This is interesting. I've recently been doing quite a bit of research into what my "future stack" is going to be for backend. MinIO regularly came onto my radar but one heuristic (among many) I use to determine which software is TRULY open source and which is far less likely to remain open source is whether they even provide a link to their Github page and prominently display it on their website. MinIO was triggering my "not really open source" radar for this reason.
I'm still dabbling but have kind of latched onto the idea of using Ceph. To my understanding they were acquired by RedHat, and the project has all the signs of real open source, including the fact that it originated as a doctoral research project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with initial funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Henry Ford's philosophy was that if he paid his workers a higher wage, they would be able to afford the products they were producing, namely his Model T automobiles. This would, in turn, create a larger customer base for his company and help stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending.
I actually think this is a pretty good argument against AI dooming that I don’t here that often.
Sam Altman doesn’t own AI. His investors actually own most of the actual assets.
Eventually there is going to be pressure for open ai to deliver returns to investors. Given that the majority of the US economy is consumer spending, the incentive is going to be for open ai to increase consumer spending in some way.
That’s essentially what happened to Google during the 2000s. I know everyone is negative about social media right now. But one could envision an alternative reality where Google explicitly controls and sensors all information, took over roadways with their driving cars, completely merged with the government, etc. Basically a doomsday scenario.
What actually happened is Google was incentivized by capital to narrow the scope of their vision. Today, the company mainly sells ads to increase consumer spending.
I'd agree. The logical fallacy I always observe in (what I call) the marxist-nihilist AI doom scenario is that it assumes that the top N% of people perfectly cooperate in a way that the remaining 100-N% cannot. Even stratified social structure is far too muddled for a "mass-replacement" scenario to not cause the elites to factionalize across different plans that would be best for them, which in turn prevents the kind of unified coherent action that the doom scenario hinges on (ex. theyll gun down the proles with robodogs).
Technofeudalism by Varoufakis is about this N% cooperation. Growing wealth concentration means this collusion becomes possible with smaller and smaller N% cooperating. If it's game theory optimal to cooperate I have no doubt Thiel will be releasing the robo hounds the minute he can.
When every industry is dominated by 1 or 2 players, collusion becomes a lot easier. This concentration has been slowly happening for decades now, and we're pretty much at the end. Every industry is dominated by what is essentially a monopoly, but because they keep at least 1 competitor alive, the public and the FTC are fine with it.
The fact that there is proprietary software running in "open source" mobile phone OSes may not be addressing the source of the problem. Because it seems that by funding a project like this it almost implies that the parties funding it don't necessarily trust the people who own and thus could open source the proprietary blobs tomorrow.
The leap I seem to have trouble getting to is this. If you can't trust the people responsible for the proprietary software, how can you be sure that they won't turn around and start using new chips or software once the existing ones are reverse engineered? Perhaps it's about patents and the patent holders could be using this IP as a cash cow?
The one that I had in mind while writing this was a "variation on this theme". Altered Carbon (Netflix, 2018–2020), based on the 2002 novel by Richard K. Morgan.
There are a number of others, though as well where the recurring theme seems to be the "evil elites" leaving the poor to fend for themselves.
Definitely agree, no one "knows" how the world works. I don't think the OP presumes anyone does. The intention in saying this was to point out that there are some (these days it seems many) who are off the mark in an almost tragic way, and have no desire to reflect / improve on this.
I haven't read that. But the search for immortality is ancient. It's in the Gilgamesh epic; Emperor Qin Shi Huang searched for it, as did many others looking for the Philosopher's Stone.
Of the current wealthy researching immortality, I know quite a few without googling:
Larry Ellison,
Jeff Bezos,
Larry Page,
Sergey Brin,
Peter Thiel,
Sam Altman.
Not sure if the 'No' was to say you disagree. I'm not sure, from reading the rest of your comment, that it is a disagreement. If you care to clarify I'll try to come back to respond at some point.
I think the "elites" you're talking about won't want to leave. They'll want to stick around so they can "have power" and fleece the people that will continue to let them do it. They won't feel at home unless they have people they can take advantage of.
I think "elite" is the wrong term maybe. I think the use of that term is pulling more from how these stories tend to paint the two groups. One being the "haves" the other the "have nots". It's true "socioeconomic status" in some way can be considered in this category I'm thinking of, but I'm thinking more from an academic perspective. People who show a true curiosity about the world around them. People who will survive in pretty much any situation because they're the ones who have the most to contribute to a society.
This could have some merit. I do question, though, why someone would spend time gaming a system when they could be living their lives and enjoying their families and friends and other things that life has to offer? Could you see yourself doing that? Or perhaps your life is already rich enough that you couldn't imagine wasting your time on something like that? The point is it seems there is a threshold, below which extremism seems to thrive.
I do agree that people with real mental health issues, who only want to see death and destruction of the people and world around them might think it would be fun, but I'd argue that those people wouldn't be very effective at achieving that goal.
> What has become known since as the "Coasean World,"--where rational actors transact freely without need for institutions, firms, or even law—"is really the world of modern economic theory, one which I was hoping to persuade economists to leave."
Not sure if this was your point, but I didn't post this thinking people on this forum didn't already know most if not all of this. I think the interesting point is that it seems nearly 1/2 of the US population are weaponizing this misunderstanding by allowing these things to inform their political views.
I'm still dabbling but have kind of latched onto the idea of using Ceph. To my understanding they were acquired by RedHat, and the project has all the signs of real open source, including the fact that it originated as a doctoral research project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with initial funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.