[b112]

I will agree that chat apps and feeds on facebook are a large swath of info. I just don't think it compares to gmail, and of course all the other data I've mentioned. The power of Android and even push notifications, from a data collection perspective is beyond immense. Amazon at one point stopped sending details of purchases via email, eg "we have your order" emails, because Google was snarfing data and purchasing trends from it.

We haven't even discussed YouTube here and viewing habits.

And Meta has its issues, as I've said. It's just the scope. Even though Facebook's platform has been misused by Cambridge Analytics and endless others, to the point of even causing civil wars and regime changes through the dissemination and fabrication of false, tailored news stories, that's not entirely on Facebook. That's platform enablement, and an example of available data, which is a bit to my point about Facebook not hiding what info it has on people.

I think part of the problem with US-centric definitions such as woke, is that US politics so poorly map to politics anywhere else on the planet. An example? California might be considered the most-leftish state the US has. Yet in this state, they fund the schools with... lottery money. I mean, why would anyone just fund the schools? You know, just pay for them with a solid, stable source of money so they have what they need? This appears to be a radical idea to people in the US.

Yet even the most left of US states doesn't seem to get this correct. They proudly proclaim "This lottery funds our schools!" or some such blather. Absolutely bizarre. Yes, they have funding from other sources, property taxes and so on. But why the variability? This is a core requirement.

My point is, nothing completely maps to anything I'm familiar with in terms of politics as a Canadian. And of course, we have multiple political parties, not two as in the US, and that likely has something to do with it.

And I guess this leads to their ridiculous and absolutely child like politics. There is no nuance. When discussing politics with Americans, I find it as discussing "Why is the sky blue" with a 4 year old. They don't have nuanced positions. They don't even know why they have positions. They just have... positions. And get angry if you just discuss why, and can never seem to provide real reasons behind those positions.

So it ... yes, woke and their other things aren't long held, well understood positions by Americans I think. They're just fads. They shift and morph constantly.

FABs are another issue entirely. Re terafab. It's very difficult to audit silicon. Just cutting the top off a chip layer by layer and using an electron microscope, isn't going to fully give you trust. People have been worried about their designs being modified at the fab for a long time. Ah well.

[ben_w]

> FABs are another issue entirely. Re terafab. It's very difficult to audit silicon. Just cutting the top off a chip layer by layer and using an electron microscope, isn't going to fully give you trust. People have been worried about their designs being modified at the fab for a long time. Ah well.

Sure, sure, but that's not why I used terafab as a question for "what if competent AI?"

The details on that are… ugh. They were clearly done for glossy magazines and posters rather than with thought, wouldn't be surprised if it was vibe-written or done by a teenage intern or by someone high on drugs.

But if you ignore all that and treat it as a serious proposal, a billion(!) Optimus robots with a competent AI is Musk having personal control over a workforce the size of China or India's adult population.

[b112]

Yes, it can be disconcerting to consider such. In anyone's singular control. And that number of robots is indeed sort of the plan.

This is a loooong podcast, but was just great from start to end. Multiples of the neurolink team were interviewed, including Musk at the start.

https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/lex-fridman-podcast-artific...

I think Musk's interview is maybe 30 minutes? Certainly less than an hour. In it he does dive a bit into robotics, and how he'd like robots everywhere. I believe he talks about how valuable they could be for things not considered yet, like just walking deep into forests and monitoring the local environment, sampling, etc.

Anyhow, it's the first thing which came to mind when you mentioned a billion robots. On that front, I think we're maybe 8 years out from mostly-competent robots. Certainly, local LLM compute will be super cheap even in a few years, so no issues with a robot having multiple LLMs onboard. But I do wonder, if we can't do competent self-driving, will we have competent robots?

I'd peg robots at years after perfect self-driving, and we're years from that. Robots would need to navigate far more random, uncertain terrain/locations.

[ben_w]

> On that front, I think we're maybe 8 years out from mostly-competent robots.

I think this depends on what is meant by "mostly-competent".

As you say:

> I'd peg robots at years after perfect self-driving, and we're years from that. Robots would need to navigate far more random, uncertain terrain/locations.

I'd put a 10 year gap between "self-driving car of quality X" and "humanoid robot able to get into driving seat of car, drive it at quality X", just on a power-envelope basis.

For this part, I'd have to disagree:

> Certainly, local LLM compute will be super cheap even in a few years, so no issues with a robot having multiple LLMs onboard.

While some LLM will be able to fit (and already can because some fit on a phone), the AI we have now in LLMs (and VLMs) is much too spiky for this use. Recent Anthropic and OpenAI models have just given me half a dozen different confident identifications for the same plant, many of which were easily falsified even by comparing what was in the image to what the AI's text output claimed it had seen in the image, like the leaf shape and how many came out of each node.

[seanmcdirmid]

Not that I would call California a left wing state, but prop 13 came about during Reagan, and it has been incredibly sticky afterwards even if it isn’t something that would pass today.

Also, schools are funded by the state rather than via local property taxes mainly because of prop 13. It’s odd by American standards, but probably more closely resembles funding models of European countries more than other states do. But I guess that is just the nuance you were talking about?

[b112]

If you're not going to call California 'left wing', I wonder how many states in the US you'd call left wing? It seems fairly left wing to me, having visited a lot. EG, spending 4+ months there a year, for several years.

Note that I'm not saying many of the polices are wrong, just that they're US labeled 'left wing'.

Prop 13 I now see did change how taxation for schools was handled, so thanks for that info. I frankly support the logic. Old people being priced out of their homes is a real thing, and terrible. Still, it's the implied variability of income source which is what "funding from the lottery" implies. It grates on me.

[seanmcdirmid]

I tied it depends on your bias? California is pretty capitalistic, the social safety net is still pretty light, elected leaders still look out for business interests rather than the people, and the people would stop electing them if they did otherwise. California only looks left wing compared to Texas, to the much of the world California looks pretty right wing, especially if you didn’t know it just got worse from there. Capitalists don’t flock to California because of the socialism.

I’m all for funding schools at the state or even national level and eliminating district inequality based on the price of housing. However, prop 13 creates huge unfair distortions in the tax base, where some people are paying super low taxes and other people are paying super high taxes, for the same property. Old millionaires who bought their home decades ago get a huge tax break and a struggling young family who just bought basically subsidize them. It’s the ultimate of ick. It’s definitely a great way to push the birth rate down.

[b112]

The "rest of the world" doesn't use left/right the way the US does. The lines between the US's two parties are gibberish and make no sense to us, comparatively.

EG, the stances taken by both your parties aren't actual left/right, but "whatever we feel like" left/right. That said, this is why I asked you:

"If you're not going to call California 'left wing', I wonder how many states in the US you'd call left wing?". You haven't answered that. Instead, you've said much of the world might consider it "right wing", but that's basically the entire US. From Canada's perspective, and I presume much of Europe, the US is just "right wing with some shades of difference".

I realise we may be talking cross purpose here, but again... if California isn't left wing, who is? Are you only going to list 1 or 2 states as 'left wing', compared to California? It has what might be considered left wing policies, a lot of consumer protection, environmental law, and more, all things which are often either California first, or California early-adopts.

Part of the word problem here is, is that capitalism =! left/right. Here's an example, although a weird one.

In Canada, we have market controlled agricultural products. Supply management. We do this, so that farmers can make a reasonable profit, and thereby ensuring that food is available without wild supply side-issues. It's been a problem in the past. It's a problem for the US. Here, we manage it pre-market side. You know, we plan things.

In the US, which makes quite a bit of noise about this, there have been multiple "Whole Herd Buyouts", the US Federal government bought out entire herds to reduce amount of milk on the market.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/23/nyregion/us-offers-dairym...

https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/1_2_overview_brow...

It's happened over and over again. Beyond that, the US government buys enormous amounts of US milk, makes cheese out of it, and stores it in those massive caves in Utah or where ever. This cheese is also given to the poor, "government cheese" as a form of welfare.

The end result? Both methods are manipulating markets, both methods are controlling the price. In the US, billions of taxpayer's money is used to ensure farmers don't go bankrupt, by artificially inflating the market price of milk on the open market.

In Canada. We said "Hmm. Why spend billions doing this, interfering with markets, when we can just set up control at the front for a few million?". After all, in both cases it is what an American would call "socialism". Government controlled market interference. In the US, you see, the government colludes to force milk prices higher.

It's all optics, but the interference is precisely the same.

Another example is the US subprime mortgage crisis, which affected the entire planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

This wasn't caused by right or left, but by decades of gradual lessening of policies by both right and left, both sides wanting reduced red tape and restrictions on lending. Both wanting to get more homes into the hands of people.

And it was a "right" wing president which orchestrated the bailout.

Again, not regulating markets at the pre-market stage, and then turning around and spending 1000s of times the taxpayer money to deal with it post market, is still market control. It's just "dealing with insane suffering, and catastrophe" after the fact, instead of before.

So, when I hear someone say a US "this or that" is socialist or not, I become a bit baffled. Because the US does socialism 100% all of the time, it's just that it waits until the last minute. It still does it, regardless.

Like I said, I'm meandering and preaching and on a soap box here, but my point is that US political views don't make any sense or map in a sensible way to the rest of the world. It's all right/wrong, on/off, yes/no, no nuance. I think the greatest gift the rest of the world has, is more than two parties, new parties that come and go.

Because it's either "socialist or not", or "left wing or not" and this sort of thing.

The truth?

Is much more nuanced.

Again, sorry for the rant.