I can’t read the article. Do they explain how it’s more imperialist than what we have now?
Using capital ownership to distribute the proceeds of an industry whose raw material was the creative output of everyone everywhere … seems like the neatest and most obvious possible solution to AI displacement and provenance. But I can see how it might make a few dozen people less likely to be billionaires.
The purpose of any technology is to expand one's powers, and whatever those powers expand to is conquested. Bronze was imperialist but iron was more imperialist, and gunpowder was more imperialist than that. Oil was even more imperialist and now chips and AI are having a go at it. Even the harnessing of fire and the cultivation of spoken language was imperialist, and a necessary step towards today's AI boom. It's the the latest ring to rule them all.
Interestingly to your example, there seems to be a rough consensus that the bronze age collapse (~12th century BC) was related to the fact that iron production was less centralized than bronze, which required multiple long-distance supply chains that could be monopolized by regional powers. Different folks point the causality in different directions.
Some technologies are inherently more centralizing, some are less so.
I agree that most technologies can be applied for imperialistic interests, and the tech space is full of things that seemed decentralizing and have since been captured, but it's not quite law.
IC manufacturing is basically a modern global palace economy full of shipping and single-player choke points and large capital investments, so it leans hard to the centralizing side.
It's less clear that AI will work that way, if it turns out that it is relatively practical to do useful work on locally hosted models it might end up being somewhat decentralizing.
Or, we'll get technological and/or regulatory capture, end up paying rents to technofeudalist douchebags with data centers and proprietary models who bribe governments and peek at user behavior and try to use their already vast resources to preemptively capture any value before anyone else can, until the next major perturbation.
The specific problem isn't "it's not X, it's Y", it's using that pattern where X and Y are not correctly related categorical items.
Yes, I know how I structured that sentence.
"It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI. "It's not an octopus, it's some type of crustacean" does not. The thing that makes it an AI tell is specifically FALSE analogy.
Summary of why sovereign wealth funds are generally a bad idea: the governments don’t like to do things that could potentially harm their investments. If a government has large stakes in cigarette companies, they’re going to be resistant to regulate them.
There’s also plenty of opportunity for corruption. But even with safeguards, there’s going to be opportunities to steer investment towards favored companies and industries and away from those that oppose the administration or otherwise do things the administration doesn’t like (think of efforts to divest from Israel or fossil fuel companies).
“Just invest in the S&P”. Something like this would give substantial power to the index makers. But it also gives preference to already huge companies. Small, unlisted companies would be indirectly penalized by having to compete against companies with government funding.
In the grand scheme of things, the gov claiming a perpetual 21%+ of all income of AI (all) companies is not all that different from owning a small percent of said AI companies. The financials and even incentives are basically the same.
It's somewhat entertaining to watch both sides argue about this as if it's some major difference when both are actually aligned on wanting bigger gov and more gov ownership/control of corps (one party via taxes the other wants it direct).
> the governments don’t like to do things that could potentially harm their investments. If a government has large stakes in cigarette companies, they’re going to be resistant to regulate them.
The ideal in a democracy would be that we behave as adults and make the decision where to draw the lines.
...and yeah, corruption is a problem, but it's going to find a way regardless of what we throw at it. We would be better off handling the existing corruption than worrying about some hypothetical future corruption as a reason we can't try new things.
I think what we’ve found with the current administration is that people will use every last surface for corruption and power that they can. The more you opportunities you give the government to be corrupt, the more corrupt they’re going to be.
Also of note: this is not the first administration to take controversial action. Pretty much every government ever has shown that more power = more corruption.
There's a reason every country with a sovereign wealth fund is a dictatorship, its a really handy way to launder money, steal. Which is why Trump wants it.
This is theory. If we look at the real world, do sovereign wealth funds typically invest in cigarettes? I don't think so. I think they typically have more stringent ethical guidelines than most regular funds.
I'm typically not in favor of sovereign wealth funds anyway. Because I don't buy the idea that the free market is always more efficient than the public sector, and if that's the case then investing the funds in the public sector, schools and improving health and social outcomes, is better than buying SpaceX even if they're going to the moon.
Of course there are exceptions.. if a country has more money than they know what to do with, it makes sense to pile it.
I didn't read because of the paywall, so I don't know how good their argument is, but I'm very skeptical about trusting The Financial Times to determine what is and isn't progressive or techno-imperialism.
30 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 21.7 ms ] threadBut this is the world we live in.
If you put your head in the sand, you become the EU - squeezed by trade wars against China and the US with a conventional war right on your borders.
Using capital ownership to distribute the proceeds of an industry whose raw material was the creative output of everyone everywhere … seems like the neatest and most obvious possible solution to AI displacement and provenance. But I can see how it might make a few dozen people less likely to be billionaires.
Some technologies are inherently more centralizing, some are less so.
I agree that most technologies can be applied for imperialistic interests, and the tech space is full of things that seemed decentralizing and have since been captured, but it's not quite law.
IC manufacturing is basically a modern global palace economy full of shipping and single-player choke points and large capital investments, so it leans hard to the centralizing side. It's less clear that AI will work that way, if it turns out that it is relatively practical to do useful work on locally hosted models it might end up being somewhat decentralizing.
Or, we'll get technological and/or regulatory capture, end up paying rents to technofeudalist douchebags with data centers and proprietary models who bribe governments and peek at user behavior and try to use their already vast resources to preemptively capture any value before anyone else can, until the next major perturbation.
Also, FT is too big to not be aware of AI writing, and to not have internal checks (Pangram, ...)
AI speak infects human language now, people start to talk like LLMs.
Yes, I know how I structured that sentence.
"It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI. "It's not an octopus, it's some type of crustacean" does not. The thing that makes it an AI tell is specifically FALSE analogy.
This is either hyperbole or it hasn't been re-checked since around 2022.
(Disclaimer: didn't read the article. It's paywalled.)
The title has the opposite meaning: it's not X, but it's Y.
FTFY. If you confuse ∈ for =, that's on you.
There’s also plenty of opportunity for corruption. But even with safeguards, there’s going to be opportunities to steer investment towards favored companies and industries and away from those that oppose the administration or otherwise do things the administration doesn’t like (think of efforts to divest from Israel or fossil fuel companies).
“Just invest in the S&P”. Something like this would give substantial power to the index makers. But it also gives preference to already huge companies. Small, unlisted companies would be indirectly penalized by having to compete against companies with government funding.
It's somewhat entertaining to watch both sides argue about this as if it's some major difference when both are actually aligned on wanting bigger gov and more gov ownership/control of corps (one party via taxes the other wants it direct).
We don’t count reduced taxes as a loss in the same way as losses on equities owned. That changes the electoral incentives.
The ideal in a democracy would be that we behave as adults and make the decision where to draw the lines.
...and yeah, corruption is a problem, but it's going to find a way regardless of what we throw at it. We would be better off handling the existing corruption than worrying about some hypothetical future corruption as a reason we can't try new things.
I'm typically not in favor of sovereign wealth funds anyway. Because I don't buy the idea that the free market is always more efficient than the public sector, and if that's the case then investing the funds in the public sector, schools and improving health and social outcomes, is better than buying SpaceX even if they're going to the moon.
Of course there are exceptions.. if a country has more money than they know what to do with, it makes sense to pile it.