A.I and Geopolitics

[uiux]

Pretty interesting reading about Bilderberg in Washington DC this year.

press release

The key topics for discussion this year are:

1. Geopolitical Realignments
2. NATO Challenges
3. China
4. Indo-Pacific Realignment
5. Sino-US Tech Competition
6. Russia
7. Continuity of Government and the Economy
8. Disruption of the Global Financial System
9. Disinformation
10. Energy Security and Sustainability
11. Post Pandemic Health
12. Fragmentation of Democratic Societies
13. Trade and Deglobalisation
14. Ukraine

Full list of participants here:

Participants

Notables:

• Altman, Sam (USA), CEO, OpenAI
• Hassabis, Demis (GBR), CEO and Founder, DeepMind
• Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, Inflection AI; Partner, Greylock
• LeCun, Yann (USA), Vice-President and Chief AI Scientist, Facebook, Inc.
• Scott, Kevin (USA), CTO, Microsoft Corporation
• Suleyman, Mustafa (GBR), CEO, Inflection AI
• Wennink, Peter (NLD), President and CEO, ASML Holding NV

Obviously all the reps for government and the military industrial complex are also highly relevant.

---

World’s most secretive group meets in Washington

One of the worlds highest-powered, yet least known, conferences on international affairs wrapped up in Washington DC on Sunday Monday AEST, without a single Australian among the attendees.

amp.theaustralian.com.au

---

Bilderberg reconvenes in person after two-year pandemic gap | Bilderberg | The Guardian

The Washington conference, a high-level council of war, will be headlined by Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general

amp.theguardian.com

And of course, holding court at the hotel bar will be Klaus Schwab’s mentor, Henry Kissinger.

Incredibly, Kissinger, 99, has been attending Bilderbergs since 1957.

The prince of realpolitik has been the ideological godfather of Bilderberg for as long as anyone can remember. And he’s recently co-authored a book, The Age of AI, with Bilderberg steering committee member Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, and this year’s Washington conference is noticeably rammed with AI luminaries, from Facebook’s Yann LeCun to DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.

Bilderberg knows that however the global realignments play out, and whatever a reset global financial system looks like, the shape of the world will be determined by big tech. And if the endgame is “Continuity of Government”, as the agenda suggests, that continuity will be powered by AI.

Whatever billionaire ends up making the software that runs the world, Bilderberg aims to make damned sure that it has its hand on the mouse.

---

Henry Kissinger’s Last Crusade: Stopping Dangerous AI

The former Secretary of State and the former CEO of Google call for leadership and guidelines around how we use artificial intelligence.

time.com

Dr. Kissinger, you’re an elder statesman. Why did you think AI was an important enough subject for you?​

Kissinger: When I was an undergraduate, I wrote my undergraduate thesis of 300 pages—which was banned after that ever to be permitted—called “The Meaning of History.” The subject of the meaning of history and where we go has occupied my life. The technological miracle doesn’t fascinate me so much; what fascinates me is that we are moving into a new period of human consciousness which we don’t yet fully understand. When we say a new period of human consciousness, we mean that the perception of the world will be different, at least as different as between the age of enlightenment and the medieval period, when the Western world moved from a religious perception of the world to a perception of the world on the basis of reason, slowly. This will be faster.

 

[Rise from the ashes]

Pretty interesting reading about Bilderberg in Washington DC this year.

press release

The key topics for discussion this year are:

1. Geopolitical Realignments
2. NATO Challenges
3. China
4. Indo-Pacific Realignment
5. Sino-US Tech Competition
6. Russia
7. Continuity of Government and the Economy
8. Disruption of the Global Financial System
9. Disinformation
10. Energy Security and Sustainability
11. Post Pandemic Health
12. Fragmentation of Democratic Societies
13. Trade and Deglobalisation
14. Ukraine

Full list of participants here:

Participants

Notables:

• Altman, Sam (USA), CEO, OpenAI
• Hassabis, Demis (GBR), CEO and Founder, DeepMind
• Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, Inflection AI; Partner, Greylock
• LeCun, Yann (USA), Vice-President and Chief AI Scientist, Facebook, Inc.
• Scott, Kevin (USA), CTO, Microsoft Corporation
• Suleyman, Mustafa (GBR), CEO, Inflection AI
• Wennink, Peter (NLD), President and CEO, ASML Holding NV

Obviously all the reps for government and the military industrial complex are also highly relevant.

---

World’s most secretive group meets in Washington

One of the worlds highest-powered, yet least known, conferences on international affairs wrapped up in Washington DC on Sunday Monday AEST, without a single Australian among the attendees.

amp.theaustralian.com.au

---

Bilderberg reconvenes in person after two-year pandemic gap | Bilderberg | The Guardian

The Washington conference, a high-level council of war, will be headlined by Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general

amp.theguardian.com

And of course, holding court at the hotel bar will be Klaus Schwab’s mentor, Henry Kissinger.

Incredibly, Kissinger, 99, has been attending Bilderbergs since 1957.

The prince of realpolitik has been the ideological godfather of Bilderberg for as long as anyone can remember. And he’s recently co-authored a book, The Age of AI, with Bilderberg steering committee member Eric Schmidt, the former head of Google, and this year’s Washington conference is noticeably rammed with AI luminaries, from Facebook’s Yann LeCun to DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.

Bilderberg knows that however the global realignments play out, and whatever a reset global financial system looks like, the shape of the world will be determined by big tech. And if the endgame is “Continuity of Government”, as the agenda suggests, that continuity will be powered by AI.

Whatever billionaire ends up making the software that runs the world, Bilderberg aims to make damned sure that it has its hand on the mouse.

---

Henry Kissinger’s Last Crusade: Stopping Dangerous AI

The former Secretary of State and the former CEO of Google call for leadership and guidelines around how we use artificial intelligence.

time.com

Dr. Kissinger, you’re an elder statesman. Why did you think AI was an important enough subject for you?​

Kissinger: When I was an undergraduate, I wrote my undergraduate thesis of 300 pages—which was banned after that ever to be permitted—called “The Meaning of History.” The subject of the meaning of history and where we go has occupied my life. The technological miracle doesn’t fascinate me so much; what fascinates me is that we are moving into a new period of human consciousness which we don’t yet fully understand. When we say a new period of human consciousness, we mean that the perception of the world will be different, at least as different as between the age of enlightenment and the medieval period, when the Western world moved from a religious perception of the world to a perception of the world on the basis of reason, slowly. This will be faster.

Cheers, will be a nice read in the morning over breakfast A tip for those who don't have a subscription for the Australian ( android) click the three dots on the top right of your screen then click settings then scroll down to site settings then block JavaScript. Then go back to article that could not be accessed then refresh page. You'll then be able to read article. Works with a few other pay walls also.
Edit... Unblock JavaScript after otherwise you'll have issues with websites.

 

[AusEire]

Cheers, will be a nice read in the morning over breakfast A tip for those who don't have a subscription for the Australian ( android) click the three dots on the top right of your screen then click settings then scroll down to site settings then block JavaScript. Then go back to article that could not be accessed then refresh page. You'll then be able to read article. Works with a few other pay walls also.
Edit... Unblock JavaScript after otherwise you'll have issues with websites.

Just for those on Mobile. This tip also works

Learn something new everyday!

 

[Goldphish]

In the AFR:


This fundie saw the AI boom coming. Now he sees a problem
Andrew Macken picked the AI boom a year before it happened. He’s still a big believer, but says the economics for players like Google remain uncertain for now.

Feb 13, 2023 – 5.00am

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Fund manager Andrew Macken is proof that in investing, spotting a trend before everyone else doesn’t necessarily always make you a winner.

About 12 months ago, the founder of Montaka, which has two funds listed on the ASX, released a white paper in which he predicted “hyperscaling” tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet (owner of Google) would use artificial intelligence to turbocharge new growth eras.

Fast-forward a year and that’s exactly how it’s playing out. Last week’s release of AI-enabled search engines by Microsoft and Google kicked off an AI arms race that will rapidly spread across the sector. Macken might be missing Australia’s summer from his New York base, but he’s had a front-row seat to watch his prediction come true.


Artificial intelligence could transform the tech sector, according to Andrew Macken. David Rowe

“We think that AI is another multi-decade transformational trend and the simple reason for that is that AI really acts like a bit of a skeleton key to unlock the solutions to really hard problems – engineering problems and scientific problems – in just about every sector you can think of,” he says.

But Macken’s early call hasn’t been without pain.

As tech stocks were smashed last year, Montaka’s portfolio was punished. Its flagship long-only fund was up 13 per cent in January, but remains down 24.4 per cent over 12 months.

Macken stresses the fund has a five-year to 10-year view of the market, and says investors who think similarly have a great opportunity.

“We find ourselves in a situation where the long-term prospects have not changed, it’s just that you can buy a lot of these businesses at heavily discounted prices. I wish I had a whole lot of cash sitting on the sidelines to buy, but unfortunately, we’ve sort of ridden this down, and now we’re riding it back up again.”

Biggest bets
Macken doesn’t consider himself a tech investor, nor is Montaka a growth fund. He names S&P Global and private capital giant Blackstone as two of his top picks, suggesting the latter will emerge from the current period of interest rate-driven dislocation in a power position.

“Our longer-term view is that interest rates will sort of be probably much lower longer term than most people think, and therefore asset prices will probably keep going up. It’s a wonderful backdrop for a business like Blackstone whose fees are obviously driven by both asset values and asset flows.”

But Macken’s biggest bets are in tech because the size of the opportunity is simply too big to ignore. Not only are the potential growth rates and profit margins strong, but entrenched giants – his top picks are Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Salesforce and Spotify – can ride big structural trends, such as digitisation and the move to the cloud, that will continue regardless of economic conditions.

“For many of the large-scale tech companies that we own, one of the reasons why we like them is because they do have entrenched competitive positions in some sectors that have very, very high barriers to entry. And they are both positioned for transformations which are quite structural in nature.”

AI is another accelerant. But while Macken says it’s been fascinating to watch the world discover the generative AI tools he and his team have been playing with for 12 months, the explosion in interest has raised a fascinating question: how soon can the tech giants actually make AI pay in the short term?

Bing v Bard
Take Google’s AI-powered search tool, called Bard. Morgan Stanley estimates it currently costs Google about $US0.0020 to deliver one of the 9 billion or so search queries it serves up each day. With Bard, those costs are likely to rise about five times.

Morgan Stanley estimates that if Google provided Bard results with 50 per cent of its queries it would add $US6 billion of incremental costs, cutting 6 per cent from its 2024 earnings.

“It’s just far too expensive to do that,” Macken says. “And I am not even sure that there’s enough compute [computing power] on planet Earth.”

He argues the cost issue sets up a fascinating clash between Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft’s share of search is so low that it won’t incur massive costs by releasing the AI-enabled version of Bing as widely as possible. What’s more, Macken says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is well aware he’s forcing Google into a tough spot where Nadella himself has said Google faces asymmetric competition.

Does Google defend its turf by releasing Bard widely and wearing those increased costs? Or does it limit Bard’s release, keep costs down, and allow Microsoft’s Bing to take share?

As Nadella said last week: “There is such margin in search, which for us is incremental. For Google, it’s not, they have to defend it all.”

Macken expects Google will need to limit Bard to higher-value users in the short term. And while most observers believe Microsoft has jumped to an early AI lead with Bing, Macken says its real advantage will be in its incredible relationship with business customers.

“Microsoft arguably has the most privileged position, but it’s actually not because of their AI. It’s because of their distribution into the enterprise.”

 

[stuart888]

What about AI. It is all I hear about. Who is the smartest? Maybe the Tesla AI guy is the badass!

This is not the 8 minute version, rather the longer version. I listen to every second. Lex is great.

I really don't think Brainchip is in competition in this space, but it spreads the AI love. Gets companies onboard and loading up.

Go EdgeAI with low power smarts.

 

[macro]

The AI Arms Race Is Changing Everything

https://time.com/6255952/ai-impact-chatgpt-microsoft-google/ Updated: February 17, 2023

Artificial intelligence has already had a pervasive impact on our lives. AIs are used to price medicine and houses, assemble cars, determine what ads we see on social media. But generative AI, a category of system that can be prompted to create wholly novel content, is much newer.

Proponents believe this is just the beginning: that generative AI will reorient the way we work and engage with the world, unlock creativity and scientific discoveries, and allow humanity to achieve previously unimaginable feats.

This frenzy appeared to catch off guard even the tech companies that have invested billions of dollars in AI—and has spurred an intense arms race in Silicon Valley. In a matter of weeks, Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google have shifted their entire corporate strategies in order to seize control of what they believe will become a new infrastructure layer of the economy. Microsoft is investing $10 billion in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT and Dall-E, and announced plans to integrate generative AI into its Office software and search engine, Bing. Google declared a “code red” corporate emergency in response to the success of ChatGPT and rushed its own search-oriented chatbot, Bard, to market. “A race starts today,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Feb. 7, throwing down the gauntlet at Google’s door. “We’re going to move, and move fast.”

Wall Street has responded with similar fervor, with analysts upgrading the stocks of companies that mention AI in their plans and punishing those with shaky AI-product rollouts.

In a winner-takes-all battle for power, Big Tech and their venture-capitalist backers risk repeating past mistakes, including social media’s cardinal sin: prioritizing growth over safety.

But the early AIs were painfully susceptible to parroting the biases in their training data: spitting out misinformation and hate speech.

In August 2022, a scrappy London-based startup named Stability AI went rogue and released a text-to-image tool, Stable Diffusion, to the masses.

Social media—the Valley’s last truly world-changing innovation—carries the first valuable lesson. It was built on the promise that connecting people would make our societies healthier and individuals happier. More than a decade later, we can see that its failures came not from that welcome connectedness, but the way tech companies monetized it: by slowly warping our news feeds to optimize for engagement, keeping us scrolling through viral content interspersed with targeted online advertising.

It’s not hard to see AI’s integration into Big Tech products going down the same road.

Even if computer scientists succeed in making sure the AIs don’t wipe us out, their increasing centrality to the global economy could make the Big Tech companies who control it vastly more powerful. They could become not just the richest corporations in the world—charging whatever they want for commercial use of this critical infrastructure—but also geopolitical actors to rival nation-states.

 

[macro]

There's no evidence today's A.I. tech will improve our daily lives, says Elevation's Roger McNamee who was an early Facebook and Google investor.

Big tech and AI rally. The incentives of the system are not aligned with the incentives of society.

He says Chat GPT - Generative AI is literally BS generators, no verified content.

“Every time you make a large language model you spend about half a billion dollars on Nvidia chips. There is no obvious business model with Open AI, there is no way to monetize it other than with surveillance capitalism. And we know from social media how much harm that causes.

A battle between Open AI trying to create this inevitability and the reality of the market saying interest rates are now 5%. The costs are too high in a 5% interest rate environment, and when you have businesses with no obvious business model.

The search engine results you need to do fact checking. That literally defeats the purpose of a search engine. Google gives you a long list of potential sources. This is going to give you one answer that sounds tremendously authoritative. It has hallucinations, – nonsense, made up things.

AI has enormous potential. The trick is you need to change the incentives. The incentive to protect the people who use it, that the content produces accurate results.”

 

[macro]

A chart comparing Chat GPT adoption to other digital platforms.

Chat GPT hit a million users faster than any other digital technology.

 

[Kachoo]

A chart comparing Chat GPT adoption to other digital platforms.

Chat GPT hit a million users faster than any other digital technology.

Show you how fats technology goes now