After the petitions and protests for the "Pause", the NSC has been funding anti-AI-Safety propaganda to keep the U.S. competitive on AI viz-a-viz China. My evidence comes from attending meetups and conferences on progress studies and e/acc-adjacent themes, which seem to suddenly have all this magic money.
Being anti-AI-Safety in the Bay Area has also become cool in general.
The types of (non-tech) "mainstream media" AI articles I see are often along the lines of:
1) Crappy AI generated pages and results are poisoning the web and search, like spam did earlier for email. The descriptive term getting used is "slop". As in "My email is full of SPAM, and my web search is full of SLOP!".
2) Crappy AI generated news stories and even higher-level work, is causing people to lose jobs, in favor of material that's basically junk, but very cheap to produce. For example, lawyers are filing legal briefs with "hallucinated" case citations.
3) Crappy AI generated algorithmic determinations are "mathwashing" underlying societal racism, sexism, etc.
It does not seem difficult to explain why there is a dearth of stories about how superintelligent AGI will shortly turn us all into paperclips.
I don't mean to be rude, but the focus on AI-doom type speculations in certain subcultures just strikes me as more and more like some strange sort of religious end-days obsession.
1. Low-cost ways to prevent CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere and removed from the atmosphere:
a) A simple tax on first sale of fossil fuels in proportion to the carbon content is the absolutely lowest cost policy but other things can mimic it:
b) Subsidizing the generation of zero-CO2 emitting energy by the amount of the tax and not more than the amount
c) When public investment or regulatory rule making is involved is involved, doing the cost benefit analysis with the (still non-existent) tax included in the benefits. This includes NEPA and NRC decisions.
d) Making sure that other subsidies, for example roof-top solar do not over-subsidize generation
e) Avoiding discouraging specific fossil fuel production and transportation projects and techniques: fracking, LNG exports, pipelines, port infrastructure. [These are additionally bad by publicly appearing to pit CO2 emissions discouragement against economic growth, the diametrically wrong message. The point of discouraging net CO2 emissions it to increase benefits, avoid future costs.]
2. Universal health insurance by a system that does contain cost control points at which therapies and the drugs and implements that are used to carry them out are subject to cost benefit analysis.
3. Expansion of social insurance, transfers to people in specific circumstances (e.g., unemployment) or times of their lives (e.g. child rearing, old age) when their needs exceed their market incomes at the time.
4. Provision of public services such as education and policing be done in accordance with cost-benefit principles.
5. Encouragement of immigration of people who will make extant residents better off and cost-effective discouragement of others. [Most seekers of political asylum would be admitted on “economic” grounds anyway, but there should be some margin for “humanitarian” admission, too.]
6. DEI in the service of MEI public policy impinges on choice among persons
7. Finance of all these things with taxes on consumption, more specifically that in the aggregate deficits = Σ(expenditures with NPV>0). Both the personal income tax, business taxes, and the wage (payroll) tax, even property taxes fail this criterion and we should move toward more use of
a) progressive personal consumption (income minus non consumption) taxes,
b) VAT, and
c) excises on negative externalities, the tax on net emissions of CO2 being the most important example.
I'm confused by this sentence: "Overwhelming disgust at any suggestion that serious public debate about foreign policy is legitimate in a democracy."
So if I were to suggest that there is serious debate about foreign policy happening on campuses across the US, the Agenda would be digusted? "How dare you suggest that there is serious debate. Nobody is grappling with the real foreign policy issues." In other words, the Agenda over-dignifies its role in discussing foreign policy by downplaying any attempts at legitimate foreign policy debate?
"Means testing is an effective increase to the progressivity of the tax system."
If done right. In practice it often just means creating costly to enforce obstacles to reduce the fiscal cost of a particular social insurance benefit.
It's not a coincidence that the most enthusiastic proponents of means testing are not also enthusiastic proponents of higher marginal tax rates on high consumption people. :) That said means testing is better than no benefit at all whihc is what happened to the RCTC (where it could easily have been "done right." :(
After the petitions and protests for the "Pause", the NSC has been funding anti-AI-Safety propaganda to keep the U.S. competitive on AI viz-a-viz China. My evidence comes from attending meetups and conferences on progress studies and e/acc-adjacent themes, which seem to suddenly have all this magic money.
Being anti-AI-Safety in the Bay Area has also become cool in general.
https://twitter.com/0interestrates/status/1685773059444072448
The types of (non-tech) "mainstream media" AI articles I see are often along the lines of:
1) Crappy AI generated pages and results are poisoning the web and search, like spam did earlier for email. The descriptive term getting used is "slop". As in "My email is full of SPAM, and my web search is full of SLOP!".
2) Crappy AI generated news stories and even higher-level work, is causing people to lose jobs, in favor of material that's basically junk, but very cheap to produce. For example, lawyers are filing legal briefs with "hallucinated" case citations.
3) Crappy AI generated algorithmic determinations are "mathwashing" underlying societal racism, sexism, etc.
It does not seem difficult to explain why there is a dearth of stories about how superintelligent AGI will shortly turn us all into paperclips.
I don't mean to be rude, but the focus on AI-doom type speculations in certain subcultures just strikes me as more and more like some strange sort of religious end-days obsession.
Way too abstract to engage with.
As a counter-Agenda: (US version):
1. Low-cost ways to prevent CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere and removed from the atmosphere:
a) A simple tax on first sale of fossil fuels in proportion to the carbon content is the absolutely lowest cost policy but other things can mimic it:
b) Subsidizing the generation of zero-CO2 emitting energy by the amount of the tax and not more than the amount
c) When public investment or regulatory rule making is involved is involved, doing the cost benefit analysis with the (still non-existent) tax included in the benefits. This includes NEPA and NRC decisions.
d) Making sure that other subsidies, for example roof-top solar do not over-subsidize generation
e) Avoiding discouraging specific fossil fuel production and transportation projects and techniques: fracking, LNG exports, pipelines, port infrastructure. [These are additionally bad by publicly appearing to pit CO2 emissions discouragement against economic growth, the diametrically wrong message. The point of discouraging net CO2 emissions it to increase benefits, avoid future costs.]
2. Universal health insurance by a system that does contain cost control points at which therapies and the drugs and implements that are used to carry them out are subject to cost benefit analysis.
3. Expansion of social insurance, transfers to people in specific circumstances (e.g., unemployment) or times of their lives (e.g. child rearing, old age) when their needs exceed their market incomes at the time.
4. Provision of public services such as education and policing be done in accordance with cost-benefit principles.
5. Encouragement of immigration of people who will make extant residents better off and cost-effective discouragement of others. [Most seekers of political asylum would be admitted on “economic” grounds anyway, but there should be some margin for “humanitarian” admission, too.]
6. DEI in the service of MEI public policy impinges on choice among persons
7. Finance of all these things with taxes on consumption, more specifically that in the aggregate deficits = Σ(expenditures with NPV>0). Both the personal income tax, business taxes, and the wage (payroll) tax, even property taxes fail this criterion and we should move toward more use of
a) progressive personal consumption (income minus non consumption) taxes,
b) VAT, and
c) excises on negative externalities, the tax on net emissions of CO2 being the most important example.
I'm confused by this sentence: "Overwhelming disgust at any suggestion that serious public debate about foreign policy is legitimate in a democracy."
So if I were to suggest that there is serious debate about foreign policy happening on campuses across the US, the Agenda would be digusted? "How dare you suggest that there is serious debate. Nobody is grappling with the real foreign policy issues." In other words, the Agenda over-dignifies its role in discussing foreign policy by downplaying any attempts at legitimate foreign policy debate?
"Means testing is an effective increase to the progressivity of the tax system."
If done right. In practice it often just means creating costly to enforce obstacles to reduce the fiscal cost of a particular social insurance benefit.
It's not a coincidence that the most enthusiastic proponents of means testing are not also enthusiastic proponents of higher marginal tax rates on high consumption people. :) That said means testing is better than no benefit at all whihc is what happened to the RCTC (where it could easily have been "done right." :(