Which raises a much more urgent question: does AI justify the diversion of such funding from, say, libraries, parks, schools, etc. to Google, Amazon, Microsoft on behalf of research? And if so, where's the hard proof backing this significant tradeoff? 7/
POLICY
-
Academic AI Research Dependency on Big Tech Infrastructure
By
–
IRL, no academic can afford to pay retail ($100b training runs, y'all). So, academic labs vie for access/proximity to Big Tech infra in pursuit of doing 'relevant' research–something that should alarm fans of academic neutrality/those concerned w conflict of interest. 3/
-
Government funding Big Tech deepens corporate AI infrastructure control
By
–
BUT the current proposals to alleviate this imbalance largely exacerbate it. Insofar as they amount to gov paying Big Tech to get academics access to Big Tech resources. This strengthens Big Tech control & further normalize access to Big Tech infra as "the way AI gets done." 4/
-
Big Tech Marketing and AI Resource Allocation Critique
By
–
But it's not just this. By accepting the frame that such access is vital/necessary, we're buying into Big Tech marketing that says AI is real, lasting, and requires the diversion of billion$ (that could be spent otherwise). 5/
-
Big Tech AI Control Problem: Current Solutions Risk Extending Dominance
By
–
Notable that this longstanding problem, which I and a few others have been naming for ~a decade, is now common sense. It's true. AI is fundamentally a technology controlled by Big Tech. But the current 'solutions' to this problem would extend, not dilute, Big Tech control. 1/ https://
x.com/jpalfrey/statu
/jpalfrey/status/1766863775427068240
… -
AI Company Faces Competition, Legal Troubles, Strategic Challenges
By
–
Sure but they also have already 4 close competitors that have largely caught up, with at least one competing on price, a dozen or so lawsuits, upcoming licensing costs, at least 2 or 3 federal investigations, no moat, high operating costs, and a desperate need to build something
-
OT Cybersecurity Investments: Former Defense Secretary Perspectives
By
–
Driving OT Cybersecurity Investments – Perspectives from the Former US Secretary of Defense. An interview with Lucian Niemeyer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and current CEO of Building Cyber Security. #buildingcybersecurity_ics #S4x24 https://
x.com/i/broadcasts/1
BdGYrdYnolJX
… -
Moral status of consciousness and legal personhood in alien slavery
By
–
Dath ilan considers it a tough moral question for 1-month-olds. I don't know what their science of consciousness says about age 2. Are you okay with enslaving conscious aliens who can talk and beg you to stop, if there's no law to tell you that they're people?
-
LLM Alignment: Ethics vs PR in the Real World
By
–
In an ideal world, the battle over aligning LLMs would be between ethicists and epistemologists. In reality, it seems to be between activists and PR strategists
-
Better tools for community moderation and thread governance
By
–
i wish we had better tools to shape our threads, it’s much easier to cultivate a space by keeping it clean than by banishing the worst litterers