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Comment ARM was used in Apple's Newton 30 years ago! (Score 3, Informative) 68

And the StrongARM in particular used in the MP2000 was amazing for its time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But sadly the Newton was discontinued in 1998. Big loss for a lot of reasons -- including ending use of ARM processors in Apple devices.

Apple returned to the ARM in 2007 with the iPhone (almost ten years later). And recently with the Mac.

A missed decade (and more) of opportunity there though.

Comment What could possibly go wrong? War Irony... (Score 1) 70

From an essay I wrote on this in 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironically ... irony. :-)"

Comment About more than AI -- about abundance in general (Score 2) 238

... and why using the tools of abundance like AI and robotics and advanced manufacturing to fight wars as if scarcity still matters is ironic, as I explore here:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.
    We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

Also by me on that theme as it applies to "intelligence" software:
https://groups.google.com/g/op...
"Summary: This note is essentially about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such FOSS "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security."

The world may choose that path or not to "A New Way Of Thinking" about security and prosperity through mutual instrinsic security -- but that ultimately is a path forward to healthy prosperity for all. Whereas other paths like competition over who can make the most aggressive AI whether economically or militarily is an almost certain path to disaster.

Sadly, even OpenAI seems to be going off the rails towards full-steam ahead proprietary competition as "Rei" said here -- and apparently for much the same reasons Putin is outlining for Russia (to "win" some competitive race -- towards humanity's doom?):
https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
"The company was being drawn in two different directions. Reportedly, one, represented by Ilya Sutskever, wanted to go cautiously and stick with the founding principles while being careful to avoid the risk of uncontrolled AGI; his personal focus, as an AI researcher, is superalignment. The other, represented by Sam Altman, was pushing hard on commercialization and outracing all potential competitors. This was automatically going to create a collision course."

Comment Is OpenAI engaging in "self-dealing"? (Score 1) 107

As I explore here: https://pdfernhout.net/open-le...
"An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society
          Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."

Comment Re:Transition thoughts? (Score 1) 107

"Any suggestions on how to make the transition?"

Read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yeasteryear" sci-fi novel from 1982 for some ideas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"The fun begins when a generation ship housing a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens when these methods encounter a population that has never been conditioned to respond? ...
      The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it!"

Or some related ideas I put together circa 2010:
https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Comment Next Level Search (Score 5, Insightful) 158

If you read this, the AI still required someone to identify the problem and propose the solution. All the AI did was take much of the tedium out of developing the solution. Something that would be done with hours of searches and filtering out irrelevant content for one reason or another.

If your job is "here, code this up", then you should be worried.

If your job is to come up with "this" then you are probably OK.

Comment 2011 Open letter to M. Obama on socio-techo change (Score 1) 151

"Long discussed, little acted on" is so true.

James P. Hogan brought these issues up in his 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" (and others), talking about a "phase change" in human society caused by a combination of cheap fusion energy, automation, and, in general, improved know-how.
"Voyage from Yesteryear"
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

A physical example of a phase change is liquid water boiling into steam instead of just being hotter water -- where gaseous steam has very different properties, dynamics, and management needs than liquid water.

From an open letter I wrote to my Princeton classmate Michelle (Robinson) Obama in 2011:
https://pdfernhout.net/open-le...
"I've spent decades thinking about these issues since Princeton and Professor Steven Slaby's class on "The Technological Imperative of the Arms Race", where I developed the theme of "technology as an amplifier" (although it is also true that technology can be an brake too, so either wings or chains). Problems can grow exponentially, but so can solutions. There are technical solutions (even as there are also technical mazes). It comes down to finding the social energy to put good solutions that we already know about into place. ... Unfortunately, as you know, substantial improvements in policy sometimes require going against some very powerful interests that are driving this country off a cliff in their greed, fear, and ignorance. But, I guess, like dealing with mildew, that has been a perennial problems of the human social condition. Physical obesity is not pretty, but then neither is financial obesity."

Anyway, better late than never for Michelle's husband to start paying attention to trends that were apparent to some in the 1980s and earlier -- but which society collectively did not have the political will to address back then. It would be great if he could provide social leadership in addressing them now.

Other information collected by me on that theme:
https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Lots more on my website related to all that. I also mention Michelle and her Princeton thesis theme of alienation from the mainstream in my 2008 "Post-Scarcity Princeton" polemic/memoir/memorial available there, mainly in these two sections:
https://pdfernhout.net/reading...
https://pdfernhout.net/reading...

tl;dr Ultimately the idea in my sig is the most important of everythign I have wrote: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." We will never be able to deal in a healthy and effective way with the socioeconomic consequences of AI and other advanced technology until we broadly acknowledge the "phase change" we have been going through as a (global) society related to broad technological changes and think about the implications for many aspects of that society.

Comment Alternatives to regulating AI -- recognizing irony (Score 1) 26

Lawrence Lessig wrote in Code 2.0 you can shape human behavior by at least four things:
* rules
* norms
* prices
* architecture

All are important in different ways and likely could be involved in shaping AI in a healthy way.

But that said, because AI is a technology produced using abundance and which can produce more abundance, humans need a perspective (and economics and politics) rooted in abundance to use it in healthy ways. Otherwise we risk creating all sorts of ironic situations, like I discuss here:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"... Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
      There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies [and also "financial" organizations] are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all.
      The big problem is that all these new war machines [and AI plans]] and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."

See also James P. Hogan's 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" on such a perspective shift based on the implications of advanced technology to produce abundance for all.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

Or Theodore Sturgeon's 1950s short story "The Skills of Xanadu" that helped inspire hypertext and the web.
https://archive.org/details/pr...

Comment All IRONY (ftfy) (Score 1) 60

As I suggest here: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

Comment Will your career be founded on IRONY or not? (Score 2) 65

FTFY. Explaination: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.
        We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

Comment Re:Why (Score 3, Insightful) 169

Your quote said mostly the same thing. The poster only had a couple items not cited, although 4 could be the same as 1, and 5 the same as 2.

1) Maintain discipline in the classroom/school = "high accountability mechanisms"
2) Focus on the important subjects like language, science, and math. = "focus on investing in general education"
3) Have support of parents who expect their kids to do well. = "high household investment in education"
4) Are not lowering the standards so "no one left behind".
5) Are not wasting time and energy and confusing kids with gender and "identity" nonsense.

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