Taxes on AI subscriptions or AI capable hardware, to financially compensate IP holders for (potential) IP theft, could very well arrive in the near future, once the industry is mature.

If this shocks you and sounds preposterous, I'll remind you that in several EU countries, we still pay extra taxes on any and all storage mediums and on devices with built-in storage (tapes, CDs, DVDs, HDDs, SSDs, tablets, phones, etc) simply because they can be used to store pirated content, decisions based on laws from 50-100 years ago, and the money goes to the national unions and associations of music and arts IP holders. It's basically a lobby pushed and government legalized extortion racket that no voter agrees with or can change but has no choice but to conform either way.

So I guarantee you in the future, it will be the same for AI subscriptions and hardware capable of running LLMs locally. Every time you purchase a Claude or ChatGPT subscription, an Nvidia GPU, Intel/AMD SoC PC or an Apple/Qualcomm powered smartphone, you'll pay a government enforced tax to the likes of Sony, Axel Springer, etc. for licensing their IP, whether you want to or not. In the EU at least. US maybe not.

This has been a feature since Windows 7, and it worked great since it would pull all necessary drivers after installation without you going hunting on the internet like in the Windows XP days.

Just that no HW manufacturer thought to push spyware in their driver repos at that point to improve some team's KPIs.

Shoving a graph in their face with a made up number won't change their economic situation.

Sure, let's say GDP went up 5%, but then everything that matters like housing and healthcare went up 10-20%. Average workers aren't the winners of this mythical economic growth we're told we need to keep prioritizing.

What use is GDP growth if most of it just gets concentrated in the top 10% of asset holders and everyone else in the trenches keeping society going, ends up worse off in a decaying society.

That's how we are now massively outputting homeless junkies who gave up on society and Luigis who want to shoot the elites responsible for this, because the system does not work for them.

Now, the elites can avoid the homeless junkies their economic policies create, by living in gated communities in the suburbs and chauffeuring their kids to private schools, but the Luigis are more tricky to dodge because they're smart and motivated, that's why the like of the EU, UK, AU, etc are expediting privacy invasive laws under the guise of "protecting kids" to make sure any future Luigis will be preemptively dealt with the moment they speak ill of the king and the nobility.

All that seems to matters today, is that the GDP number keeps going up at any and all cost, regardless of long term externalities and second order effect to society. Kina like Saturn devouring his children.

Like sure, now you need to wait 4 months to see a public healthcare specialist compared to only 2 weeks 8 years ago, but the GDP number is higher now than back then, so obviously we must be better off today than in the past, right? RIGHT?!

That's why EU politicians are rushing to implement free speech crackdowns, invasive privacy laws using dictatorial techniques, like last week's Chat Control 1.0. They know they're on borrowed time before the majority of the population wises up and turns against them for the effects of the unpopular policies they pushed that lead to their decline in quality of life and purchasing power.

Notifications on your smartphone that's always on you are way better for that purpose, than on a device that's tied to your desk.

Add Gacha mechanics for +100% extra damage.

Devices tied to your desk are actually very good for tech detox.

So if getting you hooked was OpenAI's goal with this, they definitely missed by a 1000 miles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KbRA2RjhgQ

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202...

The previous president was burning tens of million of Euros on renting private jets on the taxpayer's dime for trips that weren't related to his duties, and when reporters wanted to investigate this misuse, the government came forward and called the president's travel history (and expenses) a national security topic and remove it from the freedom of information.

Isn't it convenient how you can just cover corruption under the rug by invoking national security? I'm surprised it hasn't been used more often.

There's really no evidence and trend to back this up as a likely outcome.

It will totally not be used to sanction you the moment you become a nuisance to the EU elites by saying "wrong speech" that goes against their mandated doctrine or pointing out their acts of corruption or dismantling of democracy.

The EU building in Brussels even has the word "DEMOCRACY" plastered on the front in large bold letters[1], in case you forgot.

[1] https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/photo/P-069521

Switzerland absolutely complies to EU (and US) demands for a long time now, when it comes to prosecuting crimes.

Swiss privacy and anonymity is a myth from a bygone era.

How about the option of the state not being so tyrannical in meddling about what people anonymously do online in their free time?

Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.

It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized to operate.

Man, I wish I lived where you guys lived.

Don't know the exact details about the US, but if you look at how the some EU countries and the EU is run today, it really isn't that much different than European monarchies of old in practice, even if on paper it's different.

Like, you have nobles from the ancient von der Leyen German noble family appointed to leadership positions by falling upwards via no direct election by the people, enforcing unpopular laws like chat control, that were rejected 3 times, by calling an emergency election during summer time when opposition was on vacation. And if you vocally criticize the nobility online too much, they'll ban your content on social media for some BS reason at best, or send police to your house with court orders to intimidate you at worst.

This isn't in opposition to monarchies, we just replaced monarchies with another form of power structure that has the same goal: keep the peasants quiet, obedient and paying taxes. There's a reason history keeps repeating itself: A fish coming from water will only know water.

True, very true. I don't want my government turning a profit, but I do want my government being accountable and efficient on how it spends my taxes and what it gives me back for them. If I keep paying more and more but get less and less quality, I want some audits and changes to be done to fix this. "Government not being revenue generating" is not the answer here.