As an American, I don't necessarily want the US to be trusted. I want foreign governments to put pressure on us to stop developing omnicidal AI. The sooner the "rogue AI agents" conversation links up with the "USA is untrustworthy" conversation, the better.
I'm not as optimistic as you are, because a component of the rightward shift is the international collaboration of the respective movements' leaders. For example, US republicans closely worked together with Orbans party and Germanys AfD, exchanging strategies and such. This is also reflected across the media landscape in these countries - when new fabricated talking points pop up across US conservative spaces, it usually takes 2-4 weeks until the same talking points are repeated by many German right-wing media outlets.
Of course these alliances won't survive forever, as these movements have to continually expand their definitions of "out-groups" to keep their core "in-groups" satisfied, since they keep making their countries' issues worse by attempting fixes that are easy, simple, and wrong. But when a movement is built around the rejection of any uncomfortable history or research mixed with a huge dose of anti-intellectualism, it is fundamentally incapable of ever reflecting and learning beyond what the personal gain of their leaders.
Why do you think so? The US funding won't suddenly stop, especially given how much the GOP hates the EU. Plenty of other rich people too.
Unless there are objectively good reasons to expect this we must stay vigilant, since if we gamble on infighting and it goes poorly, the consequences could become horrifying.
yup, but the utter majority of foreign funding that was found in the AfD and the other far-right parties' scandals came from Russia. The propaganda they spout comes straight from Russia. The bot farms amplifying their propaganda are mostly Russian.
Sure, the US MAGA network, the super riches (Musk, Thiel, ...) aren't to be underestimated. But they are breaking apart already and without a cohesive force connecting them, they will be much less powerful.
Sure, so far the funds came from Russia, but the US government has openly talked about increasing their funding.
I don't think that their propaganda is fully dependent on Russia. IMO their strategy was really easy to observe during/after the 2020 election: they do contentious things with barely any justification, then watch conservative social media spaces for explanations/justifications that users naturally share & amplify. From these options, they select ones advantageous to them, and then turn them into talking points. This machine doesn't need to get talking points from Russia! They just need a halfway charismatic leader to keep it going, especially due to my next point.
The bot farms are no longer needed thanks to AI! I guarantee you, they are already running plenty of bots themselves. And since these days most social media & news media companies are aligned with/owned by them, they can easily optimize their approach well enough to become dangerously effective.
I just don't see a reason to feel so safe about them breaking apart before major damage is done. Just look at how genuinely friendly Trump acts towards most highly authoritarian leaders, compared to the way he acts towards most other leaders. I assume they'll definitely break apart after e.g. the EU is broken up, because then the US will squeeze everyone else. But under Trump they're going to keep it up, as far as I can see.
it takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear power plant and it takes another 20 to build it back. it costs a multitude of resources and money to build, maintain and tear down compared to renewables.
nuclear has its role currently but it's not the future.
Long long ago people planted trees where a windmill was to be build. Construction would start 20-30 years later and also took quite a bit of time.
If it took (I dunno) say a year to build one you could pick a new location and plant trees each year.
Seems almost an alien concept but I guess it is a bit like a construction company has to wait for the new powerplant to expire before they get to build a new one.
Yes, switching energy sources takes a while, but the energy system is being completely rebuilt anyway as equipment ages out, so you need to be continually doing this anyway.
None of the actions that countries are taking to decouple from the US happen over night.
The US has destroyed its privileged position among nations, but the effects won't be visible for a couple more years.
Well assuming it's successful, there will be a large number of companies who's value will be reassessed as the token cost to replicate and run the business.
Multi-million dollar companies will be reduced into multi thousand dollar companies.
The CEOs will be replaced with teenagers in garages with their parent's credit cards.
If it stalls, then China will undercut the whole AI market with cheap electricity and crash the US stock market.
I can’t help but notice the “if it stalls” still assumes AI is successful, only that China beats the US. What if AI in general can’t do any of the things you mention?
The AI companies will be bailed out by the government, resulting in inflation and lost purchasing power for regular people while investors keep all their gains. Classic wealth transfer.
It's obvious to more people every day that "AI" has never delivered on what it promised. Until now nobody cared because the costs were cheap and it pays to appear cutting edge. Now the price is rising, and the delayed cost of AI-addiction and broken outputs are starting to sting. Not that employers care about the individual harms of course, but a workforce so deep in collective delusion that they can't see the train coming is only useful when the market is delusional too.
Once this snaps, and it will snap suddenly, companies will be climbing over each other to rip out AI as fast as possible. They won't call it that, of course, you're not going to get a CEO on the news talking about how they made a mistake and it was wrong to invest so much in AI tech. But they'll mean it.
The win scenario is that the crash reduces "AI" use to near zero. Spat out into the graveyard of VC hype like blockchain and metaverse before it. Banished to an eternal unlife of scammers running call centre scams, deepfake porn producers, and the occasional "we made AI safe!" startup trying to reignite the bubble again. While companies with their business on the line clamber to announce that they don't use it.
Probably a con job. The AI companies don't think they will be able to significantly improve their models in the next year or so, so they are stalling with government regulations whilst taking in investor money.
That didn't keep them from getting bombed for a month, and their senior leadership all killed. It just let them punch back a little bit. Not an equal amount, just a little bit.
They say it, but can they prove it? Because everyone seems to be saying a different thing. Shouldn't Pakistan be able to say "this is the document, these are the terms, these are the signatures, case closed"?
I'm not saying they're lying, I am just wondering why they don't seem to have a definitive proof of what they say- they say one thing and the US "disagrees"- why can't any of the parties just show the fucking document?
Better than the alternative where they don't, I suppose. Kind of like how for some political things you have to use yandex to search because US search companies suppress the results.
Country-1: "Absolutely free speech! Except when it's about Country-4 -> rights revoked."
Country-2: "Criticize Country-4 all you want, but talking smack about Country-5 is treason buddy."
Country-3: "Wait... so I can roast Country-4 but not Country-5... and also not Country-6? My head hurts."
Country-4: "We don't block anything! ...Just not that thing you're talking about."
Country-5: "See Country-3? We absolutely love speech. As long as it praises us. Freedom yay!"
In the end, we might end up having the very same private vpn';s (or tor) routing their traffic over these gov. vpn's based on keyword matches in the request.. or customer's will be able to choose .. kinda like auto-model feature on openrouter lol.
Even if the EU becomes far right, far right governments don't work or trust each other. What you are saying is moot.
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