> There's a calculable limit to the population an area of land can sustain. (Yes, some agricultural practices can mitigate that, but that should also be weighed against culture and history, and how much change is acceptable.)
Ah yes, folks fighting the good Malthusian fight since 1798, and yet to see a win. LoL. [1]
We may also discover that einstein-rosen bridges exist [1] or that aliens exist or that magic is real or that astrology works. Hopefully none of these things are keeping you up at night.
Also, broken clocks, twice a day right, etc etc. Clocks still broken.
> Then what??
Plenty of dystopian sci-fi available for your reading/viewing pleasure. [2]
> Why does it need to be? Would freedom of permanent movement still be something Europeans would vote for today?
Freedom of movement for labor is absolutely critical to counterbalance the freedom of movement that capital has, otherwise it leads to mass exploitation of labor and rising levels of inequality, which leads to, well, the French approach to the bourgeois problem.
The future is a bit fuzzy, always. That said, here's my take on it.
> Transition to f-ing what though?
Not jobs. Those will be gone once ai can do them cheaper than humans. ai can already do many (most?) of them better than humans. The jury is still out on the cost aspect. Judging by r/LocalLlama, the lower cost is not that far off. There may be some structural adjustments around compute pricing before that happens, though.
In the EU, humans will probably be ok. They have a strong tradition of focus on human needs. Because of lower average salaries [1] than the US [2], human employment will likely carry on longer as well.
In the US, those folks that have capital will likely be ok. They'll be able to purchase services from ai companies and invest in ai companies and corporate armed forces (ai-populated, not human) to protect the Haves. Those that don't have capital? Who knows? America hates poor people, women and minorities.
China? No idea. Though I hear that their demographics are upside-down, so there'll be fewer people to support over the long-term. That they'll supply the robotics and goods for the rest of the world is not in doubt: cheaper electricity from solar/wind, advanced ai and robotic tech, science and industry moving forward while the US regresses, hard.
India? Hard to say. No social net of any consequence. Not enough capital to go full ai/robotics, human labor way cheaper than ai/robotic labor at the moment, so maybe they'll survive as that last major bastion of human work for some time to come. But their economy is growing, and they have a lot of people, so at some point they'll come to that same fork in the road. Hopefully they'll have serious social safety nets by that time.
Africa? In a lot of ways, they're similar to India on the human labor costs side, so their future hasn't been written yet either. India can probably fend off an invasion by rapacious US corporates with ai/robotic armies looking for resources because of sheer numbers, but Africa, fragmented, is a different story. Maybe China will be their friend? If you think this scenario is outlandish, look into the history of European companies colonizing the world. You didn't think the East India Company with its massive private armies were government-owned, did you? Likewise with the Spanish/Dutch/Portugese expansions. The govt. takeovers didn't happen until much later, tens of decades later.
South America? They're an interesting case. Brazil may take a trajectory similar to the EU. Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay too. The others are a ?
This article seems to completely miss the significant compounding effect of real growth over 13 years.
China liberalized their economy in the 70s: 1976 Mao dies -> Cultural revolution ends -> 1978 Deng Xiaoping launches 'Reform & Opening Up'.
India liberalized their economy in the 90s: 1991 Rao and Singh come to power -> eliminate tariffs, dismantle the License Raj.
The difference is at least that of compounded growth over time. At 7% real growth, in 13 years an economy gains about 2.4x. In PPP terms, China's economy is about 2.4x India's [1].
Additional factors to consider are that China liberalized more aggressively through state directed experimentation, and India liberalized more gradually, and within a democratic legal system. Also, on the Chinese side there were periods of slowdown (1989, others), and on the Indian side the economy would have been about 20% larger but for the right-wing/fascist policies of the BJP government [2][3]. But policy failures on both sides are probably a wash, bringing us to today's gap.
Hmm, despite the 13 years head start, turns out in terms of absolute and PPP GDP India and China seemed to have been neck-to-neck until ~1990, after which China really took off.
Maybe we need to strengthen civic/philanthropic infrastructure around Science and Technology to reduce reliance on government funding cycles.
Science and Educational purposes are valid 501(c)(3) purposes. A donation to a 501(c)(3) that funds open-source scientific software, public STEM education, basic research, science grants, or public-interest tech research can be deductible.
Up to 60% of Adjusted Gross Income can be tax-deductible as charitable contributions to a qualified 501(c)(3) with itemization, depending on the contribution type.
This would create a non-partisan defined/dedicated non-profit funding layer with serious governance that will benefit all sides. Might be possible to go global.
This would need serious structure: independent board, conflict-of-interest rules, grant review, public reporting, no private benefit, and probably fiscal sponsorship first.
Maybe this deserves a separate Ask HN to avoid derailing this thread: would people here actually support or help design a 501(c)(3)-style vehicle for public-benefit science and technology funding?
Problem is that the current administration is ALSO going after 501c3s. They just changed the rules for reporting via 990 tax forms (that non-profits in the US use to report their activities) to make them far more detailed and require more details about where and how money is being spent. On the surface, most people read that and think "good, more information is better" but what ends up happening is that foundations and other large donors may shift the way they give due to the new ruling, which will leave huge swaths of non-profits without funding.
Arguably, these vehicles do exist... in the form of 501(c)(3) university endowments. They endow professorships and graduate fellowships, pay for facility buildouts and infrastructure, and provide a strong pipeline of financial aid to allow talented undergraduates to pursue research rather than needing to repay debt immediately after graduation. And unused funds are invested in public and private markets, ensuring minimal waste and sustainable capital growth. And non-profit universities have strong and time-tested governance rules on many if not all of the dimensions specified.
But these very endowments have been special cased as additionally taxable, despite that status, under the 2025 OBBBA, resulting in research budget cuts [0].
Would independent endowments as you describe them be more immune?
> Norway is the 5th largest weapons and defense manufacturer
Any evidence for this? Norway shows as 13th on the list of arms exporters, and is 1/42 of US exports [1]. If counting total manufacturing, Norway is 1/100th to 1/150th of US volume, based on how you count. [2]
> while the so called Oil Fund doesn't directly invest in them, Kongsberg is 50% state owned.
Kongsberg is a conglomerate with non-defense businesses [3]. The volume of defense-related product is not called out but Norway's total is just around $2.5B [4] compared to US at $334B [5] or about 1/133. Your point does stand as hypocrisy at the state level; though management decisions are likely separate between the two entities and not coordinated at the state level.
> Glad Norway's oil fund has some sense and is above the virtue signaling of the Danes.
That is two claims: that the Danish fund lacks judgment, and that its policy is performative. Any evidence?
> so called Oil Fund
'Oil fund' is fair shorthand - it's funded by petro wealth. 'so called Oil Fund' seems to be a sneer. Combined with 'some sense' and 'virtue signaling,' it reads less like argument and more like contempt.
> AI is grown, not built, and like with anything you grow, you'll never be able to predict exactly how it will turn out.
Remember when the frontier labs found out that curated high-quality training was critical to making better models?
Basically, just like high-quality and more education tends to make better humans, on average, I think we can expect quality education to turn out better ai, on average, and with better repeatability than with humans because of better control over the initial conditions and environment.
> Basically, just like high-quality and more education tends to make better humans, on average
Much like these models seem to be plateauing, I think there is a cap to the whole “more education makes better humans” and can’t be more apparent than in the US congress and the boatload of C-Suites not actually being very good humans.
Seems to me the venn diagram of "congress and c-suites" vs "educated people" would have one circle wholly inside the other.
I know people without a college education that would give you the shirt off their back, and educated people that rewrite wills while their parents are on their deathbed.
What we call education today is a problem, and one need look no further than the massive amount of debt we saddle on kids. For what? So they can pay for privilege of being told what books to read, what topics to write about, and a rubber stamp? I didn't learn a _thing_ in college that I haven't learned better either at $dayjob, or from reading.
Most of my math profs. didn't speak english well, and none of the TAs did. Any math I've since forgotten from college was self-taught. Calc i/ii/iii, diffew, linear, stat.
College/education lost the plot. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can fix it.
> Sadly, education does not correct psychopathic traits, which might be overrepresented in c-suites, and selected for in politicians.
>> Seems to me the venn diagram of "congress and c-suites" vs "educated people" would have one circle wholly inside the other.
Both things can be true.
> look no further than the massive amount of debt we saddle on kids.
See politicians and c-suites populated by psychopaths for the origins of this problem.
> I didn't learn a _thing_ in college that I haven't learned better either at $dayjob, or from reading.
Putting it a bit bluntly, like any other activity, one gets out of it what one puts into it. I had a very different experience from yours, accents and language skills notwithstanding. But there is so much variation in a domain so broad in our country that is so big, it doesn't necessarily invalidate your experience.
> College/education lost the plot. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we can fix it.
There is a long list/tradition of higher education through thousands of years of human history, with Harvard/MIT/Oxford being the pre-eminent ones today. [1][2]
What alternative do you propose? For humans, and AI?
Seems like the key elements in this are the use of a neuromorphic autoencoder (instead of a 'regular' one), plus Fowler–Nordheim annealing dynamics and Ising energy minimization so that the system is not just passively settling, it's being taken through a controlled search process designed to avoid premature trapping and scale to higher-order combinatorial optimization problems. [1]
A 'regular' autoencoder is a neural network trained to compress data and then reconstruct it.
A neuromorphic autoencoder is instead implemented using brain-inspired computing elements like spiking neurons, event-driven updates, local interactions, sometimes specialized hardware. In this paper, looks like the autoencoder is being used as a structured energy-minimizing circuit for an Ising optimization problem. The architecture manipulates Ising clauses rather than only pairwise spin interactions.
Ordinary artificial neurons compute matrix ops such as y=f(Wx+b), while this uses artificial neurons that accumulate input, which emit a spike when they cross a threshold, like biological neurons (event driven neural dynamics).
From the article: "... Illinois’ bill goes a step further, requiring independent auditors to verify that an AI lab is adhering to its own safety standards. ..."
Ah yes, the fox guarding the chicken-coop; the auditors are to verify that the fox is indeed guarding the chicken-coop per the standards the fox has set. No mention of disappearing chickens anywhere in the standards.
Ah yes, folks fighting the good Malthusian fight since 1798, and yet to see a win. LoL. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Criticism
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