I agree on the initial point but Pandora's Box has long been opened on this technology by the intelligence community post 9/11. The common solution to AI's use to dominate is to make it ubiquitous and low cost for everyone to use. I do mean everyone! There will be those who seek domination and those who seek to counter. If cheap enough, AI can be used against itself to reveal itself and make it a shared tool to make all aware of more knowledge than we are currently to expose the charlatans. It can be a great self-education tool, the next step in Wikipedia as long as enough whistleblowers are using AI itself as a counter-measure. Substack, Rumble and etc have already proved effective which provides proof of concept that the Internet can widen freedom of speech by knowledgable authors. By what I have already seen, I am encouraged by the progress pushed by alilybit, Jen McCarthy, Robert Malone, MD and deskool, Eliz Nickson and so many more voices who have redefined and renewed basic freedoms.
I get an email from Gab AI once in a while and today Torba of Gab is celebrating it because now he has access to just as powerful AI as the big boys. Good news on that front i suppose.
However, Lily’s outline of the situation is duly noted. This is a bit scary to think where this train might take us too.
I do not know the ins/outs of AI but being a long-term investor have always avoided the hyped suggestions. Tech is always one-upping each other and I do not know if DeepSeek is BS or the real deal, but suffice it to say prices in the stock market are sharply lower because the lock by a few has just been broken. For the rest of us that is very good news. There will be other copy cats with lower prices yet. You can count on that. Any one of us will be able to expose fakes by using competing AI offerings against each other. No one will have a lock on the space as Nvidia claimed it did. The Internet was once poised as spreading democracy i.e., free speech. A small group tried to silo control but with people electing Trump-type politicians globally the voices of individuals are coming forward with censors scurrying away. I see much emerging that is positive as long as each of us remains keenly aware of what they tried to do to us.
IMO, we could use more thoughtful folks like you, Lily. Thanks for what you do so well.
This topic seems to fly well below the radar in most people's lives, including my own, so I appreciate your wake up call. However, I also have to remember the great Carrington event of August 1859, which fried telegraph lines and other electrical equipment which was far more rugged than our hyper-sensitive electronics of today. One giant X-50 CME from our star and no one is going to be doing anything online. Until then, I'll do my best to put a smile on the faces of those in my life.
Appreciate learning more about AI and the technology that China is advancing. At 78 understanding this complex future seems insurmountable, that’s why I always look forward to reading your work. Knowledge.=Understanding for me.
Thanks for the TL/DR summary. It gets harder and harder to find the time to read all the articles I want to read. Especially since, I suspect, there are few substackers who work with an editor.
A potentially sketchy part of it is that a nefarious actor could poison the information ever so slightly and you'd never know it. To my knowledge, there is no way of unpacking all of the knowledge in a neural network and fact checking it.
Exactly. At some point users will be running blind. At the moment more experienced users are cross referencing the output of AIs with what they believe to be factual. And we all know that facts also change over time as new information comes into view so keeping up and knowing what's factual and what isn't is going to be a challenge to say the least.
As with everything else, when a valuable good like AI is offered for 'free', it means you are the product. Even though the code is open-source, who would be surprised there is a plan to gain something apart from the public good. Data is so valuable, and people are so willing to give it up for convenience.
Wait until you find out about the energy predicament!
And the sheer number of resources that will be required to simply keep things going as they are. Business as usual is already looking extremely shaky. Remember when data was the new oil? Now silver is being touted in the same manner because vast amounts of silver (from where?) will be required to manufacture new types of batteries (solid state) and other such wonders.
At some point one has to sit back and take it all in... what we're building, where it's all going, and whether we'll even be successful.
I will take a stab and say that decentralization doesn't work. Not for any useful civilization building activity. Sure, individuals can choose to drop out and homestead and all that malarkey but for now they're mostly plugged into high tech systems that they don't care to do without.
So everyone is tethered in that way to the central system.
And the central system appears to exist to provide billions of consumers with essential products and services as well as the not so essential luxuries in life.
So what is the purpose of this AI exactly?
The way things are now rapidly coming into view it looks to me like the AI (all the variants and AGI to come) will make half the population redundant while the other half will be scrambling to jump onboard this latest bandwagon in any way they can to remain relevant.
May the best intelligence win. For this is a battle of musical chairs and capture the flag that I, for one, am not qualified to play.
Surveys and benchmarks: Weapons of Mass Delusion. Let's wait for more comprehensive and creative tests, more information about managing of privacy, how benevolent DeepSeek really is.
When AI is going to become as ubiquitous as electricity, and as the dominant and cheapest version of AI will be used for every aspect, every decision in managing society, every bit of research and planning, and the technology is Chinese, is that like giving the on-off switch to the Western technological light bulb to the Chinese government?
If Chinese AI is open source and so developed into thousands of specialist purposes, from companies to government departments, does that mean the West is both developing the Chinese software to run the West's economies? And does that give China unparalleled access to every iota of information the West handles?
Perhaps it is more realistic to see Deep Seek as the ultimate Trojan Horse, a gift from China to the world. But what is really inside?
Wow.. You know I never thought humanity was ready for the AI path, we're just not evolved enough collectively to take the next step. It almost seems like the next step is being forced on us whether we're ready or not. The problem is, like you say in the article, it's a race for control and influence, not for the betterment of humanity. There are both good and bad sides to new releases and I feel most are just focused on an "easier life where we don't have to do anything" rather than what could truly happen if things get out of control, especially when the "leaders" of the movement are greedy, money hungry, low energy souls. Well we're in the game now and can't eject so now what?
I agree on the initial point but Pandora's Box has long been opened on this technology by the intelligence community post 9/11. The common solution to AI's use to dominate is to make it ubiquitous and low cost for everyone to use. I do mean everyone! There will be those who seek domination and those who seek to counter. If cheap enough, AI can be used against itself to reveal itself and make it a shared tool to make all aware of more knowledge than we are currently to expose the charlatans. It can be a great self-education tool, the next step in Wikipedia as long as enough whistleblowers are using AI itself as a counter-measure. Substack, Rumble and etc have already proved effective which provides proof of concept that the Internet can widen freedom of speech by knowledgable authors. By what I have already seen, I am encouraged by the progress pushed by alilybit, Jen McCarthy, Robert Malone, MD and deskool, Eliz Nickson and so many more voices who have redefined and renewed basic freedoms.
I get an email from Gab AI once in a while and today Torba of Gab is celebrating it because now he has access to just as powerful AI as the big boys. Good news on that front i suppose.
However, Lily’s outline of the situation is duly noted. This is a bit scary to think where this train might take us too.
I do not know the ins/outs of AI but being a long-term investor have always avoided the hyped suggestions. Tech is always one-upping each other and I do not know if DeepSeek is BS or the real deal, but suffice it to say prices in the stock market are sharply lower because the lock by a few has just been broken. For the rest of us that is very good news. There will be other copy cats with lower prices yet. You can count on that. Any one of us will be able to expose fakes by using competing AI offerings against each other. No one will have a lock on the space as Nvidia claimed it did. The Internet was once poised as spreading democracy i.e., free speech. A small group tried to silo control but with people electing Trump-type politicians globally the voices of individuals are coming forward with censors scurrying away. I see much emerging that is positive as long as each of us remains keenly aware of what they tried to do to us.
Digital Control > Dollar Control ??
If so, then China just took America’s Queen in the Chessboard for World Dominance.
Very informative and interesting read.
IMO, we could use more thoughtful folks like you, Lily. Thanks for what you do so well.
This topic seems to fly well below the radar in most people's lives, including my own, so I appreciate your wake up call. However, I also have to remember the great Carrington event of August 1859, which fried telegraph lines and other electrical equipment which was far more rugged than our hyper-sensitive electronics of today. One giant X-50 CME from our star and no one is going to be doing anything online. Until then, I'll do my best to put a smile on the faces of those in my life.
You G-O, Girrl!
Appreciate learning more about AI and the technology that China is advancing. At 78 understanding this complex future seems insurmountable, that’s why I always look forward to reading your work. Knowledge.=Understanding for me.
Thanks for the TL/DR summary. It gets harder and harder to find the time to read all the articles I want to read. Especially since, I suspect, there are few substackers who work with an editor.
Excellent article Lily. So easy to understand the real situation from your observations and clear, concise, no nonsense writing. Thank you.
A potentially sketchy part of it is that a nefarious actor could poison the information ever so slightly and you'd never know it. To my knowledge, there is no way of unpacking all of the knowledge in a neural network and fact checking it.
Exactly. At some point users will be running blind. At the moment more experienced users are cross referencing the output of AIs with what they believe to be factual. And we all know that facts also change over time as new information comes into view so keeping up and knowing what's factual and what isn't is going to be a challenge to say the least.
As with everything else, when a valuable good like AI is offered for 'free', it means you are the product. Even though the code is open-source, who would be surprised there is a plan to gain something apart from the public good. Data is so valuable, and people are so willing to give it up for convenience.
Wait until you find out about the energy predicament!
And the sheer number of resources that will be required to simply keep things going as they are. Business as usual is already looking extremely shaky. Remember when data was the new oil? Now silver is being touted in the same manner because vast amounts of silver (from where?) will be required to manufacture new types of batteries (solid state) and other such wonders.
At some point one has to sit back and take it all in... what we're building, where it's all going, and whether we'll even be successful.
I will take a stab and say that decentralization doesn't work. Not for any useful civilization building activity. Sure, individuals can choose to drop out and homestead and all that malarkey but for now they're mostly plugged into high tech systems that they don't care to do without.
So everyone is tethered in that way to the central system.
And the central system appears to exist to provide billions of consumers with essential products and services as well as the not so essential luxuries in life.
So what is the purpose of this AI exactly?
The way things are now rapidly coming into view it looks to me like the AI (all the variants and AGI to come) will make half the population redundant while the other half will be scrambling to jump onboard this latest bandwagon in any way they can to remain relevant.
May the best intelligence win. For this is a battle of musical chairs and capture the flag that I, for one, am not qualified to play.
I think I'll sit this one out.
Surveys and benchmarks: Weapons of Mass Delusion. Let's wait for more comprehensive and creative tests, more information about managing of privacy, how benevolent DeepSeek really is.
China Talk here on substack (Jordan Schneider, Jan 26) has a more nuanced view on the export controls (https://blog.heim.xyz/deepseek-what-the-headlines-miss) or cost accounting.
Anyway, I'm just going to sit and wait like the old guy watching the crazy car chase in the first Pink Panther movie.
It’s almost like DeepSeek R1 is designed to be exploited by bad actors.
https://www.kelacyber.com/blog/deepseek-r1-security-flaws/?utm_campaign=Blogs&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=344373757&utm_content=344373757&utm_source=hs_email
Thank you for this feature, you clarified things for me.
Great piece
Where can I apply for pro-CCP propaganda funding? Asking for a friend.
I would add two questions and one point:
When AI is going to become as ubiquitous as electricity, and as the dominant and cheapest version of AI will be used for every aspect, every decision in managing society, every bit of research and planning, and the technology is Chinese, is that like giving the on-off switch to the Western technological light bulb to the Chinese government?
If Chinese AI is open source and so developed into thousands of specialist purposes, from companies to government departments, does that mean the West is both developing the Chinese software to run the West's economies? And does that give China unparalleled access to every iota of information the West handles?
Perhaps it is more realistic to see Deep Seek as the ultimate Trojan Horse, a gift from China to the world. But what is really inside?
Wow.. You know I never thought humanity was ready for the AI path, we're just not evolved enough collectively to take the next step. It almost seems like the next step is being forced on us whether we're ready or not. The problem is, like you say in the article, it's a race for control and influence, not for the betterment of humanity. There are both good and bad sides to new releases and I feel most are just focused on an "easier life where we don't have to do anything" rather than what could truly happen if things get out of control, especially when the "leaders" of the movement are greedy, money hungry, low energy souls. Well we're in the game now and can't eject so now what?