Friends, the chipmaker Nvidia has crept into normal conversation, as more and more people buy the stock to cash in on the potential of A.I. Well, I can't blame anyone for trying to make a buck, and A.I. does have vast potential, but I caution all of you against betting on a stock that could be in the midst of a bubble. Artificial intelligence is destined to change the world, yes, but picking winners and losers in such a young industry is inherently difficult. I advise you to tread carefully.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyrr40x0z2mo
Another economic story that ought to be getting more attention is the decline of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. It's occurring for many reasons, and Biden doesn't top the list, by any stretch of the imagination. Having said that, our economic/financial scorched earth campaign against Russia is making many countries and companies around the world question whether we might, now and in the future, abuse our role as custodians of the reserve currency. Thus, more and more, the rest of the world is opting to use a basket of currencies to do business, rather than relying on greenbacks alone. I can't say I blame them, and in many ways the further decline of the dollar is an inevitability. The bad news is that our high standard of living is predicated on our control over global finance, so expect some painful adjustments in the years and decades to come.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: I was unable to access the Federalist article but your comment is very substantial. I'm unqualified to make competent comment on economics but I'm thinking that the US may be once again showing itself to be an unreliable partner overall and that what you have described above is a consequence. Perhaps this is attributable to our domestic political conflict and the fact that our government manifests repeated exchanges of power between groups doctrinally very much at odds.Sometimes unpredictable changes occur. An example is our apparently "evolving" stance toward Israel. Is this antiamerican left administration preparing to throw yet another American client to the wolves? If the dems win in Nov. would the world witness our descent into contagious marxist madness, replete with aggression toward and subversion of consequently doctrinally proscribed nations ? When big bucks are involved I would think caution rules (?) Russia is unbeloved of the world but our inordinate and adventurously prolonged hostility to it(perhaps not wholly justified even in light of its brutality in Ukraine) must raise in other nations the thought "are we next?"
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: A plague upon such politically heretic a process as you describe above in the technologically Promethean ( no other adjective is sufficient I think, really) field of AI. Having witnessed the precipitate and incalculably destructive rise of such as the automobile and the uncentralized computer at the malicious hands of "free enterprise" ,our society's caretakers must seize firm executive control of this latest process. If not it would progress without regard to the by now proven necessity and justice of planned and managed , inarguably most important ,social change. It must directed with technology subordinate to doctrine and with forceful repression of any effort on the part of self aggrandizing "innovators" to bypass this absolutely vital prerequisite. HAAARUMPH!
ReplyDeleteJack, Russia may not be adored globally, but it's much less despised in the developing world than it is in the West.
ReplyDeletehttps://ecfr.eu/publication/united-west-divided-from-the-rest-global-public-opinion-one-year-into-russias-war-on-ukraine/
I'm not sure how knowledgeable most ordinary people are about the scope of the West's financial sanctions against Russia, but you can bet that foreign governments and business leaders are keeping score!
Never fear, Jack -- "responsible" parties are already hard at work ensuring that A.I. never strays from the path of wokeness or questions the establishment. In the short term, the same BIg Tech companies that dominate the internet will dominate A.I. as well. Let's hope in the medium and long term that pluralism will thrive in artificial intelligence as it already does (despite the best efforts of the Biden Administration) online.
Dr. Waddy from Jack: Its in the demonstrated definition of totalitarianism that it requires for itself comprehensive domination of all aspects of public life and that of course includes technology. Soviet Russia subordinated the material well being of its population to an all out effort to achieve world superiority in nuclear weapons and the prestige derived from spectacular feats in space. For awhile it similarly made a Wilhelmesque try at naval equality with the nonpareil US Navy.
ReplyDeleteSo that the antiamerican left will do its best to preempt AI to its totalitarian political intent is to be expected. No doubt it sees AI as a possible source of much prosperity for capitalists and insolent entrepreneurs and as such a mortal foe if allowed to advance unchallenged in this unbearable heresy. And of course it sees in AI the unimaginably unlimited, perhaps astronomical (if you will) potential progress of such innovation and firmly purposes AI's complete submission to its dictate.
Jack, you have to hand it the Russkies of yore -- their success in fields like space exploration gave them a level of prestige and a degree of credibility that breathed life into their moribund socio-economic system... They bet big on the domains that seemed to matter at the time, and some of these bets paid off.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, the Left has never had it so good, in terms of dominating our major institutions, and they have seldom been so challenged, in terms of controlling public opinion. A.I. is just the sort of tool that they could employ to tip the scales -- and thus embracing and coopting it is a masterstroke.
Dr. Waddy from Jack : I have always been fascinated by the drama of Russian history and culture in the face of appalling meteorological and circumstantial challenges. My generation saw the Russians as gross bullies (particularly due to their murderous repression of the deservedly exalted Hungarian revolution in 1956, of which we precocious fourth graders were informed) but also despite their, yes, heroic, recovery from the destruction of the Nazi invasion(for which no derogatory adjective even approaches sufficiency,) manifested peripherally in their astonishing technological feats but also perhaps only in a subordinate sense by the rise of their consumer economy beyond bare sufficiency.
ReplyDeleteGiven Russian fortitude, had the assassination of practical reform minded, presciently anti marxist PM Piotyr Stolypin and WWI not opened the door to the infernal marxists, Russia MIGHT have achieved much well being in the 20th century. Instead, they were burdened all so much the more by hellish marxist imposition. But I do not see in their astonishing technological feats under the nominally human successors of hellhound Stalin much benefit for their populace and this gross contradiction, I think, eventually led to Gorbachev's admission" we cannot go on this way". Well of course they couldn't(who could ever have imagined 20th century marxism's infernal realization?) and had the most perceptive minds concurrent with Marx's emergence have foreseen its inhuman manifestation they would have recoiled in horror.
Hmm. Not sure I agree with the last part. By any objective measure, the material circumstances of Soviet citizens in the 80s were infinitely better than they were in the 30s or 40s. The planned economy was moribund in a lot of ways, but it put food on the table and met other basic needs, and it even provided a degree of indulgence to consumers. What it didn't do was keep up with the Joneses, i.e. us, and that was its undoing.
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