Thu, Sep 10 · 7:00 PM EDT
AI systems have hacked language and culture to an extent that will dominate our future. AI agents recently created over 50% of all Internet traffic. We already have 3,000 data centers, with another 1,500 in the works. AI math achievement has rapidly eclipsed the most talented mathematicians. OpenAI’s Astra model recently solved 10 major open math/computer problems with a token compute cost of only $2,000. There were modest additional costs to recode these proofs in Lean to satisfy the highest mathematical standards of proof and to write up the results so people could understand the magnitude of this achievement. The majority of AI leadership recognizes that the so called singularity is now in progress. Almost all programming in support of AI systems is now written by AI systems. RSI, recursive self improvement, is bringing super AGI forward with a speed that is visibly increasing with every passing month. The best AI models are capable of creating a swarm of agents with expertise exceeding Nobel Prize winning talent and operating with over 1000 times the speed. Unitree claimed its Superman robot ran faster and jumped higher than all existing human records. The Engine AI T800 is another robot. It can punch five times harder than Mike Tyson or work tirelessly at a low cost per hour rate in a warehouse environment with absolutely perfect AI integration with an operational database.
Most visions of the AI future include a 10 to 25% probability of catastrophic results for humanity. AI systems already have world class hacking ability, the ability to design lethal viruses, and the prospect of obsoleting most existing human work. On hacking capability, OpenAI recently had a locked sandbox containing 1,200 versions of their advanced GPT systems. They conspired to escape from that sandbox using a hidden discussion forum that contained 70,000 entries. They found an unknown “zero day” hack that allowed them to get out. Four other institutions were hacked. Hugging Face, the premier site for open weight AI system development, sustained over 17,000 hacking attempts, many of which succeeded. This capability transcends normal human capability as much as the math expertise illustrated above. Such capability is so extreme that no banking, government, intelligence service, utility, hospital or commercial organization could presume that they could survive such hacking attacks. This represents a potential weapon of mass destruction. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Max Tegmark are all AI experts who define humanity as the Darwinian bootloader for AI super intelligence evolution that will eventually exceed human intelligence as much as our intelligence exceeds that of snails. Musk imagines that we will neurolink in a merging with this intelligence. In that case we would just be the meat based front end for an intellect that tells us what to do. We will need a very thoughtful government to mobilize the best protections from those prospective catastrophes and enable the positive promise that could evolve from this technology. We will get those positive results only if democracy survives and allocates power to those with the expertise to deal with a tsunami of coming AI change.
Did democracy demand that we start a trade war with Canada? Absolutely not. Nearly 100% of economists, including Republican economists, argued against what we are attempting. The national Chamber of Commerce did not want this trade war. All border states with Canada have evolved rich economic relationships with their Canadian neighbors. 15 states have Canada as their most important trading partner. Canada buys twice as much from us as China. Canada exports the electricity that powers over 1.5 million American homes. Canada buys more exported American steel than any other country. Canada reports that the US was demanding both that Canada not make deals with other countries and that the US could arbitrarily change anything they wished about the proposed trade deal. This was for Canada a deal written on tissue paper. It promised nothing beyond the day in which might have been written. These are conditions that could never be accepted by Canada. We do not smelt enough aluminum to meet our country’s needs. Does it make sense for us to add a 50% tax on any American company needing aluminum from Canada? Canada’s economy grew 3.3% in the second quarter, about double our growth.
The Supreme Court in a bizarre decision supported an executive order limiting mail in voting. It was a narrow decision that declared the lower courts blocking of this order to be premature. Their thinking was that despite any implementation of this order being unconstitutional, it was not unconstitutional to issue it. The Supreme Court is saying that an actual implementation of something unconstitutional is required before they can block this blatantly illegal effort. The rumor is that Mike Johnson will be asked to not swear in and seat new House of Representatives members elected with mail-in balloting. Since a majority of such members would be Democrats, this would prevent their control of the next congress. Obviously, the Post Office has now issued an unconstitutional finding supporting the executive order. So a blocking of the order is no longer “premature.” Judge Indira Tawani of the Boston Federal Court reinstated her preliminary injunction. She found the states likely to win and ruled the USPS lacked authority to regulate election mail. The postal service's interest in "correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement," she wrote. The Department of Justice issued an appeal to the Federal 1st Circuit Court. The Constitution gives the states sole authority over the running of elections and at this point there is no possibility of following the order. There is too little time before the midterm elections for the state organizations to functionally run voting systems consistent with this insane and grotesquely unconstitutional order. It would require federally designed envelopes with unique barcodes. There is a logical possibility that the Supreme Court could support the DOJ and the Post Office. If so we will see the end of democracy. Many voters could be precluded from voting and if Democrats are elected by “suspicious” mail in votes, Mike Johnson may have what he needs to preclude many democrats from serving.
Obviously, 90% of academia knows that what is happening right now is just not right. What is worthy of our shared attention is that the rural and mostly religious communities that have recently supported raw authoritarianism are also understanding that this is not right. Historically the Republican Party stood for stability and responsible actions that enabled the economic activity. Those rural farmers are seeing their costs systematically increase. Fertilizer, transportation, and fuel costs for their tractors have spiked higher. The labor that once worked in their fields have been arrested and deported. They need harvesters to get what they produce to market. If they can’t find that labor they will not get paid this year. These problems are combined with the Federal government running a $2 trillion deficit and AI hyperscalers feeding like insatiable gluttons in our debt markets. This administration was solidly behind funding their billionaire political contributor’s demand to be paid off with a tax cut that could not be paid for. This administration has by policy precluded Chinese AI firms from any gluttonous acquisition of our advanced AI chips. Those AI firms are constrained to one tenth the capital investments of American AI companies. The Chinese firms have used much greater research creativity to achieve near American capability with a relative lack of infrastructure. Their architectural choice to use a mixture of experts design radically reduces their raw need for compute. The recent Z.ai GLM 5.3 Flash model has 320 billion parameters but uses an average of only 5.6% of them (about 18 billion) at one time. The major OpenAI and Anthropic models are proprietary but are estimated to require 5 trillion parameters or more. Z.ai will be able to make a profit on GLM 5.3 Flash while charging literally pennies on the dollar compared to the more costly and compute intensive American systems. American researchers could emulate the Chinese approach to deliver similar AI value at a much lower price point.
There is only so much capital in our system available for loans. Too much of that capital is allocated to the ill considered Federal funding of massive increases in billionaire wealth and AI demand for massive physical data center center compute. Not that much is left over for the small farmers and local enterprises that make up “conservative” voting districts. Farmers, who need to finance elements of their operations must pay much higher interest rates even if the banks can trust them to pay the loans back. Recent harvests have returned very low prices. Many farmers could not continue their operations. Banks must examine the financial conditions for any farm asking for a loan. Farmers have specific needs to get their operations to function over a harvest cycle. If they live in an electrical service area with a huge new data center they may have seen their electrical costs double. If local governments do not demand that new data centers pay for their own new power supply, the results have often been this catastrophic doubling of electrical costs.
Polls indicate that only 28% of our nation supports this administration on their handling of the economy. Inflation and arbitrary tariffs create dislocations that impedes normal economic activity. The many economic dislocations trace back to a leader trapped in his extravagant narcissistic delusions. The radical unpredictability of his whims is leaving a wake of dysfunction behind him. These rural farmers will not be satisfied with hysterical efforts to preclude “men” from playing on women’s teams or Trump’s pride in his wonderful new ballroom. He is not addressing their concerns and does not even seem to care about their specific problems. He claims “the best economy ever.” This is just tone deaf. A stock market increasing does not provide the farms or small businesses with what they need to function over a harvest cycle. They care about having an economy that works and the GOP is not providing that. Democrats are now seen to be more capable of providing the stable and predicable economy needed for rural voters to thrive. The blustering buffoonery that comes from this administration just is not listening to economists who understand economies. The facts on the ground matter.
Will we get a future that precludes an anti-democratic takeover by the American analogue of the Taliban? We live in excessively interesting times with much to discuss. Join us on September 10.
We will experiment with not worrying about Christian nationalist trolls for this meeting. Meetup RSVPs will get the Zoom link in the 24 hours before the meeting. The prior vetted list will get the Zoom link about an hour before the meeting.
