George Rebane
‘How the AI Revolution Will Reshape the World’ is an essay in the 1sep23 issue of Time that presents an excellent summary of how the advent of generative AI is launching “the greatest redistribution of power in history.” Not only is this new wave of technology based on large language models sufficient to found the greatest revolution in human civilization all by its lonesome, its redistribution of power will be abetted by accompanying technological breakthroughs in synthetic biology, quantum computing, and “abundant new sources of energy.” Having understood all this, it is remarkable that today “this is the most underappreciated aspect of the technological revolution now underway.” What’s more, previous technological leaps were reserved to the capital rich elite or national governments. That’s no longer the case. “We are facing a step change in what’s possible for individual people to do, and at a previously unthinkable pace. AI is becoming more powerful and radically cheaper by the month—what was computationally impossible, or would cost tens of millions of dollars a few years ago, is now widespread.” For the sanguine among us, snooze on at your own peril. (H/T to reader)
Blinders on black governance. It’s with some trepidation that I offer this observation motivated by the recent slum apartment building fire in Johannesburg that killed over seventy poor immigrants to the Union of South Africa. (more here) Over the last generation (i.e. post-apartheid) that nation’s largest city has turned from a crown jewel of Africa into the country’s, perhaps the continent’s, largest favela. And here is the observation to which no one dare give voice – are there any black-governed countries in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, that compare favorably with first-world nations like those in Europe, North America, and Asia? To carry this observation even deeper, the same may be asked of black-run cities in the United States. Instead, these questions remain unasked and unexamined. From an academic or demographic perspective such enquiries remain on terra incognita, and their causal factors define one of our culture’s growing number of forbidden territories. Anyone daring to even explore whether there is any truth to the basis which such questions imply is immediately tagged as a racist or worse. As evidence, I offer the comment stream below.


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