission in a single year. We all know that nothing will be done about this even under a hypothetical centre-right US government.

How do we know that? Well was anything done about Microsoft’s anti-competitive behaviour in the 90s?

But for me, the real irony is the polemics about competition and “free market”. In a real free market, MS, Meta, Google would not have hundreds of billions of dollar to burn because competition would drive profit margins to a state of approaching zero. Zuck would not be able to burn $45 B on his weird and disgusting Metaverse Mii autosexuality fetish.

Not a fan of the leadership of China, but I genuinely do believe that one area that we can learn from them is how to deal with oligarchs.

Counter arguement: you need to do your own research/planning/applications and so on. There won’t always be an easy “all inclusive” path. But opportunities are there for those who are looking for them.

That being said, it would massively help to speak at least one other language fluently.

You’re also correct that it’s not easy from a resource perspective. But if people from much poorer countries can make it work, than so can people in the US.

Let’s hope for the best, without dark ages, and who knows, perhaps we have novel tools too.

One example would be: Trans-Siberian Railway (1904)

Took 13 years to build.

Thanks.

Can’t say I agree though. I can’t think of any historical examples where a positive agenda in of itself made a difference.

One example would be industrialization at the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century. One could argue it was far more disruptive of pre-industrial society (railroads, telegraph, radio, mass production) than the information age is now.

Clearly industrialization enabled mass benefits in society, but it took WW1/WW2 and the rise of uncompromising, brutal revolutionary regimes for societies to come to terms with pros and cons of industrial society and find a middle path of sorts (until the next disruption).

Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point in our times. That being said, the current oligarch regime comes off as even more self assured than the beneficiaries of early industrial society (gilded age oligarch in the US, Romanov dynasty in Tsarist russia).

The current batch of oligarchs has the benefit of hindsight and yet they is no end to their hubris with Bezos talking about millions living in space and comically stupid projects like data centres in orbit and The Simpsons-style “block the sun” schemes to address climate change.

Only option is to not use Americans products and services.

America cannot be trusted. At the end of the day the current US administration is a mere symptom, not the root cause.

As another poster mentioned, there is far more similarity between Obama and Trump than most Americans would like to admit.

No disrespect to sane Americans. It is a disaster for global democracy that America has de facto transitioned to a chauvinistic oligarchy.

So yes, we need a positive vision for AI so we can deal with these problems

I am genuinely curious why you think we need a positive vision for AI.

I say this as someone who regularly uses LLMs for work (more as a supplement to web searching) and uses “AI” in other areas as well (low resolution video upscaling). There are also many other very interesting use cases (often specialized) that tend to be less publicized than LLM related stuff.

I still don’t see why we need a positive vision for AI.

From my perspective, “AI” is a tool, it’s not inherently positive or negative. But as things stand right now, the industry is dominated by oligarchs and conmen types (although they of course don’t have a monopoly in this area). But since we don’t really have a way to reign in the oligarchs (i.e. make them take responsibility for their actions), the discussion around positive vision almost seems irrelevant. Let’s say we do have a positive vision for AI (I am not even necessarily opposed to such a vision), but my question would be, so what?

Perhaps we are just talking about different things. :)

P.S. FWIW, I read your replies in this thread.

That’s a fair point. I am just sharing my interpretation.

From the first time watching the movie in 2006 to a recent re-watch, I always got the impression that the eugenics piece was never meant to be taken seriously (or literally). If anything both parties were made to look rather silly in the intro (in their own way). Felt like more of a story setup.

There were definitely many critiques of US corporate culture (I was living in the US around that time after living in Europe and Asia) and the complacency of US society. The TV commercials/shows/ads, the Fox news show, the overboard consumerism, costco university, the Brawndo slogan. It made all of them look bad and stupid.

One could argue that an average guy solving all the worlds problems while the corporate types failed is a damning take on oligarchy.

The director, Mike Judge, didn’t emphasize the more sociopathic and dark elements of oligarchy, but the movie was meant to be a comedy.

Google, Apple, Meta it’s all the same to me. I don’t do fandom for oligarch conglomerates. I am not from North America.

In reality, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse because you want to defend Google’s business practices for some reason. You’re conflating the way Google collects sensitive user information for the purpose of advertising in every single one of its products, including from non-Google apps and webpages with some technicality around verbiage in a privacy policy, which you have not even cited yourself.

All right, all right! It’s all a big conspiracy to protect Alphabet and discredit poor little Tim Apple.

You got me partner. It’s all technicality in their privacy policy!

Some of the people in the society portrayed in the Minority Report movie seemed to be doing fine, but it was clear that a lot of people were also living in rather miserable conditions. Not to mention the brutal security services that reminded me of russia.

It’s been a while since I read the novella, but I vividly remember Spielberg’s adaption having a society that was much more flashy and sanitized. The world in the novella was a nihilistic, proto-cyberpunk world with 50s pulp space scifi motifs.

So have you or have you not read the Apple privacy policy?

Where did I say Apple has a search engine? I said Apple tracks and logs your searches.

At the end of the day it was a comedy. Sometimes subtly is a virtue.

It’s pretty clear that the movie satirizes and critiques the corporate world.

At the very least, he deserves several decades as a junior janitor in the Bhasan Char refugee camp (with full asset seizure) for his contribution to the Rohingya genocide. A similar rehabilitation approach should be applied to multiple other Meta executives as well and the whole board of Meta.

And when I say “asset seizure”, I mean every last cent, with all family members and business partners being forced to sign affidavits agreeing that should any assets be found and there is reason to believe they were involved, they’ll have to partake in the same rehabilitation program as Zuckerberg (including affidavits for their family members and business).

It’s a scalable and efficient approach to justice.

I am just curious, have you ever read Apple’s privacy policy?

What makes you think they don’t log your searches?

Like those scenes in Minority Report. The world in the movie was rather dystopian.

FWIW, from my last reading of their privacy policy, they openly stated that they do share PII with other companies who they consider to be their partners.

They claim that they don’t share PII with third parties “for their marketing purposes”.

That being said, you’re at the mercy of their definition of “partner” and interpretation of “for [the third party’s] marketing purposes”.

I should honestly just re-read their privacy policy (and the same for Google and Meta).

Their service line was growing much faster than hardware, it is a big part of their business. So their business model does depend on data collection.

The last time I read the Apple privacy policy it sounded like they pretty much collect everything and let themselves share this data with whoever they feel like.

There was a lot of calming language, but it didn’t sound convincing to me.

That being said, if you like the Apple ecosystem and UX, it’s a solid option.

I personally believe their statements about privacy are nothing more than PR.

They are an ad company. If you read their privacy policy it’s largely the same as Google or FB but with more calming language that is meaningless.

Their financial reporting explicitly mentions privacy laws as a danger to their business.

Don’t buy their propaganda, they are not better than Meta or Alphabet their attitude towards the public. They just have better PR and more committed fanboys.

They are all trash. Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose iOS over Android, but this should be driven by ecosystem or UX preference, not hope that Apple cares about your privacy (or cares about anything beyond money).

I generally agree with you, except I don’t think we can speculate whether it will be like 2008 the dot-com bubble.

The world economy is different from what it was ~25 years ago. I believe the reliance on index type funds has increased at a drastic rate.

There is also things like the relative concentration of AI-influenced stocks.

Another new piece is America becoming much more corrupt. Americans might not care about this, but it would be naive to think this would not have a caustic effect in the medium term on the real world.

Mind you, I am not necessarily saying I know the correct answer, just pointing out some things to consider.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case, but since we are using YT to start with (I do use Peertube, but it’s a lot smaller), this is a good baseline approach IMO.

Use YT as hosting/player service, not as a discovery/library management service.