Putin Says West Cannot Have AI Monopoly So Russia Must Up Its Game (reuters.com) 238
Russia President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned that the West should not be allowed to develop a monopoly in the sphere of AI, and said that a much more ambitious Russian strategy for the development of AI would be approved shortly. From a report: China and the United States are leading the development of AI, which many researchers and global leaders think will transform the world and revolutionise society in a way similar to the introduction of computers in the 20th century. Moscow has ambitions to be an AI power too, but its efforts have been set back due to the war in Ukraine which prompted many talented specialists to leave Russia and triggered Western sanctions that have hindered the country's high-tech imports.
Speaking to an AI conference in Moscow beside Sberbank CEO German Gref, Putin said that trying to ban AI was impossible despite the sometimes troubling ethical and social consequences of new technologies. "You cannot ban something - if we ban it then it will develop somewhere else and we will fall behind," Putin said of AI, though he said ethical questions should be resolved with reference to "traditional" Russian culture. Putin cautioned that some Western online search systems and generative models ignored or even cancelled Russian language and culture. Such Western algorithms, he said, essentially thought Russia did not exist. "Of course, the monopoly and domination of such systems, such alien systems is unacceptable and dangerous," he said.
Speaking to an AI conference in Moscow beside Sberbank CEO German Gref, Putin said that trying to ban AI was impossible despite the sometimes troubling ethical and social consequences of new technologies. "You cannot ban something - if we ban it then it will develop somewhere else and we will fall behind," Putin said of AI, though he said ethical questions should be resolved with reference to "traditional" Russian culture. Putin cautioned that some Western online search systems and generative models ignored or even cancelled Russian language and culture. Such Western algorithms, he said, essentially thought Russia did not exist. "Of course, the monopoly and domination of such systems, such alien systems is unacceptable and dangerous," he said.
Robotics (Score:3, Insightful)
Whoever wins the robotics game will own the world. AI is cool, but it is nothing without robotics. If you have a general purpose versatile and dexterous robot that can farm, mine, and manufacture things in a lights out factory it's game over.
Re:Robotics (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Robotics (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily, we've had very capable robots for many, many decades now. They have to be able to carry out tasks repetitively. AI allows complex dynamic behaviour, which is not really necessary in even the most modern factories.
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No doubt AI will be used to quickly iterate designs for these new robotics, taking advanta
Re: Robotics (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true accountant: run the system so tightly that the least little problem causes a breakdown. Basic engineering teaches you to build in tolerance for failure. Did the supply chain crisis pass you by?
About more than AI -- about abundance in general (Score:3)
... 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... [pdfernhout.net]
"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 tech
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Not necessarily, we've had very capable robots for many, many decades now. They have to be able to carry out tasks repetitively. AI allows complex dynamic behaviour, which is not really necessary in even the most modern factories.
The robots have only been able to repeat pre/programmed motions or very simple tasks that can be simply, in relative terms, computed. They excelled at highly repetitive and dangerous tasks, something simple like folding actual random laundry is a major challenge state of the art systems still struggle with. Any tasks requiring the flexibility and dexterity humans offer under such conditions as messy and Ill defined tasks, tasks that require some basic spatial thinking, tasks that need to be done outside
Re: Robotics (Score:4, Informative)
[...] something simple like folding actual random laundry is a major challenge state of the art systems still struggle with.
And me.
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We still don't have a general purpose sewing robot. 90% of clothing is finished by hand.
Even Modern Factories Need AI (Score:2)
AI allows complex dynamic behaviour, which is not really necessary in even the most modern factories.
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Re: Robotics (Score:2)
Prioritizing mission objectives as options become limited is a problem solving task that a heuristic system cannot perform effectively today. Without AI, a military's robotics are limited to a very narrow set of missions or to remote control. And having weapons that are not flexible and multi role flies in the face of current military doctrine.
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Boston Dynamics seems to have already won that race haven't they? Is anyone else even close to their capabilities?
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They are only advanced in comparison to others and may be in the lead, but the race is far from over in terms of achieving "useful robot" status.
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Whoever wins the robotics game will own the world. AI is cool, but it is nothing without robotics. If you have a general purpose versatile and dexterous robot that can farm, mine, and manufacture things in a lights out factory it's game over.
Exactly, if I wanted to "wins the robotics game to own the world". I'd just bypass the "chatGPT" style current fad and concentrate on real AGI. You could go unnoticed for quite a while still while others spin their wheels in the current fad. Especially, don't brag about anything, let the others brag. Guaranteed way to win IMHO as long as you have competent staff and vision.
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Yeah go ahead buddy "concentrate on real AGI". Concentrate real hard. You're an idiot and you don't know what you're talking about. Ever since the beginning of computing, Alan Turing made the following argument:
1) we don't have a rigorous definition of "general intelligence",
2) we *do* know that our goal is to build a human-like intelligence (AGI), and
3) even without a rigorous definition, we *can* recognise human-like intelligence in other people, by interacting with them.
From this follows Turing's pragmat
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And guess what? Both Google's Lambda and GPT passed this test in 2022.
These days, no one serious thinks the Turing test is an appropriate way to measure intelligence. After all, Joe Weizenbaum's Eliza had arguably 'passed' back in the 1960's and it very obviously wasn't intelligent. Fooling humans, it turns out, just isn't that difficult. Goal posts have moved around quite a bit since then, though without a solid theoretical foundation, it's all just silly nonsense.
You're right that the parent would just be wasting his time "concentrating on AGI". Not because he's an idiot,
Re:Robotics (Score:4, Funny)
if I wanted to "wins the robotics game to own the world". I'd just bypass the "chatGPT" style current fad and concentrate on real AGI.
Russia's so fucked they're going to have to use mechanical turks just to implement artificial stupidity. They have zero chance at developing AGI, which has been just around the corner for decades now.
Re:Robotics (Score:4, Funny)
Why would Russia need artificial stupidity, when their natural stupidity stands unbeaten?
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Whoever wins the robotics game will own the world. AI is cool, but it is nothing without robotics. If you have a general purpose versatile and dexterous robot that can farm, mine, and manufacture things in a lights out factory it's game over.
The world is fucked, Russia is absolutely crushing the west in robotics.
https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]
Give it time (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Give it time (Score:5, Informative)
When the fuck did their economy ever work? Have you studied the history of the Soviet Union?
I think you have misread my message. We absolutely want them to be as broken as the USSR once again. It was a mistake allowing them any access to the West, which we will now fix.
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Re:Give it time (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea that all participants in the club are bound by the same rules stands in stark and fundamental contrast to the Imperial Powers era and mindset, which is quite simply that might makes right.
GP is correct that China is the larger long-term threat, simply because of the Russian government's self-sabotaging incompetence. But make no mistake - Russian Hitler's invasion of Ukraine was not the end, it was a midway step in his process of attempting to destroy the rules-based international order by re-establishing, in essence, the Russian Empire by force - either invading or corrupting into vassal states everything east of the Carpathian mountains and north of the Caucasus.
Re: Give it time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Give it time (Score:4, Interesting)
While China is growing stronger, though there is a wobble in their economy now.
It only looks like a wobble when measured by the flimsy Western economics metrics that makes Amazon, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, etc economically important.
China is doing the economically sound thing and deflating over-valued companies whose only goal is to race to the bottom. Fucking up the rest of the economy and society so they can boast about "shareholder" value.
All that's happening in the West now is VCs with too much money using startups like Ponzi and pump-and-dump schemes. WeWork getting valuated to insane levels when it simply could not have ever make that much money with its actual business model. But it doesn't matter, because someone somewhere was able to sell those shares and find a greater fool to take money from. The greater fool using money that they've gouged from the average consumer and the low level employees.
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Yeah, not really. The Chinese economy is on the brink of collapse. Their property market is crashing hard, foreign investors are not interested, banking is a shit show and their population is rapidly growing old. Don't you watch Zeihan??
Re:Give it time (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you suppose you'd feel if you lived in Manila, Saigon, or Taipei?
I wouldn't feel much different, because I don't look at China from the Western imperialist/colonialist mindset.
You guys still don't get it. What China wants is continued economic dominance, and it can only get that by trade relations. That's why it continues to push ahead with the BRI, even though it's making losses on loans.
People like you in the West somehow can't imagine anything unless it's absolute military domination and forcing people to accept a certain economic and political system.
China, on the other hand, just wants international trade. The reason why Taiwan is such a big issue is that, ever since the Qing Dynasty, anyone with an understanding of Chinese history knows that China is fucked if foreign powers can blockade the Chinese coast. And Taiwan (and Hong Kong) is forever the launching point of any blockade of China. Same goes for the Malacca Strait and that whole area. Blockade that and China is, again, fucked.
Only stupid Westerners with no understanding of Chinese history and the Chinese mindset thinks China will go on an imperialist adventure like Russia in Ukraine. Hell, you even have morons who thinks China will actually launch military attacks against Australia.
China has always been, and always will be, about trade. They couldn't give a shit about exporting their political system, like Russia and the West are doing with their respective system.
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It's pretty amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care that millions die in the process.
Collectivism wasn't the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Because of this Mao and Stalin both made the same mistake where they assumed you could put a plant in a stressful condition and have the plant magically become stronger. So they double planted or rather they forced Farmers to double plant.
That's where the dictatorship comes in. Nobody could tell either dictator they were wrong even though every Farmer in the country knew it. You don't tell the dictator that they're wrong. Especially about something this Central to their belief system.
And make no mistake the discredited pseudoscience of lamarckian evolution was absolutely critical to their belief systems because in both cases it let them act like the land itself had made their people, Russia and China respectively, into Superman. It was part of their mythology and nationalism.
None of this has anything to do with collectivism. It's a variation of right-wing extremism. In this case actual right-wing extremism and not the conservativism that people mistake for right wing extremism. Remember that being right wing isn't about maintaining a mythic past rather it's about hierarchical structures and the belief that people hire on the totem pole are the ones who get to make the rules and give the orders.
Collectivism and socialism are the exact opposites of that. They are however extremely difficult to implement because existing power structures will use violence to maintain their power in the face of a transition to Star Trek style socialism, and then the people trying to make that transition will turn the people who are themselves good at violence to fight the revolutionary war.
The problem with that of course is that people who are good at violence aren't so good at stepping aside and giving up power when it's over. Everyone likes the point to George Washington not becoming king of America without realizing that Washington was already so insanely wealthy that becoming king would have been a downgrade for him....
Any transition to a Star Trek style socialist Utopia is inevitably going to have to be slow, boring and peaceful. It's going to be done by people like Nancy pelosi and Barack Obama and God help us to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton. Not by people screaming about revolution. Because anyone who wants a revolution, a real one not the silly little rhetoric that Bernie Sanders has been tossing around while proposing conservative ideas like single-payer healthcare, anyone who actually is calling for the real revolution is sooner or later going to turn to somebody like a Stalin or a Mao if they have to.
Or to be honest they're going to turn to somebody like Donald trump. There are honest to God maga communists. And that's not a contradiction. In the left wing community we call them tankies. And they are just as if not more dangerous to freedom and democracy as the Christian nationalists on the right wing. To be honest they get along just fine with the Christian nationalists just like they did when Stalin cozied up to the Russian Church...
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I agree with conclusion that the transition to a Star Trek style socialist utopia will be slow, boring and peaceful. I believe it will be inevitable. The larger historical trend (200k years) is evident. But we won't be happy, since human being define their reality through misery and suffering. In utopia, we will suffer as much from the anxiety that our food will be slightly less perfectly prepared than our neighbour's, as medieval humans suffered from famine.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a pe
You've been watching way too much (Score:2)
Human beings are not prone to misery what we're prone to is fearing things we don't understand. Specifically things we haven't had direct experience with on a regular basis.
Dictators and other members of the ruling class will exploit this tendency to get you to punch down on people who work for a living just like you. They will divide you into various casts or in/out grou
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It's going to be done by people like Nancy pelosi and Barack Obama and God help us to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton.
All three of those people worked to maintain a deteriorating status quo and enrich themselves. Barack promised the most transparent administration in history and ran the most opaque (at the time.) Trump was worse, and Biden is about the same as Trump in that regard. YHBT, HTH, HAND.
Honestly you're just wrong (Score:2)
So in about 6 years or so assuming we don't fall to dictatorship the baby boomers are going to be too old to vote anymore and the next generation is going to take a modest leap Forward. What you going to start seeing is fewer and fewer people prone to the kind of
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These predictions you are making sound nice. But they are fairy-tale level ridiculous.
The corruption in our leadership is not some sort of happenstance phenomenon. It's not like we can replace the corrupt ones with good ones and *boom* have a benevolent government. The same goes for the racism that we still see in our culture, and the greed that we see in our cartel-dominated economy. These things are intrinsic to human nature. What we see here are examples of how people behave when they attain power.
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You say "Those are the people the system needs to keep from the table" as if that's something we can actually do.
No human-operated system can prevent power-hungry humans from attaining power. Even if your from-thin-air numbers are accurate, you are saying that 3 out of 4 people are power-hungry and 1 in 4 of them are psychopaths. How in the world do you propose filtering them all out of government?
It doesn't matter, whatever you propose will be just as naive as everything else you just posted. It won't w
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When the fuck did their economy ever work?
I think the question you want to ask is "for whom did their economy work?". Clearly not for the masses but for those in charge I think they'd tell you it worked quite well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Russia not Third-world (Score:2)
Russia today is a third world country outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Have you ever visited Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg? I did several years pre-pandemic and it most definitely is not a third-world country, it's much like a less-well-off rural area of Europe. As for your example, fridges became common in the US well before other countries, even Canada. In 1959 only 13% of UK homes had a fridge and only 58% by 1970. Even Canada only had 21% of homes with one in 1941 but it was up to 90% by 1960. So anyone from Europe would have been surprised to see every home wi
Re: Russia not Third-world (Score:2)
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Communism killed more Soviet citizens than Nazi Germany.
Too bad it wasn't actually communist. It was just another pyramid structure with a fancy name hung on it.
Communism has more blood on its hands than any political movement in human history except perhaps Genghis Khan's.
Capitalism as a political movement is working its way up to human extinction, give it time.
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When did it work?
I meant our Western system worked to collapse their economy once and we will do it again. Sorry if it was unclear.
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How old are you, and if you're young, just how bad was your history education?
The soviet economy collapsed to the point the empire could no longer be maintained in 1991. It turns out a planned economy ruled by grifters can't compete with a market economy ruled by robber barons.
We're still getting rogered by the rich, but we have slightly nicer toys and work harder while they're doing it.
Re:Give it time (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is that the capitalist system is better at hiding its flaws, or rather, better at blaming you for them.
The Communist promise is "work hard, be productive and soon we'll all live in paradise". The Capitalist promise is "work hard, be productive and soon you'll live in paradise".
Both systems are lying to you. But it's like a reverse Russian reversal. In Communism, you blame the system for the failure, in Capitalism, the system blames YOU.
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I think it's slightly more complex - with free(ish) market capitalism, hard work does bring the promised personal benefit, but the available niches to excel in decrease in number over time as established winners are able to dominate the market, block new entrants, and pass along their success directly to their offspring.
Communism expects everyone to work hard without direct personal benefit... and then the guys at the top rob you.
Both systems fall apart over time, but one has a longer potential lifetime, is
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Communism expects everyone to work hard without direct personal benefit... and then the guys at the top rob you.
Sounds similar to the system of capitalism we seem to have at the moment to me: you are expected to work hard for direct personal benefit....and then the guys and the top rob you. If you don't get rid of the guys at the top then both systems will fall apart. What makes capitalism better is that the guys at the top are not a necessary part of the system so it's possible to control, constrain and even get rid of them.
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Do you have an example of multiple generations blocking new entrants in a capitalist system? Because I don't think that's a thing. It's not like the Ford family has cornered the automobile market for generations to come, Hilton has a monopoly on hotels, or the Walton family owns all grocery stores.
Rich families tend to move on to more profitable markets, until they either have all their money in passive income or the offspring blows it all on hookers, blow and crypto. Anyway, the pie is large enough for eve
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Yeah. Look at the lists of biggest corporations and richest families. Now go back and look at who topped those lists 20, 40, 60, 80, or even 100 years ago. While wealth can survive generations, it tends to decline. Whether it's through technology, changes in markets, or heirs lacking the abilities of their ancestors it tends to decline.
We didn't see 30 years ago the parents of Bezos or Musk topping the table. Apple was 25 years ago barely likely to survive. The Hearst heirs aren't sitting on the largest med
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Whether it's through technology, changes in markets, or heirs lacking the luck of their ancestors it tends to decline.
ftfy
I think by now it should be obvious that financial success has less to do with ability than with luck. Take a look at the current slew of billionaires and tell me anyone of them has any kind of "ability". If the way they "invest" after they hit the jackpot once is anything to go by, they're playing va banque and got lucky. There's a ton more guys that did the same and just didn't happen to win the lottery.
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There's a ton more guys that did the same and just didn't happen to win the lottery.
Being in the right place at the right time with the right amount of money is generally based on luck. But making the right investment can be based on luck, or intelligence of either major kind. And one of those kinds of intelligence can be based on luck itself... or schmoozing.
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I can believe that in figures like Buffet who are fairly consistently hitting it big with their investments. But when I look at Musk, it's more "throw shit at the wall and hope some of it will stick".
He's lucky that our system is rigged in the way that there's always some of it gonna stick and compensate for the blunders of another magnitude, if you have just enough money to fling just enough shit.
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Communism expects everyone to work hard without direct personal benefit... and then the guys at the top rob you.
The only difference between that and the way the US works these days is that under US free market capitalism you actually get a small semblance direct personal benefit and the promise that if you just wake up one morning and decide to become rich it will happen to you ... and then the guys at the top rob you. On the other hand, under communism you did usually get at minimum some semblance of universal free healthcare and free college education which you don't get in the US, so it kind of evens out.
Re: Give it time (Score:2)
Is that blame somehow misplaced?
Here, if you start a business and it doesn't do well, odds are incredibly high that you simply did something wrong. Maybe your business model sucked, maybe your product sucked, maybe you misread the market, maybe you were rude to your customers.
In the USSR, some bureaucrat decides whether such a shop should exist at all, market demand be damned, maybe he'll put you in charge of it, but probably not unless you're a higher ranking member of the party or know one. If that shop d
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Here, what makes or breaks your business is luck. Nothing else. If you try often enough, provided you either have enough money or enough charisma to bullshit VCs into sending you yet again a fat check because you just KNOW that this time it's gonna work out, you will eventually make bank.
Only way to not be a poor slob is to climb the ranks of the party by kissing the right asses in exactly the right order, and in exactly the right way, for exactly the right length of time.
Same deal here. The asses to kiss change, otherwise, it's pretty much the same.
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Here's the thing, though, colonialism turned out to be a fairly bad business. We've learned that it's far better to keep the colonies under a local government and instead own that government, by means of money and delivery of weapons. We send the local warlord weapons and money, they squander it and in return we get the goods we would have colonized the area for. That way, the expense of a government is on their shoulders, we only get to fund it and even get our "fair" share of goods out of it.
If (or rather
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When did it work?
Prior to 1914, Russia had the fastest-growing economy in the world. Steel production was higher than in France and on track to soon exceed the UK.
Everything was look'n up.
In 1914, the WSJ recommended Russia as the 2nd best place in the world to invest for the 20th century.
Only Argentina was more promising.
Re: Give it time (Score:2)
No reason Russia shouldn't be in a similar economic state as the US right now aside from the fact that they were sold on the idea of socialism. It really says something that the US went from having little to no arms manufacturing capability to suddenly making up almost all of the arms production of all of the allied forces, including Russia who had similar population numbers, within only a few years. No planned economy has ever been able to do anything close to that.
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No reason Russia shouldn't be in a similar economic state as the US right now aside from the fact that they were sold on the idea of socialism.
There were also a couple of world wars that didn't go so well for Russia.
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I guess that says more about the prophetic skill of the WSJ. Did they advice to invest in pre-war Germany as well?
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Did they advise to invest in pre-war Germany as well?
They did, but it was further down the list. Germany was doing well before 1914 but was already industrialized, so it had less room for growth than Russia and Argentina.
Of course, things fell apart for all three in August. The reason is obvious for Germany and Russia, but Argentina was a big European beef supplier, and that collapsed.
The WSJ was also bullish on America, which turned out to be the winner of the 20th century.
Re: Give it time (Score:2)
I think the point is that it didn't. Perhaps in response to the usual little Amlettes around here like rsilvergun that blame all of the world's problems on automation, capitalism, etc, and yearn for simpler times that they perceive as being easier but in reality were much harder.
Most of all, they believe planned economies where literally every industry is nationalized is somehow a better way, even though WWII thoroughly disproved that idea before it was even tried on a large scale.
https://youtube.com/watch? [youtube.com]
Good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
Rob everyone, chase out all the intelligent and educated people who can escape, and demotivate everyone else by throwing their children into a meat grinder you started to obtain more resources to steal and won't back out of due to 'face' or ego or whatever. Seems like a great way to keep a high tech economy competitive to me.
Meanwhile, if it isn't drowned in the blood of Russians first, Ukraine is building up a highly motivated population of people desperately but very cleverly adapting technology to make better blenders for Russian soldiers.
But keeps on trying to convince everyone how great Russia will be, helping keep it on a downward trend and dampening any hope of recovery.
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Hopefully Russia suffers a fatal blow too, but Ukraine isn't coming out of this at all in tact.
It's a good thing that they're not relying on tact, then. How's your Remedial English class going?
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So... you missed the part in my post about "if they don't drown in Russian blood".
Ukraine's hurting badly, but they are able to do slightly better than hold their own given the external assistance they're receiving, which is pretty damn amazing.
If Western governments didn't think it was winnable for Ukraine, they'd hardly be investing so much in that outcome. Russia's good at projecting the image of strength... until it's tested. That's why their short cake-walk has turned into a multiple-year mire where
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I'm not pro Russian by any stretch, but
This has historically been an excellent place to stop reading. When was the last time you recall ever reading a sentence that started this way that didn't immediately turn into a dumpster fire?
When someone says "I'm not" they are in effect begging you to take them seriously... and if they have to beg it's usually a safe bet you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
They ran out of men
Pfft, who needs men when you have biolabs full of combat birds and mosquitoes?
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You're not pro-Russian, you're a paid Russian shill, who repeats the talking points of Russian propaganda verbatim.
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I'm not pro Russian by any stretch, but I can't believe that there's anyone left who believes the "plucky little Ukraine" narrative any more.
If it were just Ukraine they'd be fucked. Ukraine plus foreign arms vs. Russia with Chinese tires? That's a different game.
They ran out of men, and now they had to broaden the conscription age to 17 to 55. Seriously, they can't win this.
Russia has been fielding convicts and derelicts for how long now? Seriously, pay attention.
Aliens confirmed (Score:3)
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No.
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Monopoly? (Score:4, Insightful)
As if "The West" were one monolithic entity that cooperated with itself (it isn't). With a simplistic view like that, Moscow will never get anywhere.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Ask ChatGPT ... (Score:2)
skyskynet (Score:2)
Do it!
Choo Choo Express (Score:2)
Hey Putler don't be so glum. I'm sure any day now there will be a fresh shipment of H800's on the next train from your good friends in the DPRK.
If Putin were competent enough to use a brower... (Score:3)
... He'd be shitposting on slashdot.
Forget Monopoly ... (Score:2)
Putin is too busy playing Risk [wikipedia.org] ...
Not possible (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember a time when Soviet scientists were just as good as American ones. They had nobel-laureate-level science institutions, and top-notch engineering as well. They failed because their economy was crap. Their systems engineering and project management skills were crap as well, which certainly put a few nails in the soviet coffin, but economy was their downfall.
When the soviet union collapsed, their scientific institutions literally went dark. I remember stories of whole departments and laboratories basically shutting off the lights and heat, scientists had to drive taxis to pay the bills, and most of them emigrated somewhere else pretty quickly. It was a field day for the US. We basically went shopping for Russian scientists on black friday, and they were running at an 80% discount.
It takes literal generations to rebuild institutions. And Putin certainly didn't help the situation with his current war. A million people fled - most of them young, talented, and/or educated. Anyone smart/capable to avoid getting ground into meat paste in Ukraine has fled, and most won't be coming back. And it won't stop when the war ends. It's gonna be at least 2 generations before many intelligent, well-informed, energetic young Russian will trust their leaders. They're gonna be brain-draining for a century. It's hard to make any kind of advance under those conditions.
Develop AI? Not in the cards. They'll have to steal it from the US, Europe or maybe China.
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Russia appears to be selling itself to China in a desperate attempt to patch the sucking chest wound of their kleptocratic economy.
I'm not sure stealing from China will be an option; as time goes by, Russia will be in a weaker and weaker position and eventually won't be willing to piss off the CCP.
Re:Not possible (Score:4, Funny)
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Mod parent funny. (I see several have!)
I worked for a startup years ago that was paranoid that some of their source code might leak. Their product was an online office suite, kind of like Google Docs. It was funny to me at the time, because their source code was built on components they had licensed from others, and there was literally nothing revolutionary about what they were doing with it. What I realized was that it's not the code that contains the "magic," it's the people behind it, who maintain, scale
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A cynic might be inclined to point out that Pentagon accountants say they aren't sure where about $35 trillion of taxpayer money went. Is it really worse to be broke and know it than to discover you're broke when some arms dealer with a senator in his pocket siphons off half of your grant?
Seems very unlikely Russia can actually do it (Score:4, Insightful)
But, now that Putin has made a decree, I fully expect in a year or so we'll start seeing regular announcements pretending that they're making great strides in AI.
Lack of infrastructure and people (Score:2)
But, Russia has never been able to do computing hardware and certainly not chips. China is the only country on earth capable of playing catch-up and while I believe China still openly trades with Russia, China who is still a generation behind on AI hardware doesn't sell their current generation externally.
China who already was working to keep pace and catch up used 3 years and far more money than Russia can afford and far mor
Too late! (Score:2)
It'd all have to be imported/stolen (Score:2)
Russia obviously has real software talent, though most of it is apparently used for state run criminal activity. But it's nowhere near advanced enough for current gen AI (that takes more than haxxing skill).
And Russia is absolutely crap for building hardware to run it on. Even if they stole Nvidia's designs they couldn't possibly build the factories to build the actual chips. I guess they could use their state sponsored global botnets to run a pirated ChatGPT4 that they'd call BlyatPutin99? Or they can g
Ah yes. Putin the great supporter of innovation (Score:4, Funny)
I seem to remember Putin declaring a while back that Russia can't trust western-controlled operating systems and has ordered the development of a native-russian OS... I wonder what became of that one.
Also, whatever became of russian COVID-19 vaccine that Putin declared as a great success - with no proof whatsoever... The vaccine that absolutely no one trusted.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't give him the credit he is due. He's not just a supporter of innovation, he *is* the innovator.
He's late (Score:2)
I figured someone surrounded with as many oligarchs as him and clinging to historical prestige from futurist megaprojects like the space race would be up to his eyebrows in chasing next big thing. Maybe he feels less underlings will coup to pursue new career ambitions if he's entertaining this.
Or just babbling and not actually going to invest and do anything, so as to distract any news analysis from the rate of Russian casualties in the 3 day not-war that's (arguably) falling behind schedule... But a man of
The Brains To Up One's Game (Score:2)
It's hard to "up your game" in AI when your brains have mostly fled for fear of being conscripted.