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Archaeology & Art@archaeologyart·

Gill-Man

Domenico Ghirlandaio (Italian, 1449-1494)

Black is the Raven, Black is the rook, But Blacker is the rougue who returns not this book

a wonderful warning written around 1839 in the front of an 1810 copy of Robinson Crusoe 

Steven Jennings

CONFUSED ABOUT THE AI CONTROVERSY?

I go for the simplest explanation, one that considers the two things that drive all gazillionaires, power and wampum.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," in the words of Lord Acton. Look at Trump being given immunity and crushing the age-old operation of the separation-of-powers doctrine. Look at the tech bros. But, here, Truscott reminds us about the free market that can make things "cheap" and also undermine monopoly power when someone like, say, China, does everything---as the Frank Sinatra song puts it---its way, and provides choice. Strange, isn't it, how a communist country threatens a malignant capitalist Epstein Class with the principles of a free market? The tech bro protection racket needs the wampum to buy the politicians, and along come communist China, like a new gang in town.

Perhaps. I still remain confused by all this, but Lucian K. Truscott IV is helping me understand.

EXCERPT: Here is what I think is happening. AI companies are selling information that already exists. What they’ve done is collect it and repackage it and sell access to it in a new, shiny, faster, supposedly cleaner way. But what AI is really selling is easier-faster. The question is, how fast can you make the machine go? What happens when somebody comes along and adds cheaper to the easier-faster equation?

It’s already happening. China is doing it cheaper. My question is, what is going to happen when all those data centers they are building can’t find buyers for the data they’re collecting? All that electricity, all that water to cool all those processing chips, and somebody is doing it cheaper, and because there are no tariffs on electrons that travel through fiber optic cable and via satellite, that somebody is going to dominate the market.

Remember the phrase, “information economy?” I always wondered what would happen when information got cheaper and cheaper. Where would the profits come from?

SOPHIA LOREN as YASMIN AZIR