I think it could be life changing, but true progress will take time, like any tech. There’s a reason most scientists know you can’t just throw money at something and just make it work. That’s why technocracy and the idea of chosen elite is so fucking dumb.

Imagine if in the 80s we had just said ok, Steve Jobs did it. We’re done here. We don’t give any outside voices or ideas in tech a chance unless Jobs gives it the ok first. Imagine how much cool shit we would have missed out on if people hadn’t just said fuck it I don’t need all that money, I’ll just make my own shit and make it work with what I have.

Innovation and progress does not flourish in a neatly controlled box, and most people that don’t just buy other people’s work know that. That’s the real reason people started pushing for DEI. Not just bc it was the “PC” thing to do. It helps bring new perspectives which then leads to new ways of thinking and problem solving.

If you completely isolate AI you may get some cool shit but eventually if you just buy out the entire market to fit your singular vision you get repeating/boring and stale.

I’m pretty sure they think they’re at a point where if they just keep throwing money at it, it will just start getting creative and update itself, but when it’s as unreliable as it is, I don’t see that happening anytime soon

I’m not saying I believe its important, the president believes it’s important bc Thiel has been funding him and making policy decisions since his first term, most people (myself included) just didn’t notice it until the second one.

The first time, he tried to promote AI deregulation while insisting we would retain American values that helped us be better than China’s surveillance state, but then Trump lost power and Thiel lost 4 years of progress at the global AI table because of those values (democracy and the constitution). Now that he’s gotten his seat back he’s not going to risk ever letting it go. IF he ever intended to try to maintain or respect those values before, he certainly doesn’t now.

That is why the truth behind Trump/JD Vance/Adrian Vermeule’s argument for a constitutional interpretation of strong executive authority needs to be made loud and clear.

I cannot comprehend how anyone who is not already a billionaire could be dumb enough to support this, but let’s just be honest about what you’re supporting.

Bc you’re paying attention and not sticking your head in the sand.

It feels like it bc they definitely are. I’m in Louisiana and just woke up to find out news my corrupt Governor is being accused of scheming to install a new senator so that he can then have them resign and take both Senate and governor seats for himself.

Report: President Trump and Gov Landry discuss U.S. Rep Julia Letlow as a potential challenger to Senator Cassidy in 2026 Republican primary

One of several examples of how Landry and Trump seem to be scheming together to be as corrupt as possible

Even for Louisiana that’s a whole other level of corruption…not even the first Louisiana governor to do it, but the last one was in the 30s.

The last governor that was this blatant about corruption also had a personal vendetta against my city and tried to take it under siege using the national guard

Guess what else the current governor and his doge inspired task force are scheming

I agree, and as I keep trying to point out to people in the U.S., I’m pretty sure the reason Trump is not even giving GOP loyalists emergency disaster money when something happens in their state, is because there’s nothing left.

He literally put all of America’s eggs in one basket because he (and Peter Thiel) thought/think if they just deregulate everything and keep throwing money at it as fast as possible they will win, and other countries will be coming to us to buy our AI.

Tbf they are definitely planning to use it for evil, not to make humanity better, but I still don’t see why anybody would buy AI tech from the U.S.

I am wondering what happened in Brussels though, that made them say they’re considering some deregulation.

Trump was also very pissy at all of the EU but apparently Brussels in particular really hurt his ego

Yeah that is kind of a given, I just wish more people would wake up to that fact.

I use proton VPN, but no I always just get my phones from Amazon bc it’s cheap. Never was a real problem in the past, but now that the U.S. is (officially) a giant Oligopoly, probably not a wise idea.

I don’t really know any tech friends that are super in the know about that kind of thing. I have a paid Norton 360 subscription that does frequent scans for malware and says it never finds anything, but honestly wouldn’t even be surprised to learn I’m paying for a useless subscription.

I’m also in a state that was involved in a huge government data breach a few years back. They didn’t really go into it too much when it happened, but apparently just about everyone over the age of 18 had their private data compromised.

The only reason I even bring that up is bc our current Governor who has always been a power hungry authoritarian boot licker renewed the Executive Order for a state of emergency for a cyber incident that our previous governor first created when the data breach happened several years ago.

When he “renewed” the order, he also slipped in a new section that granted authority to the director of one of his cabinet’s agencies, Governor’s office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), to handle the emergency as he sees fit.

What’s even more concerning is that on the same day he renewed this order, he restructured GOHSEP so that it is now under the control of the state’s National Guard, gave the former director of GOHSEP a new title, and then named a member of the Guard “acting director.”

He’s been very vague about what the renewal was about, but it allegedly had something to do with updating the OMV/DMV data base for the state. Since then he has also created a hiring freeze for the state, which would seem to indicate that whoever was acting director is now indefinitely the director named in the executive order until the governor decides to lift the hiring freeze.

Even for someone not already paranoid, and without everything happening at a national level, that would all be a bit concerning right? I’m not a journalist, but I’ve been trying to get people to pay attention to it.

For some reason, no actual local journalists seem to be willing to point this out, but it’s all publicly available information.

I know I’m usually on the more paranoid side, but I’ve always assumed everything I do on a smartphone is potentially being monitored via camera or mics.

If the apps are just taking screenshots, or recording a few seconds of data via mic, it would be almost guaranteed that certain corrupt (and also paranoid) governments that are dismissive of privacy rights could force or bribe those apps to allow them to also access screens, mics, and cameras anyway, right?

I’m in the U.S., and especially with how glitchy my phone has suddenly become over the last few months, I’m just at the point where I just assume that’s what’s going on.

I had the same android for like 4 years without many issues, then suddenly around February it just became almost impossible to use. Weird glitchy things with the size of the tool bar at the bottom of my screen and the popup keyboard. Redirect notifications all the time for certain websites, and my VPN connection is just constantly interrupted and having to be reset.

I finally was like fuck it, this is an old phone so maybe that’s it. Brand new phone, but most of the same issues.

I use signal instead of text most of the time, and switched a lot of things to proton mail, but if someone is potentially recording your screen, does it really matter if what you’re doing is encrypted?

No it’s not clickbait, he really is a fucking moron.

I had the same visceral reaction reading the title of this post

Oh fuck me! The standard of living has already taken such a giant nose dive during my lifetime. First it was corporations and now this shit? You have got to be fucking kidding me.

He’s Trump’s science advisor, Peter Theil’s protege, and son in law of Brexit Secretary Sir David Davis. The best of the best.

Yeah it was a dumb thing to say, that’s the point

Have you never seen a dystopian scifi movie? If this administration somehow attempted to time travel, you don’t think the world would look exactly like it does now?

I mean, if we are to go by Kratsios’ speech, it would appear they are just the first brave and innovative enough to take advantage of technology already existing but intentionally weighed down by regulations. This timeline being a result of their brave innovation makes a lot of sense.

Maybe in your house, but in the White House, I’m not so sure. Mr. Kratsios holds a political science degree (with a focus on Hellenic studies) and appears to have no hard science qualifications.

No joke, he was actually Trump’s acting director of OSTP during his first administration. During that time, people were critical of him because he lacked any qualifying experience in science.

Democratic members of the House actually wrote a letter begging Trump to pick a real science advisor to avoid a potential disaster. Trump eventually picked a meteorologist as his official science advisor several months later. If not for Anthony Fauci’s meddling, those two would have been solely responsible for handling the COVID pandemic under Trump.

Just to be clear, the point is that Kratsios seemed to be making a sciencebro sales pitch about U.S. innovation under Trump, but given how delusional and unethical this administration has already been when it comes to making a name for U.S. tech supremacy, people took it seriously.

Wasn’t expecting such a weirdly strong reaction to pointing this out, but yikes.

You just gave me a mental image of the dumbest BTFII reboot

Nope. But given our elite technologist leaders often have some dangerous ideas about innovation and “improvements to society,” that don’t quite align with reality, I can’t say I blame people for worrying they might actually try.

I would make an inappropriate Ted Kaczynski joke if I didn’t know everything we do is being constantly monitored at all times by a bunch of turds with zero sense of humor.