There are so many parallels between the USA and Russia it is no wonder that there are similarities in how both countries look at the rest of the world.

- Large

- In principle have lots of resources

- Have told themselves they are exceptional and deserving of better

- Have started many wars on false pretenses and fabricated data

- Have a lot of internal issues that they offload on other countries

- See enemies everywhere

- Both forget that they are not larger than the rest of the world

Of course there are also massive differences but these seem to foster some kind of attitude problem.

I wonder how far down it has to go before the USA wakes up and realizes that they are sliding. Just today there was a recorded speech by Trump where he blames Ukraine for worldwide high oil prices and that they should stop bombing Russian oil infra. You can't possibly believe the rest of the world is that stupid so this must be for domestic consumption. Insane how far this has gone and we're not done yet. I'm hoping for some kind of miracle in November but hope is the prelude to being disappointed.

10x loc? wow. That makes me wonder how it will perform. And how you will review that, since if it is physically impossible for a human then who will take responsibility for what you release?

Benchmarks look good.

Reviews? They were the first casualty.

Why would that be funny? Years of people's work appropriated and they end up without even the recognition?

I'd be furious.

> But with math, everyone in the world would gain from computers becoming really, really good at it.

I'm not convinced of that.

It is one possible outcome but there are also other possible outcomes.

Except...

(From WP)

India

In 1998, India said it would only sign the treaty if the United States presented a schedule for eliminating its nuclear stockpile, a condition the United States rejected.[18]

Israel

In 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that its ratification was dependent upon "the regional context and the appropriate timing".[19]

United States

The United States has signed the CTBT, but not ratified it; there is ongoing debate whether to ratify the CTBT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Compreh...

They made a movie about that.

Between:

   "Iron Sky"
   "Whoops Apocalypse" 
   "Wag The Dog"

and

   "Idiocracy"

You'd think we were amply warned.

If they manage to leap ahead they can effectively kill all competition, present and future and you'll be at their mercy.

So the solution is to make the company that can’t avoid sub-AGI models from going rouge to try RSI?

Also, AI performance has proven to be a function of power and compute, and right now most of the compute lies between two companies rushing towards RSI not because they are afraid someone is going to do this before but because they are the ones who wants to build it.

If the position is that one of these models will go out of control and destroy humanity then why would having two such models be safer than one?

Given that the arrival of this stuff has been compared to nuclear weapons already the question is whether or not the same mechanisms that kept us from annihilating the planet would hold there too.

I am not sure that it will.

But a balance duopoly tends to be better than a monopoly and if there are multiple poles then so much the better.

I'm past the point where I believe that any of these a-holes is in it 'for the good of humanity', their behavior so far can be extrapolated safely to what they will be like when they are in the control of what effectively would be the largest private arsenal ever created.

For a while I thought the AI doomers were off their meds and too paranoid but I'm coming around to the fact that they may have a point: we are rapidly approaching a point of no return, if we are not already past it and the people in charge are exactly the wrong people to be in charge at such a point in time.

How specifically would a balanced duopoly be safer?

> If the position is that one of these models will go out of control and destroy humanity then why would having two such models be safer than one?

Models don't go out of control, they generate totally harmless tokens. The people directing the models go out of control. The owners of the single powerful model are seriously tempted to go rouge and they're going to do it, sooner or later.

Two or more competing groups force the development of defensive capabilities which require strong models too. In addition, offensive capabilities in possession of different competing groups introduce the option of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) which is a form of defense that doesn't require defensive capabilities. Worked with nukes.

I worked for a little bit with a group making optical sieves, this stuff is mindblowing to a non-trained-in-the-art outsider. I can easily see losing a couple of decades in that rabbit hole.

Wow, how shortsighted.

> - NATO - Maintaining security on the high seas for other than USA shipping,

NATO consists of a lot of countries, why would they only work for USA shipping? And where do you think that shipping comes from?

> - tariffs imposed by other countries (yes, other countries have been imposing tariffs for decades):

Of course they do. But they're not usually idiots about it.

> The USA can use the money saved for its own citizens (possibly even lowering their taxes!)

You advocate for tariffs but don't understand how tariffs work...

I didn't "advocate for tariffs". I merely pointed out that other countries have had tariffs on USA goods for decades.

Yes, as does the USA.

So your point is moot: tariffs are a tax on your own population, ostensibly to stimulate local manufacturing but in practice it is just another tax. Protectionists will immediately reach for this mechanism because they believe - in spite of all the evidence - that this time around it will work. It never does.

Manufacturing is so intertwined now that all tariffs do is to reduce the buying power for those at the bottom of the totempole, whereas those higher up hardly feel any concrete effect. Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come.

jacquesm says

"Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come."

I said nothing of the kind. You are injecting that statement here yourself.

---------------------------------------------

Returning to the topic of interest:

Tariffs do work: they protect certain industries and keep them onshore.

For instance the manufacture of nuclear warheads by the USA is an onshore industry and will remain so. I am certain that Japan or North Korea could eventually make a cheaper and probably even a better nuke but b/c I don't want to be forced to do periodic quality control tests and checks. The USA chooses to keep the industry here.

But as far as I am concerned, I'd also like to keep hand tools as a protected onshore industry.

The Smoot-Harley Tariff Act of 1930 is usually used as the counter example of this argument. It is believed to have been one of the reasons the Great Depression was so bad. It is credited with reducing USA exports by ~60% if I remember correctly.

I trust neither. But 30 years ago this would have been an easy question. 10 years ago it would have been an irritating question and now it is a hard one.