Ukraine is Running Out of People, DeepSeek and the AI Industry's "Sputnik Moment", Trump Regime Suspending NGO Funding, The #MAGA Class, Death of NYC Bohemia
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LLMs act as powerful assistants. They won’t replace most jobs, but they’ll make employees who know how to leverage them far more productive. These gains in productivity can be used to get more done with less people.
It’s more “the horses are being replaced with tractors” and less “this robot does your job for you now”.
As for people who ask, “what will laid off workers do?”, I’ve seen strong arguments made that many modern jobs are fake, unnecessary, or downright harmful. It’s a strange time though, as many of these jobs (federal employees, DEI, NGOs) are going away… I suppose we can hope that enough illegal fruit pickers are deported that the former DEI commissars can take their place… but to be serious, I don’t know how things will shake out.
As for DeepSeek, I don’t know enough to comment on it.
Yes. FWIW, I'm learning to construct my queries on Google as "natural language", rather than "telegraphic" keyword strings. And -- [un?]surprisingly -- I'm getting well-phrased and -formatted responses. Yes, I then dig deeper, but it's the "door-opener" that makes it more enjoyable.
Turbo America and Turbo China. EU getting fucked in the ass, Russia too weak and distracted, India still too young, Middle East under control and BRICS doesn't even exist. Ursula's latest PowerPoint presentation and Gustavo Petro's public humiliation (after a bout of drunken tweets, my sources in Medellin tell me) prove the point.
The irony is that we hit a wall with processing vs power. It's a physical limit of size vs heat dissipation. Reality cut us off...
Quantum computers are not delivering but are a neat science experiment. I suppose they think it'll magically be crazy efficient. If it only worked... There's a few videos about quantum computing and the issues here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdAkAC4ItcFyNFBywN0wiZ45pCnMr-Ay
As for deep seek, they just demonstrated that whatever they claim as something so super complicated is really not.
So that makes us wonder why the obsession with needing more and more chips.
That's why these AI people want nuclear power. 😳
I guess they're not unlike the civilization that built the computer in Hitchhikers guide that are seeking enlightenment! Decades of processing and decimation of planets to get the answer of 42 and forgetting what the original question was. 😂
Yeah the EU is a big net loss for much of E Europe: populations drain away, inflating wages at home (supposedly) and depressing them in the West (certainly) while allowing oligarchs to make out the tiresome (and ironic!) argument that non-European foreigners have to be imported 'to do the jobs locals don't want to do'; Gypsies menace the Occident, accumulate enormous wealth, achieve cultural near-hegemony and elevate already extreme corruption in urban fringes and countryside at home but go unpunished because of EU 'inclusivity' directives; expenditure on education of the young and fit benefits only the wealthier Western countries; and on and on...
You can earn money with Open Source but you can't earn truckloads of money. Big business requires state protection. China's big PR win when it comes to libertarians and those leaning in that direction ( although I am told that official China doesn't support people like DeepSeek group but will certainly not interfere in PR win ). State is primarily concerned about military applications.
> At the same time, I am forced to ask: what are the real-world applications that are facilitated by LLMs today that matter?
There are none, and it is unlikely that there will be any. Unless you think further shittification of education, search, and customer service matters (maybe it does, in a negative way).
LLMs are the shiny baubles used to fascinate investors and the public, in order to attract more funding and hype. Like an evil megacorporation in a movie making cute robot pets as their public facing product while they develop autonomous death machines behind the scenes.
There are certainly going to be useful applications of machine learning. There already are, some potentially positive like in diagnosis and treatment of disease using computer vision, in science, in entertainment. Some almost certainly a mistake we'll come to regret, like in military drones, law enforcement, and labor. But LLMs are a sideshow.
If AI research is left in the hands of zombie IP trolls like Oracle and Microsoft and surveillance capitalism data vampires like Google and Facebook, via cartel proxy foundations like OpenAI, as was the Biden admin's policy and as Trump is seemingly continuing, we will get nothing but more trolling and more surveillance. The tech behemoths are ossified and can only think about new technology in terms of how it fits into their existing business models. See for example Facebook's acquisition of Oculus and subsequent attempt to turn it into yet another engagement funnel and surveillance device, rather than any consideration as to what VR might be usefully or interestingly applied to.
Edit: also, the article you linked on DeepSeek reeks of AI slop, underlining my first point. Cracks me up. I think that it's probably partially human-written with some edited AI slop to pad it out. Ask yourself: if an article's author has made all the points he has to make, and then pads the article with slop - to achieve a word count target for SEO or whatever the case may be - how has this improved our quality of life or productivity?
I saw this interview earlier this week on C-Span with Gary Marcus about his new book written in haste, he says, to warn people. The book is called Taming Silicon Valley, and the discussion occurred in San Francisco in September of 2024. He is on Substack for anyone who wants a deeper dive. He says several things that I found very interesting, one being that the tech world intentionally instills fear about the mysterious, quickly evolving power of AI to manipulate the public. This tool being similar to past eras to keep proles in line, such as claiming Kings were divinely anointed.
Russia takes the eastern wasteland, Ukraine borders shift west a la Poland 1945, Ukes move further west to sunnier and wealthier climes, Western Europe kicks the demographic can down the road another decade with 15M mostly women and children...
"It is a vast, integrated network of suppliers, logistics hubs, specialized clusters and infrastructure that supports a range of high-value industries." [which goes on to mention #3: Robust Infrastructure]
Yes, their ports... which, unlike those of the US, long-ago embraced automation as a vital part of the workflow -- as-if at DNA-level. We Americans (and Europeans, too) are our own worst enemies.
While China built out its vast integrated network to support a range of high-value industries, the US built out a vast integrated network called USAID to support a range of high-value neoliberal policy goals.
The reason we as a species are still here is that natural causes cut our numbers back repeatedly in history with disease, war and starvation. Though war, nuclear, could still cut us back, nature has been put into service to allow our population to increase. Since I was born in 1950, the population of the US is 2.5 times what it was. The population of the world is 3.5 times what it was.
You dismiss the warnings of the past as foolish but the reasons given for them have only become more pressing. What seals the issue is that the world is on the wild ride of capitalism that is not just content with profit and growth, but demands it. It is a system that admits no limits on a planet that is finite.
Keeping in mind my mention of the increase in population since I was born, the "standard of living" has changed beyond the recognition of anyone living in 1950. Capitalism is now worldwide and for every individual, so many more of them now than then, the desire is for more than the already huge demand.
We have infinite human desire and a capitalism that is more than happy not only to go with that but to promote it. Doing the math is easy. A multiple of the population of 1950 and each individual consuming a multiple of what each individual consumed (worldwide average) in 1950. This is a recipe for disaster and then add in the idea that there must be more people tomorrow in order to support the increase in elderly tomorrow.
Multiple x multiple x multiple. It can't go on. Ocean areas that one thrived with sea life are overfished. National parks, once far removed and essentially wilderness are now subject to bumper to bumper traffic and reservations musts be made for camping years in advance. Manhattan is implementing fees for vehicle entry.
It is easy to go to a grocery, look at the shelves and think shortages are impossible. This overlooks the always increasing use of fossil fuels to get those shelves filled and the fact that much of the fresh produce is coming from overseas, made possible only by air shipment.
Bottom line - always have more people each one of whom wants more and is encouraged by an economy that demands more consumption and is dedicated to that goal which is always moving out further is an impossible system to maintain.
As I began, I end. Mankind is here because our numbers were always cut back for one reason or another and that is no longer true. There is no other species that procreates and is not cut back and that is the key to sustainability. We are dooming ourselves by deluding ourselves that we are unique in being able to consume without limit and reproduce without limit at the same time.
Check on CO2 in the atmosphere at https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/index.html The increase yearly is relentless, not even a hint of moderation in the increase and methane, many times the greenhouse effect of CO2 is ramping up sharply.
Trump says global warming is a hoax, that we need to drill, baby, drill while the public buys ever large gasoline engine vehicles. I rest my case. Niccolo you are being an ostrich.
Hit the like button at the top or bottom of this page to like this entry. Use the share and/or re-stack buttons to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so.
And please don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so already!
LLMs act as powerful assistants. They won’t replace most jobs, but they’ll make employees who know how to leverage them far more productive. These gains in productivity can be used to get more done with less people.
It’s more “the horses are being replaced with tractors” and less “this robot does your job for you now”.
As for people who ask, “what will laid off workers do?”, I’ve seen strong arguments made that many modern jobs are fake, unnecessary, or downright harmful. It’s a strange time though, as many of these jobs (federal employees, DEI, NGOs) are going away… I suppose we can hope that enough illegal fruit pickers are deported that the former DEI commissars can take their place… but to be serious, I don’t know how things will shake out.
As for DeepSeek, I don’t know enough to comment on it.
Thanks!
"LLMs act as powerful assistants."
Yes. FWIW, I'm learning to construct my queries on Google as "natural language", rather than "telegraphic" keyword strings. And -- [un?]surprisingly -- I'm getting well-phrased and -formatted responses. Yes, I then dig deeper, but it's the "door-opener" that makes it more enjoyable.
I'm an AI fag, so here's my 2 eurocents:
1. DeepSeek humiliated the West by being more open about their achievements than the AI giants over here (this might change)
2. The giants will integrate the advantages of DeepSeek due to this openness within months (their congratulations weren't just face saving)
AI development will continue to be computing power based, so the West hasn't fallen. DeepSeek wasn't Sputnik, it was Netscape Navigator.
I wanted to write an article about it, either on Substack or in Hungarian elsewhere, but it's a tiresome job to deflate sensation and I write for fun.
Netscape Navigator...haha
Had an undeniable impact. Made the web better.
Didn't win.
It did in that the way they did it better was adopted by others like Google, firefox, etc.
Microsoft and Apple were slow to get with the true web standards and their browsers were regularly non compliant.
NCSA Mosaic
Turbo America and Turbo China. EU getting fucked in the ass, Russia too weak and distracted, India still too young, Middle East under control and BRICS doesn't even exist. Ursula's latest PowerPoint presentation and Gustavo Petro's public humiliation (after a bout of drunken tweets, my sources in Medellin tell me) prove the point.
The irony is that we hit a wall with processing vs power. It's a physical limit of size vs heat dissipation. Reality cut us off...
Quantum computers are not delivering but are a neat science experiment. I suppose they think it'll magically be crazy efficient. If it only worked... There's a few videos about quantum computing and the issues here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkdAkAC4ItcFyNFBywN0wiZ45pCnMr-Ay
As for deep seek, they just demonstrated that whatever they claim as something so super complicated is really not.
So that makes us wonder why the obsession with needing more and more chips.
That's why these AI people want nuclear power. 😳
I guess they're not unlike the civilization that built the computer in Hitchhikers guide that are seeking enlightenment! Decades of processing and decimation of planets to get the answer of 42 and forgetting what the original question was. 😂
Yeah the EU is a big net loss for much of E Europe: populations drain away, inflating wages at home (supposedly) and depressing them in the West (certainly) while allowing oligarchs to make out the tiresome (and ironic!) argument that non-European foreigners have to be imported 'to do the jobs locals don't want to do'; Gypsies menace the Occident, accumulate enormous wealth, achieve cultural near-hegemony and elevate already extreme corruption in urban fringes and countryside at home but go unpunished because of EU 'inclusivity' directives; expenditure on education of the young and fit benefits only the wealthier Western countries; and on and on...
To think Kanye could have been the godfather of the vibeshift
You can earn money with Open Source but you can't earn truckloads of money. Big business requires state protection. China's big PR win when it comes to libertarians and those leaning in that direction ( although I am told that official China doesn't support people like DeepSeek group but will certainly not interfere in PR win ). State is primarily concerned about military applications.
The NY mag article reminds me of Franco supporters who emerged in Madrid after he took the city in 1939. Had survived a stressful 3 years.
> At the same time, I am forced to ask: what are the real-world applications that are facilitated by LLMs today that matter?
There are none, and it is unlikely that there will be any. Unless you think further shittification of education, search, and customer service matters (maybe it does, in a negative way).
LLMs are the shiny baubles used to fascinate investors and the public, in order to attract more funding and hype. Like an evil megacorporation in a movie making cute robot pets as their public facing product while they develop autonomous death machines behind the scenes.
There are certainly going to be useful applications of machine learning. There already are, some potentially positive like in diagnosis and treatment of disease using computer vision, in science, in entertainment. Some almost certainly a mistake we'll come to regret, like in military drones, law enforcement, and labor. But LLMs are a sideshow.
If AI research is left in the hands of zombie IP trolls like Oracle and Microsoft and surveillance capitalism data vampires like Google and Facebook, via cartel proxy foundations like OpenAI, as was the Biden admin's policy and as Trump is seemingly continuing, we will get nothing but more trolling and more surveillance. The tech behemoths are ossified and can only think about new technology in terms of how it fits into their existing business models. See for example Facebook's acquisition of Oculus and subsequent attempt to turn it into yet another engagement funnel and surveillance device, rather than any consideration as to what VR might be usefully or interestingly applied to.
Edit: also, the article you linked on DeepSeek reeks of AI slop, underlining my first point. Cracks me up. I think that it's probably partially human-written with some edited AI slop to pad it out. Ask yourself: if an article's author has made all the points he has to make, and then pads the article with slop - to achieve a word count target for SEO or whatever the case may be - how has this improved our quality of life or productivity?
I saw this interview earlier this week on C-Span with Gary Marcus about his new book written in haste, he says, to warn people. The book is called Taming Silicon Valley, and the discussion occurred in San Francisco in September of 2024. He is on Substack for anyone who wants a deeper dive. He says several things that I found very interesting, one being that the tech world intentionally instills fear about the mysterious, quickly evolving power of AI to manipulate the public. This tool being similar to past eras to keep proles in line, such as claiming Kings were divinely anointed.
https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/taming-silicon-valley---how-we-can-ensure-that-ai-works-for-us/649276
"EU membership for Ukraine would see another catastrophic outflow of its people, as the continent’s larger economies act as magnets."
Leaving lots of room for EU-beloved migrants... they might not *work*, but they'd help fill those empty houses and hamlets.
Goodbye Ukraine. What’s choice! Demographic decline or a great replacement.
Russia takes the eastern wasteland, Ukraine borders shift west a la Poland 1945, Ukes move further west to sunnier and wealthier climes, Western Europe kicks the demographic can down the road another decade with 15M mostly women and children...
It's a win-win all around!
"It is a vast, integrated network of suppliers, logistics hubs, specialized clusters and infrastructure that supports a range of high-value industries." [which goes on to mention #3: Robust Infrastructure]
Yes, their ports... which, unlike those of the US, long-ago embraced automation as a vital part of the workflow -- as-if at DNA-level. We Americans (and Europeans, too) are our own worst enemies.
While China built out its vast integrated network to support a range of high-value industries, the US built out a vast integrated network called USAID to support a range of high-value neoliberal policy goals.
The reason we as a species are still here is that natural causes cut our numbers back repeatedly in history with disease, war and starvation. Though war, nuclear, could still cut us back, nature has been put into service to allow our population to increase. Since I was born in 1950, the population of the US is 2.5 times what it was. The population of the world is 3.5 times what it was.
You dismiss the warnings of the past as foolish but the reasons given for them have only become more pressing. What seals the issue is that the world is on the wild ride of capitalism that is not just content with profit and growth, but demands it. It is a system that admits no limits on a planet that is finite.
Keeping in mind my mention of the increase in population since I was born, the "standard of living" has changed beyond the recognition of anyone living in 1950. Capitalism is now worldwide and for every individual, so many more of them now than then, the desire is for more than the already huge demand.
We have infinite human desire and a capitalism that is more than happy not only to go with that but to promote it. Doing the math is easy. A multiple of the population of 1950 and each individual consuming a multiple of what each individual consumed (worldwide average) in 1950. This is a recipe for disaster and then add in the idea that there must be more people tomorrow in order to support the increase in elderly tomorrow.
Multiple x multiple x multiple. It can't go on. Ocean areas that one thrived with sea life are overfished. National parks, once far removed and essentially wilderness are now subject to bumper to bumper traffic and reservations musts be made for camping years in advance. Manhattan is implementing fees for vehicle entry.
It is easy to go to a grocery, look at the shelves and think shortages are impossible. This overlooks the always increasing use of fossil fuels to get those shelves filled and the fact that much of the fresh produce is coming from overseas, made possible only by air shipment.
Bottom line - always have more people each one of whom wants more and is encouraged by an economy that demands more consumption and is dedicated to that goal which is always moving out further is an impossible system to maintain.
As I began, I end. Mankind is here because our numbers were always cut back for one reason or another and that is no longer true. There is no other species that procreates and is not cut back and that is the key to sustainability. We are dooming ourselves by deluding ourselves that we are unique in being able to consume without limit and reproduce without limit at the same time.
Check on CO2 in the atmosphere at https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/index.html The increase yearly is relentless, not even a hint of moderation in the increase and methane, many times the greenhouse effect of CO2 is ramping up sharply.
Trump says global warming is a hoax, that we need to drill, baby, drill while the public buys ever large gasoline engine vehicles. I rest my case. Niccolo you are being an ostrich.
"Musk’s “efficiency department” has crowed about slashing $45m in scholarships for students from authoritarian Burma..."
The journalists are shocked at the cruelty, whereas Americans are shocked to learn that 45 million dollars goes to students in Burma!
Nic you might try to interview Robert Kaplan. He has another new book out, seems up your alley. https://www.amazon.com/Waste-Land-World-Permanent-Crisis-ebook/dp/B0D2W1B519?ref_=ast_author_mpb