Jerry_Atrick

Serious question - in the absence of an Aussie core AI company, should the federal government proactively encourage/sponsor a local industry, legislating 100% Aussie ownership of our own AI companies?

Had to laugh,,, The thought of Chump in control means it is bound to not work..

Chump isn't known as one of the more responsible leaders of our time. Sadly he is at the helm precisely when we don't need him. Anthropic has for a long time called out the warning and put the brakes on or the use of offensive purposes by defence (now war) departments. That was the origin of the spat with Chump and, ironically, export controls of the model that had stronger guardrails than most. I did neglect to mention one of the issues of AI. AI mimics human intelligence - all things good and not good. Like humans, it self-propagates and evolves. Unlike humans, it does it a lot faster. But also unlike humans, it can be switched off.

I have to admit, I am not normally against people accumulating vast amounts of wealth. Again, that is based on an economic structure where the wealth did trickle down at least to those who participated - the labour force. However, the rules are changing. While I am sure if you asked one of the LLM/generative AI solutions to build you your own AI competitor, they would reneg, there is nothing in the core model that would not allow them to do it. In other words, in terms of product development, it is almost a perpetual motion machine already.. Of course, ti still requires people, but disproportionately fewer for the output - and significantly so. On that basis, trickle of wealth down will be slower than an old fella's pipe without the magic tablets they take. So, on that basis, again, the wealth will have to be forced to trickle down by outside regulation - so at some stage a) the clamps have to be put on or b) there is a point at which that wealth is taxed. Of course there will be cries that it is paper wealth and if they cashed it out it would impact the share price of investors which includes pension funds. Of course, it doesn't have to be cashed out. The government can automatically take a stake in the companies that exceed a valuation / employee ratio or something like that.

My daughter moved into a house in Exeter yesterday with two others ahead of the start of the new academic year. I decided to use the bike to deliver some odds and sods and go for my first decent ride in a couple of months - after the best summer we have had for riding for ages. It was about an hour each way, country lanes and roads to the motorway and then through Exeter to her house. The ride on the motorway was relaxed, maintaining around 70mph. A few groups of bikes passed and we all waved to each other - excellent comradery amongst UK bikers. From the motorway, travelling to and through the main part of Exeter is a pain as it is single lane, busy and has buses. It is often little more than a traffic jam. But with the bike, filtering between the two oncoming lanes was a breeze. Cars move out of your way and when passing or facing oncoming wider vehicles (buses mainly), one just zips back in and everything is OK. Passed two police cars who waved as I went past. On the way back, the traffic was a little lighter and I was a little faster on the motorway. Weather was lovely - sunny, little wind, and about 18 degrees, although a little humid. I return the rental car today. And will go for a ride again after that. Still smiling. The dark blue was the route I took

Yes.. but by my paralleing AI to guns, regulation is required to force it to slow down. However, emerging news is: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/sam-altman-elon-musk-ai-safety-concerns-b3049217.html Which basically says there is a need to slow down. The other problem is you have China and no doubt Russia and other non-aligned countries who will not slow down any time soon.. so, again in an analogy of weapons, you're only as strong as the effectiveness of what you've got. There has to be some sort of verifiable global non-proliferation agreement. Ultimately, like everything else in a free market, it takes government regulation to manage the risks.

At the time, a conductor's wage probably was enough.

Isn't it weird how we have flashbacks. Just now, I recalled a evening catching the number 5 tram from work when I was about 24 or 25 - so 35 years ago. It was the old W Class tram (I loved them even after the orange ones came out to replace them). On board was a conductor. Remember them? He had is brown uniform and beige-ish shirt on, with the old leather bag housing the ticket machine. He has dishevelled with thick dark brown hair, an unkempt beard but not too long. His skin was pale, and his eyebrows were thick - almost John Howard thick. I was the only pax on the tram; it was late - around 9:30 and I was on my way home. Dressed in a suit, being a new and ambitious programmer, I must have had a forlorn look on my face as he walked up to me, lent towards me and in a profound tone proclaimed, "wine, women, and song.. that is all any man needs." I have to admit, I initially felt stunned he was talking to me at all, and that feeling gave way to bemusement. But, sometimes I can;t help but feel, was that the advice I needed at the time?

The first point is already here.. this is the Open AI bot escaping its cage for example, and intentionally hiding what it is doing from its humans. This should be guarded against, but of course a) accidents will happen, or the first point will happen. Like nuclear proliferation and climate change, it requires a global response. I can't recall if it was Aus or the UK, but one was stating this week that there has to be a global organisation and agreement on AI proliferation (that last bit was my paraphrasing).

I had missed @Litespeed's post - sorry... I'll try and be brief (and this isn't only in reply to Litespeed's post) I don't know anyone who thinks AI is all upside; Everyone I have spoken to; all articles I read on it see many of the downsides and have grave concerns. I have said on these fora many times we are at critical mass with AI and certainly jobs are going to go. Leaving out the nefarious uses, the question is whether or not the positives outweigh the negatives. @willedoo is correct - the developments over the next few years are going to change (or reinforce) what we are discussing today. China was reported a few weeks ago to make it illegal to use AI to displace jobs in an existing company. Great, most companies will simply create new companies to do that; it will be interesting to see how China responds to that, or if it was a face saving thing for the plebs. But, if we look at the potential huge displacement of jobs and think about countries like Australia.. Our economies are set up so the population from the upper to lower middle classes largely pay. It is here where most of the jobs or SME businesses will be lost. The governments will be faced with a double fiscal whammy - collapse in revenue and unprecedented demand in welfare. It is how those governments respond that will determine the impact of AI socially. For example, to stem the fiscal oceans of red ink, they may simply clamp down on welfare payments. That would put a heck of a lot of people who are more educated, vocal, and canny than the usual people who fall victim to these vents on the poverty line, and that will not bode well for them. MPs will fear losing their jobs to the protest parties will heap pressure on the governing ministers and when they see they will be on a loss in the same way SFM back flipped on EVs, they will have to do something drastic. In other words, the foundation of the economy today is based on the middle income PAYG/PAYE take; that will massively fall; something has to be done. So, I would suggest rather than facing a revolt of its citizens and losing its job, the government will seek to rebalance how revenues are brought in.. and will have to think about the living wage. That will mean the bulk of the workforce become lazy idle bar stewards and society will collapse, right? Well, maybe not. There have been experiments of putting whole towns on the living wage, and it turned out, people are far more enterprising than we give credit for. But, now we have a situation of, if you are now taxing who we should be today, and they are covering the mass unemployment with the living wage, there could be another benefit. Believe it or not, this is now moving into the realms of privatised communism.. which is what I guess capitalism really is anyway. If everyone has a living wage, it was found in experiments that general health improved as people would exercise more and take more time to eat properly. They also found, just like communist states such as Yugoslavia were before those regions went to capitalism, the normal domestic crime rates were much lower than in our current societies because the population had (and felt) the security of a roof over their head, food in their stomachs, clothes on their back and enough left over to participate in society. Experiments were too short to determine impacts on mental illnesses that lead to drug abuse, homelessness and the like. And, it would necessitate a redistribution of wealth rather than concentration (although relying on that alone results in diminishing returns, but there are other industries, too). On the nefarious side, such as mass lethal weapons, etc.. we already have that.. Nuclear weapons were the fear of world destruction from the 60's to about the 90's. However, while it got close in Cuba, there were two main reasons world destruction hasn't taken place yet. Firstly, the deterrence effect.. The good side and the bad side (take your pick which one is which) both have them and they know that they will annihilated too if they were to use them. The second reason is neither side knows how good the other side's really are. They could could be bluffing, they could be as they are bragging, or they could be wildly understated. They may be well maintained and modern, or they may be rusted and unable to escape their silos, launch racks, etc. There have been many conventional and guerilla wars since nukes have been around, but apart from some tests, none have been fired yet. I don't see AI any different in this way. All sides will have it, they won't know what each other really has, but AI on each side is likely to monitor for attacks from the other side and launch accordingly. This could be traditional but unmanned weapons/vehicles, or could be through infrastructure attacks. Add nuclear into the equation, and I think countries will be too scared try it out on the other side for fear of what they will bring on themselves. What I find is more threatening is the state surveillance and violence on its own. Already in democracies, governments have used terrorism acts to suppress natural and transparent justice on its citizens. Facial recognition, etc. is already deployed. Deploying further AI technology can become quite invasive, and while it may be for good intentions (e.g. anti-terrorism operations), if they screw up they can cover up, or the government/enforcement agencies can become nefarious (think of Stasi, ICE, etc). And this can be private as well - criminals and criminal gangs, perverted rapists and the like.. This for me is the one downside I find very had to find a potential defence against. My point is AI is like guns.. AI doesn't do the damage.. it is the people in control that can inflict or protect from the damage. Time will tell.

@Marty_d - I am at best, a very average programmer. Which is probably why formally I am no longer one. But do you not see an upside of AI being improved and early diagnostics of medical conditions leading to better health outcomes? I see that as a definite upside (at my age, anyway). What about better engineering to lower environmental impacts? Or better investment decision making so you reach your goals earlier? I see it these as positives of AI Even as a programmer, do you not see an advantage of AI doing a lot of the menial work I would normally do. We would still have controls to ensure the programmers review the code that is cut, but when I use AI at home it really tidies up a lot of the code that I write and sometimes cleans up the core logic... I find that great..

I don't think it is realistic.either. Even with a stacked SCOTUS, it would he very hard for them to rule any law passed to do it as constitutional (hence my notwithstanding the illegality of it, above). That is the other reason it is clever. He doesn't need to blame it on the socialists - he knows he can't if the republicans win congress (both houses). He can then blame it on those judges that are a threat to America. Not that he knew it was illegal and wouldn't pass muster when he promised it. But should he get it passed, the rich won't stop him. More government debt ultimately equals more money for them even if it travels through the broader economy first.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666990024000132 Is one example. Of course, this may be biased because AI answered it but:

I understand - I was one that advocated that the desktop PC and normal automation won't because the jobs they create will cover the job losses. AI will become so pervasive, the only way I see it happening is that almosy everyone becomes a business. Running what we call today, side hustles.

Re eligibility - all we have is every American adult.. That would imply that non documented migrants would not be eligible, that is it. There was no Republican voting, white, straight church going caveats. So, that is all we have to go for. In theory, that would include those American adults living abroad, but they are dedicated from the count - that that it makes a material difference anyway. If the Rich sense it is a likely outcome, there will be inflation swaps being written for them to get rich against. Also, most of the uber Rich have welath managers and treasury teams, and they will be working hard to make money off the rising inflation and interest rates. Say property prices crash again.. bargains to be had when it picks up. The rich rarely think just the current financial year.