We're seeing that compute and investment liquidity is effectively a zero-sum game and by having Google go after the excess compute and liquidity (which they don't really need) will most likely weaken the competitors to the point where they aren't competitive. But if OpenAI and Anthropic merge they can pool resources and be more competitive.

I fear that OpenAi and Anthropic would not be able to compete against an adveserial Alphabet which owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects. My prediction is that OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually be crushed by Alphabet as they run out of investment and compute, leaving Alphabet to have a monopoly on AI, at least in the west.

This is why I think OpenAI and Anthropic should really be one company, if they join forces and pool together investments and compute they'll stand a chance.

This is the way to go to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and to reduce time of mainters reviewing LLM slop.

Yes. But modern technology, especially software doesn't have the high barrier to entry like being a feudal lord, but successful software can be just as impactful, tie in economies of scale and network effects and it can be even more powerful, which has allowed the producers of such software to wield significant power and as a result bypass democracy. And this ties in with your point:

> The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

It remains to be seen if this era of LLMs and datacenters raises or reduces the barrier to entry for software production and in general technological innovation. The marketplace is always hungry for innovation and those that can deliver and control it will be in a position of power.

The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

I disagree, as a programmer having my code being used long after I am gone would be a great honor.

> The specific video is also picked for that reason: to let the deceased developer look bad and make fun of him.

I believe the linked video is Terry's last video that is why its so special.

There is a whole sub-culture, cult following lore around TempleOS, some of us used to watch the live-streams when Terry was coding in real time. Terry appreciated it and even when he was homeless, he tried very hard to reach his audience.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48316457

Points: 30

# Comments: 0

> Except when game theory does not account for externalities. As a follower of Doctorow myself, I have to point out that everyone is rent-seeking and that the forces that restrain it are abolished by systems like Bitcoin.

Yes most definitely. Decentralization is a spectrum. A village can be decentralized because everyone knows each other, and they trust each other to follow the protocol. But when you scale it up to a nation or global level where people don't know each other, you get people that don't want to follow the protocol for whatever reasons. Some attack the participants (wrench attacks) or some directly attack the protocol itself.

Usually the way to mitigate this is by adding a sub-system to filter/moderate out the bad actors. This sub-system than ends up with so much power it centralizes the system. Another way is by federation, which can decentralize the filtering. But the federations can also collude and centralize the network like the centralization of bitcoin miners, as you point out.

When someone is attacking the protocol this is the time when coordination is needed the most. Decentralized coordination on a large scale is hard, though bitcoin solved it for a very narrow use case (but not full proof since miners can collude and centralize).

So yea I agree with you, and with the article. Centralized governance might be a requirement for large scale coordination. But I cant help but see the beauty in in Satoshi's game theory, it being the key innovation in bitcoin and not the cryptography.

For example in bitcoin if you have enough resources to spam the network, you are incentivized to mine instead, thereby securing the network and produce new blocks.

So I think game theory and aligned incentives can be used to address the law issues, allowing different entities whether its States, Corporations and individuals to work together, even if they absolutely hate each other.

Game theory takes over where cryptography ends. Bitcoin gives us a glimpse of this.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279114

Points: 2

# Comments: 0