| this perez model thing completely misses the communications revolutions of the telegraph, radio and television not to mention demonopolization of bell. > Then came AI, revealing new dynamics. ChatGPT’s breakthrough didn’t come from a garage startup but from OpenAI, i thought the transformer and large language models came from google research. > There’s also social pushback—in the UK the campaigns against big ringroad schemes started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And perhaps we’re seeing some of that about AI. The U.S. map of local pushback against data centres from Data Center Watch covers the whole of the country, in red states and blue. People seem to hate Google’s inserting of AI tools into its search results, and hate even more that it is all but impossible to turn it off. the us had the highway revolts. in most cities where the revolts succeeded it is widely heralded today as a success. the data center hate is interesting. i think many people are just learning what data centers are. but that said, they've come to represent something different in recent years. previously they were part of the infrastructure that made industry hum, now public messaging from tech leaders and academics is along the lines of "this is how your livelihood is going to be replaced" while the institutions that are supposed to provide any sort of backstop are being dismantled or slashed to pieces by crazypants trumpist politics. i think focusing the energy on the tangible like mundane buildings is interesting, but the hate makes a lot of sense. addressing the core thesis, i'd argue that ai is not the next step in the 70s digital technological wave (especially considering the future of ai compute is probably hybrid digital-analog systems), but rather is something fundamentally new that also changes how technology interacts with society and how economics itself will function. previous systems helped, these systems can do. that's a fundamental change and one that may not be compatible with our existing economic systems of social sorting and mobility. the big question in my mind is: if it succeeds, will we desperately try to hold onto the old system (which essentially would be a disaster that freezes everyone in place and creates a permanent underclass) or will we evolve to a new, yet to be defined, system? and if so, how will the transition look? |