If you’re in the DC area, Dean W. Ball and I are hosting a meetup (more on him below). It’s vaguely pro-AI coded, but it’ll be a chill social event.
To register, use this link.
You must register ahead of time. Even if it’s a “maybe going”, it helps with projections for capacity.
In the Media
I had an article in City Journal about Google Gemini. I make the case that politically neutral competition is currently available and that the most important priority is defending it from political interference.
Google insists that it will “do better,” but answers to its left-wing AI product may already be on the horizon. According to a report by data scientist David Rozado, machine-learning models such as Anthropic’s Claude, X’s Grok, and Zephyr 7B Beta are almost politically neutral. That developers are creating more centrist alternatives makes sense, given the incentives. A centrist model, after all, will align with more users’ beliefs (not to mention with objective reality) than will one built by Google’s “Responsible AI” team.
As long as AI remains relatively free of government interference and centralization, those who produce machine-learning models will have an incentive to produce a less ideological product. Provided those incentives remain intact, engineers will be able to produce large language models, and AI systems of all kinds, that reflect the majority’s views.
I also did an interview with Richard Hanania. The comments mostly consist of doomers complaining that I point out they like to make wild assertions with no evidence and saying that this is unfair to them. When I prompt them, they immediately make wild assertions with no evidence. It serves as a beautiful compliment to the contents of the podcast.
Alliance for the Future got some fairly positive coverage in Politico.
My attitude towards e/acc is somewhat misrepresented, but in an understandable and not necessarily malicious way. In DC circles, its normal for subtle disagreements to imply something bigger. But in this case, the night before an e/acc twitter account was trying to pitch me on some of the grander metaphysical concepts of e/acc, such as the Thermodynamic God, and I wasn’t buying it. e/acc is obviously correct on the broadly optimistic approach to technology and policy goals.
Here is my exact quote:
Effective accelerationism is not just a set of policy positions. They have positions on the meaning of life, and the grand scale of humanity. I think of myself as more of a practical person, and Alliance for the Future is much more of a practical organization. They’re an interesting group, I definitely don’t have any ill will towards them, but the scope of their movement is a lot bigger than Alliance for the Future.
I don’t blame Derek for the framing. I moreso blame the game, and myself for not being used to it. Other than that, the media is honest and good.
Friends of From the New World
In somewhat related news, Dean, my co-host for the meetup has a great substack and a related piece in National Affairs.
The transformative potential of AI has inspired crucial questions, such as how to ensure that the technology is not biased, that it does not spread misinformation, and that it is only used for "good" or "productive" purposes more generally. Exploring those questions quickly leads to the sort of epistemic and moral questions we have been discussing and debating for millennia: What is the truth, what is the good, and who gets to decide?
Such conversations are essential, but we will fundamentally constrain them if they take place primarily in the debate over what government should be doing about AI today. History makes clear that government is not always an ideal arbiter of what is productive or even good. Indeed, we have found, through millennia of conflict and hard work, that answering those questions in a centralized fashion tends to lead to corruption, oppression, and authoritarianism. We must grapple with that reality, not seek to wash it away; attempting to do so will drastically limit or perhaps even outlaw future progress in this profoundly promising field.
My brief commentary on twitter:
AI and social media reveal the true desires of voters. There are people who like democracy and people who can't stand it.