28 ms·

Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]

148 points by internaut 10y ago

someguydave 10y ago
THIEL: "one other way of interpreting the AI boom is that on the surface, it is about extreme optimism about the potentialities of computer technology, and the beneath the surface, it is simultaneously, perhaps, a great deal of pessimism around the possibilities in other technologies that will be developed by humans, and deep pessimism about the possibility of what humans can do." This is what I think about whenever I hear folks scaremongering about the "singularity". In my opinion these beliefs reflect a kind of spiritual emptiness; a yearning for answers that only God can fulfill.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  So you are ready to believe that physics and chemistry created simple organism which through the process of evolution become more complex organism eventually turning into us. But you can't believe that this evolution will continue? Perhaps it's exactly because their argument is empty of spiritualism that they see the world more clearly.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  I'm of the mind the technological singularity won't come from AI but from enhanced human minds. I think it's easier to load more memory, processing, and the like indirectly to the human brain that it is to recreate a perfect mind inside a machine not even equipped to handle the questions we wish to ask it.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  What I find funny is people who think that metaphysics is real, even at the mild level of mathematical Platonism, but think that it can only ever be figured out from our armchairs, that there's no way I could build a machine to do it for me. On the other hand, I find it pretty easily believable that we can receive compounding returns from advances in ML/AI. After all, pretty much as soon as we invent new techniques in computational statistics, the go-to fields needing to apply them are the other computational sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, medicine.
dang 10y ago
Url changed from http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/peter-thiel-ii/ http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/peter-thiel-ii..., which points to this.
- kruipen 10y ago
  I don't think this is a good URL change. It is not like http://conversationswithbillkristol.org http://conversationswithbillkristol.org is a blog spam for "Conversations with Bill Kristol". And the original site has video divided into chapters which is useful.
  - dang 10y ago
    It was a borderline call, but I'm guessing a URL with Bill Kristol in it would have had an evil-catnip effect. So, risk mitigation.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      It definitely gave me pause when I hit the YT link. Fair call.
peternilson 10y ago
For those who would prefer just the audio it's also offered as a podcast on iTunes.
mrep 10y ago
Is there a transcript anywhere? I much prefer reading over watching/listening
- tristanj 10y ago
  Youtube has an auto-generated transcript feature. In the video description, click More->Transcript. Edit: actually don't use the YouTube transcripts, there's a human-curated transcript here http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thiel-ii-transcript/ http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thi...
  - Animats 10y ago
    That transcript system doesn't recognize sentence breaks. Theil speaks in run-on sentences, so it's not entirely the transcription system's fault.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      It also doesn't try to distinguish the speakers, which is weird. (It could just be "speaker #1", "speaker #2", etc.) I'd have thought it would be a lot easier to distinguish voices than to understand the English words they are saying.
  - mrep 10y ago
    Beautiful, thanks!
  - patrickk 10y ago
    > Edit: actually don't use the YouTube transcripts, there's a human-curated transcript here How very meta.
Animats 10y ago
OK, the big theme here is "innovation has slowed down, but this is being masked by all the activity around computers". So let's take a look at that. Way too many smart people are tied up doing rather banal things with computers, or in finance. That's capitalism in action. What isn't being worked on? Thiel is bothered by lack of progress in medicine. Medicine is now working on really hard problems, most of which are consequences of aging. Short of redesigning the human genome to eliminate aging, which may happen, those problems will remain hard. There hasn't been much visible progress in aircraft in a while. Boeing is still building the 737, which first flew in 1967. Aircraft are lighter, quieter, more fuel efficient and safer than they were back then. But not cheaper. The biggest societal problem is that we have less and less of a role for a big part of the population. The average IQ is only 100, remember.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  One of the hardest, but also the most pressing issues is regarding population growth. Should we artificially limit population growth? Can it be done in a way that isn't forceful, but perhaps with the right incentives? Should humanity, as a global society push for quality over quantity in reproduction? Is basic income still feasible in this scenario? It's an ethical and ideological mess and frankly, it'll require someone way smarter than I to come up with the answers.
  - Animats 10y ago
    For Europe and Japan, population is in decline. US population would be in decline if it were not for immigration. China is expected to max out around 2026. (The one-child policy worked.) India, though, has real problems.[1] Two big problems we expected to have were overpopulation and running out of energy. Neither happened. [1] http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in-2050-extreme-projections-demand-extreme-action/ http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in...
    - simula67 10y ago
      Overpopulation is a real problem for India. The population growth is falling, but not fast enough https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:IND:CHN:USA&hl=en&dl=en https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
daemoncat 10y ago
after Trump nomination, o to -1, sorry Thiel, you are not welcome
- hugh4 10y ago
  Way to deal calmly with the fact that not everybody in the world shares your political opinions, bro.
- oneloop 10y ago
  This is also my first instinct. But be careful, people who do things you find wrong might still have intelligent things to say. Evaluate ideas on their own merit.
- return0 10y ago
  Your comment is not useful, but nevertheless his endorsement is worth discussing. It's obvious that trump is more aligned with his world view of a more risk taking, long-term planning and less people-pleasing leadership. You should also not assert yourself as a representative or gatekeeper of the community. It's this mindset that should not be welcome here.
  - samastur 10y ago
    Trump long-term planning? In what way?
  - qrendel 10y ago
    >... nevertheless his endorsement is worth discussing. It's obvious that trump is more aligned with his world view of a more risk taking, long-term planning and less people-pleasing leadership. Given some of Thiel's views and statements on politics (and without necessarily making a value judgment on those views), I'd honestly put more money on his just wanting to hurt the functioning and credibility of the US government as much as possible by seeing Trump elected. At least one source[1] reports it as: "'Peter has become an increasing admirer of Trump's public attacks on political correctness, especially what he has been saying about women,' says a close friend of Thiel...." [1]https://heatst.com/politics/the-real-reasons-peter-thiel-has-been-seduced-by-trump/ https://heatst.com/politics/the-real-reasons-peter-thiel-has...
kriro 10y ago
Very interesting talk. I'd love for him to write a history of capitalism type book. "The History of Innovation and Globalization". Start it off with the x-axis=globalization and y-axis=innovation model and go from say 18th century to now. I always enjoy history of economics books. I like the mainstream books but really enjoyed the perspective and research that went into "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought". I am not aware of any good history type books from a more pragmatic business oriented point of view. Thiel has some interesting insights and perspectives. Unfortunately that book probably wouldn't be a good use of his time but come on Peter, I know you want to write it :)
- mseebach 10y ago
  Zero to One actually has some good material in this vein.
  - mark_l_watson 10y ago
    The book does, and is well worth the reading time. I have Zero to One as an audio book and I am on my second way through it. The concept that zero to one is much more valuable than one to ten helped me understand my own career better. I have always been a risk taker and even though some of my work projects over the last 30 years have failed, my bosses never seemed unhappy with me. I would usually really nail a few new ideas a year. This book helped me to understand why I seemed to get perks (like ocean view window offices at two consequative companies) that none of the other programmers got, even though they seemed to be much steadier workers than I was.
- return0 10y ago
  I think it would be a biased history book. He has strong opinions and that would not apply well to history.
- jk4930 10y ago
  You might like "The Birth of Plenty", the first chapter is online: http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM It's not the pragmatic business POV, but it has some highly interesting considerations.
return0 10y ago
He reiterates many of the things he 's been saying for a while and written in his book. It's worth reiterating them, probably because things have not changed. He makes a distinction of computers as the "one field that has progres", but, is it really true that IT is not stuck in a rut as well? What are the new paradigms developed recently? Computer vision, machine learning were established in the 80s , despite only becoming commonplace nowadays. There is little progress in theory since then. Engineers obsess over the rediscovery of functional languages, a relic of the 50s. Commercial success should not be taken as an indicator of real progress.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- virmundi 10y ago
  I agree that there doesn't seem to be much advancement over the 80s (I'm trying to learn emacs for Clojure right now). I don't agree that commercial success is not an indicator of real progress. For example, LISPs did not run well on 80s computers. The Japanese, amongst others, had to create special computers to control their trains. Rules based programming performed poorly too. May other such paradigms and tools fall into this category. For the most part the old, neat tools of now have the hardware necessary for them to be useful. The JVM provides great performance for Clojure. Over the last 30 years, multi-threaded concepts coalesced too. Now they're built into mainstream languages. Provided people stop trying to solve already solved problems like task management, we could possibly be on the verge of productivity improvements.
- internaut 10y ago
  Progress can be a rather nebulous word. It can mean breaking new ground or on a lower level: a continuation in effort. Replace progress with 'vital energies'. New ground is what we all want (new nuclear systems) but when there isn't even a continuation of effort (no old style nuclear plants being built) it's even worse. Computer science is in a rut. It's just that other things have even lost the energy to cycle through old accomplishments. I'd say the Art world is one of those areas that has lost all vitality.
aaharb 10y ago
This video is oddly pessimistic, but to me, Thiel is overlooking where the greatest advances are yet to come. The advances in computers are advances in processing power and connectivity. Every industry uses both of these elements to succeed. Now that computers are reaching a sort of peak development, there is going to be a dispensing of the capabilities that computers offer into other industries. Its hard for me to put it into words, but I think that computers are simply a stepping stone for real achievements to come. The car has basically reached peak performance years ago, but we aren't disappointed in the fact that there was a lot of focus improving the car and a giant vehicle industry for many many years. Instead we moved on to building things that can use a car, such as the highway system. Or the mail delivery system, or the thousands of industries that completely rely on highways or mail. In the same way with computers, we are now going to see industries and technologies appear that rely on having computers that have reached this advanced level of processing power we have today. Once this mighty computer is passed on to the common man, innovation begins to move in different paths again. Like a tree. I dont know, this may have delved into a bit of a rant but that video made me extremely optimistic :)
- mark_l_watson 10y ago
  I don't think that computers are anywhere near a stall-point as far as new advances go. I expect to see computers that use very much less energy, more memory but still get much smaller, and CPUs with more special instructions that enable faster neural networks, data structure manipulation a that might enable symbolic AI, etc. You do make good points, and I up voted you.
- internaut 10y ago
  Thiel would agree with your main statements. He's said before that he's not particularly worried about advancements in computers continuing to unfold and the potential for the Net to become ever more like a planet wide nervous system with many more use cases coming into existence. His complaint is that if progress does not occur in fields outside of computation there will be stagnation. No amount of computational intelligence can mine asteroids or convert the Sahara to arable land without doing something with the material world. You can have rapid improvements in specific technologies in the midst of a general decline or a stagnation. For example; surely there a great deal of improvement in weapons systems during the middle ages. The stirrup, the crossbow, the gun, the cannon. Most of the advantages of those technologies didn't really help the average person's situation. This is not a hypothetical. While there was enormous increases in computational power in the past three - four decades median wages have not budged. People were able to consume more primarily due to debt. We ought to question whether computers will be enough to raise living standards in the developed world in the short to medium term (his main contention I think).
kurtpre 10y ago
Wait, isn't that the buddy of our all good friend Mr. Trump? I guess we should all listen to him.
- camillomiller 10y ago
  Palantir needs monies bro
- mineshaftgap 10y ago
  Are any HN users stupid enough to say they will leave the country if he is elected?
tiler 10y ago
One interpretation of this interview: If Machiavelli had had a prince for a disciple, the first thing he would have recommended him to do would have been to write a book against Machiavellism. --Voltaire Another interpretation of this interview: P.T. for POTUS.
andrewfromx 10y ago
"From 1982 to 2007, that 25 year period, NYC was the world center for globalization, moving money around to do things we already know how to do. Now from 2008 to Present the center is Silicon Valley. Moving money around to do things we don't yet know how to do."
some_guy1234 10y ago
Well, I am working on hard science. Neuroevolutionary development algorithms for reinforcement learning. Online unsupervised learning. I can't get funding. He talks big but he doesn't invest in the research. He still wants some business plan dropped in front of him. It doesn't work that way until the hard science is done first.
- kwisatzh 10y ago
  He's a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. He never grew up beyond 16. It's not worth bothering about what he says or means.
- jk4930 10y ago
  Check out http://www.breakoutlabs.org/ http://www.breakoutlabs.org/
dredmorbius 10y ago
Innovation discussion at 20m38s Transcript: http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thiel-ii-transcript/#innovation http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thi...
codingmyway 10y ago
Peter mentions Robert Gordon and his theory that all the good innovation is done but the one I'm looking forward to is the coming revolution in brain research. Wait until procrastination, anxiety, depression and fatigue can be turned off by a device behind your ear that controls your amygdala and instantly puts you in the zone. See see how much productivity goes up when everyone has the energy and motivation of the Richard Bransons of the world.
codingmyway 10y ago
His bit about wisdom of crowds won't please The DAO fans.

148 points by internaut 10y ago

THIEL: "one other way of interpreting the AI boom is that on the surface, it is about extreme optimism about the potentialities of computer technology, and the beneath the surface, it is simultaneously, perhaps, a great deal of pessimism around the possibilities in other technologies that will be developed by humans, and deep pessimism about the possibility of what humans can do." This is what I think about whenever I hear folks scaremongering about the "singularity". In my opinion these beliefs reflect a kind of spiritual emptiness; a yearning for answers that only God can fulfill.

ThomPete 10y ago
So you are ready to believe that physics and chemistry created simple organism which through the process of evolution become more complex organism eventually turning into us. But you can't believe that this evolution will continue? Perhaps it's exactly because their argument is empty of spiritualism that they see the world more clearly.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I'm of the mind the technological singularity won't come from AI but from enhanced human minds. I think it's easier to load more memory, processing, and the like indirectly to the human brain that it is to recreate a perfect mind inside a machine not even equipped to handle the questions we wish to ask it.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
What I find funny is people who think that metaphysics is real, even at the mild level of mathematical Platonism, but think that it can only ever be figured out from our armchairs, that there's no way I could build a machine to do it for me. On the other hand, I find it pretty easily believable that we can receive compounding returns from advances in ML/AI. After all, pretty much as soon as we invent new techniques in computational statistics, the go-to fields needing to apply them are the other computational sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, medicine.

dang 10y ago

Url changed from http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/peter-thiel-ii/ http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/peter-thiel-ii..., which points to this.

kruipen 10y ago
I don't think this is a good URL change. It is not like http://conversationswithbillkristol.org http://conversationswithbillkristol.org is a blog spam for "Conversations with Bill Kristol". And the original site has video divided into chapters which is useful.
- dang 10y ago
  It was a borderline call, but I'm guessing a URL with Bill Kristol in it would have had an evil-catnip effect. So, risk mitigation.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    It definitely gave me pause when I hit the YT link. Fair call.

peternilson 10y ago

For those who would prefer just the audio it's also offered as a podcast on iTunes.

mrep 10y ago

Is there a transcript anywhere? I much prefer reading over watching/listening

tristanj 10y ago
Youtube has an auto-generated transcript feature. In the video description, click More->Transcript. Edit: actually don't use the YouTube transcripts, there's a human-curated transcript here http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thiel-ii-transcript/ http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thi...
- Animats 10y ago
  That transcript system doesn't recognize sentence breaks. Theil speaks in run-on sentences, so it's not entirely the transcription system's fault.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    It also doesn't try to distinguish the speakers, which is weird. (It could just be "speaker #1", "speaker #2", etc.) I'd have thought it would be a lot easier to distinguish voices than to understand the English words they are saying.
- mrep 10y ago
  Beautiful, thanks!
- patrickk 10y ago
  > Edit: actually don't use the YouTube transcripts, there's a human-curated transcript here How very meta.

Animats 10y ago

OK, the big theme here is "innovation has slowed down, but this is being masked by all the activity around computers". So let's take a look at that. Way too many smart people are tied up doing rather banal things with computers, or in finance. That's capitalism in action. What isn't being worked on? Thiel is bothered by lack of progress in medicine. Medicine is now working on really hard problems, most of which are consequences of aging. Short of redesigning the human genome to eliminate aging, which may happen, those problems will remain hard. There hasn't been much visible progress in aircraft in a while. Boeing is still building the 737, which first flew in 1967. Aircraft are lighter, quieter, more fuel efficient and safer than they were back then. But not cheaper. The biggest societal problem is that we have less and less of a role for a big part of the population. The average IQ is only 100, remember.

antisthenes 10y ago
One of the hardest, but also the most pressing issues is regarding population growth. Should we artificially limit population growth? Can it be done in a way that isn't forceful, but perhaps with the right incentives? Should humanity, as a global society push for quality over quantity in reproduction? Is basic income still feasible in this scenario? It's an ethical and ideological mess and frankly, it'll require someone way smarter than I to come up with the answers.
- Animats 10y ago
  For Europe and Japan, population is in decline. US population would be in decline if it were not for immigration. China is expected to max out around 2026. (The one-child policy worked.) India, though, has real problems.[1] Two big problems we expected to have were overpopulation and running out of energy. Neither happened. [1] http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in-2050-extreme-projections-demand-extreme-action/ http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in...
  - simula67 10y ago
    Overpopulation is a real problem for India. The population growth is falling, but not fast enough https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:IND:CHN:USA&hl=en&dl=en https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

daemoncat 10y ago

after Trump nomination, o to -1, sorry Thiel, you are not welcome

hugh4 10y ago
Way to deal calmly with the fact that not everybody in the world shares your political opinions, bro.
oneloop 10y ago
This is also my first instinct. But be careful, people who do things you find wrong might still have intelligent things to say. Evaluate ideas on their own merit.
return0 10y ago
Your comment is not useful, but nevertheless his endorsement is worth discussing. It's obvious that trump is more aligned with his world view of a more risk taking, long-term planning and less people-pleasing leadership. You should also not assert yourself as a representative or gatekeeper of the community. It's this mindset that should not be welcome here.
- samastur 10y ago
  Trump long-term planning? In what way?
- qrendel 10y ago
  >... nevertheless his endorsement is worth discussing. It's obvious that trump is more aligned with his world view of a more risk taking, long-term planning and less people-pleasing leadership. Given some of Thiel's views and statements on politics (and without necessarily making a value judgment on those views), I'd honestly put more money on his just wanting to hurt the functioning and credibility of the US government as much as possible by seeing Trump elected. At least one source[1] reports it as: "'Peter has become an increasing admirer of Trump's public attacks on political correctness, especially what he has been saying about women,' says a close friend of Thiel...." [1]https://heatst.com/politics/the-real-reasons-peter-thiel-has-been-seduced-by-trump/ https://heatst.com/politics/the-real-reasons-peter-thiel-has...

kriro 10y ago

Very interesting talk. I'd love for him to write a history of capitalism type book. "The History of Innovation and Globalization". Start it off with the x-axis=globalization and y-axis=innovation model and go from say 18th century to now. I always enjoy history of economics books. I like the mainstream books but really enjoyed the perspective and research that went into "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought". I am not aware of any good history type books from a more pragmatic business oriented point of view. Thiel has some interesting insights and perspectives. Unfortunately that book probably wouldn't be a good use of his time but come on Peter, I know you want to write it :)

mseebach 10y ago
Zero to One actually has some good material in this vein.
- mark_l_watson 10y ago
  The book does, and is well worth the reading time. I have Zero to One as an audio book and I am on my second way through it. The concept that zero to one is much more valuable than one to ten helped me understand my own career better. I have always been a risk taker and even though some of my work projects over the last 30 years have failed, my bosses never seemed unhappy with me. I would usually really nail a few new ideas a year. This book helped me to understand why I seemed to get perks (like ocean view window offices at two consequative companies) that none of the other programmers got, even though they seemed to be much steadier workers than I was.
return0 10y ago
I think it would be a biased history book. He has strong opinions and that would not apply well to history.
jk4930 10y ago
You might like "The Birth of Plenty", the first chapter is online: http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM It's not the pragmatic business POV, but it has some highly interesting considerations.

return0 10y ago

He reiterates many of the things he 's been saying for a while and written in his book. It's worth reiterating them, probably because things have not changed. He makes a distinction of computers as the "one field that has progres", but, is it really true that IT is not stuck in a rut as well? What are the new paradigms developed recently? Computer vision, machine learning were established in the 80s , despite only becoming commonplace nowadays. There is little progress in theory since then. Engineers obsess over the rediscovery of functional languages, a relic of the 50s. Commercial success should not be taken as an indicator of real progress.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
virmundi 10y ago
I agree that there doesn't seem to be much advancement over the 80s (I'm trying to learn emacs for Clojure right now). I don't agree that commercial success is not an indicator of real progress. For example, LISPs did not run well on 80s computers. The Japanese, amongst others, had to create special computers to control their trains. Rules based programming performed poorly too. May other such paradigms and tools fall into this category. For the most part the old, neat tools of now have the hardware necessary for them to be useful. The JVM provides great performance for Clojure. Over the last 30 years, multi-threaded concepts coalesced too. Now they're built into mainstream languages. Provided people stop trying to solve already solved problems like task management, we could possibly be on the verge of productivity improvements.
internaut 10y ago
Progress can be a rather nebulous word. It can mean breaking new ground or on a lower level: a continuation in effort. Replace progress with 'vital energies'. New ground is what we all want (new nuclear systems) but when there isn't even a continuation of effort (no old style nuclear plants being built) it's even worse. Computer science is in a rut. It's just that other things have even lost the energy to cycle through old accomplishments. I'd say the Art world is one of those areas that has lost all vitality.

aaharb 10y ago

This video is oddly pessimistic, but to me, Thiel is overlooking where the greatest advances are yet to come. The advances in computers are advances in processing power and connectivity. Every industry uses both of these elements to succeed. Now that computers are reaching a sort of peak development, there is going to be a dispensing of the capabilities that computers offer into other industries. Its hard for me to put it into words, but I think that computers are simply a stepping stone for real achievements to come. The car has basically reached peak performance years ago, but we aren't disappointed in the fact that there was a lot of focus improving the car and a giant vehicle industry for many many years. Instead we moved on to building things that can use a car, such as the highway system. Or the mail delivery system, or the thousands of industries that completely rely on highways or mail. In the same way with computers, we are now going to see industries and technologies appear that rely on having computers that have reached this advanced level of processing power we have today. Once this mighty computer is passed on to the common man, innovation begins to move in different paths again. Like a tree. I dont know, this may have delved into a bit of a rant but that video made me extremely optimistic :)

mark_l_watson 10y ago
I don't think that computers are anywhere near a stall-point as far as new advances go. I expect to see computers that use very much less energy, more memory but still get much smaller, and CPUs with more special instructions that enable faster neural networks, data structure manipulation a that might enable symbolic AI, etc. You do make good points, and I up voted you.
internaut 10y ago
Thiel would agree with your main statements. He's said before that he's not particularly worried about advancements in computers continuing to unfold and the potential for the Net to become ever more like a planet wide nervous system with many more use cases coming into existence. His complaint is that if progress does not occur in fields outside of computation there will be stagnation. No amount of computational intelligence can mine asteroids or convert the Sahara to arable land without doing something with the material world. You can have rapid improvements in specific technologies in the midst of a general decline or a stagnation. For example; surely there a great deal of improvement in weapons systems during the middle ages. The stirrup, the crossbow, the gun, the cannon. Most of the advantages of those technologies didn't really help the average person's situation. This is not a hypothetical. While there was enormous increases in computational power in the past three - four decades median wages have not budged. People were able to consume more primarily due to debt. We ought to question whether computers will be enough to raise living standards in the developed world in the short to medium term (his main contention I think).

kurtpre 10y ago

Wait, isn't that the buddy of our all good friend Mr. Trump? I guess we should all listen to him.

camillomiller 10y ago
Palantir needs monies bro
mineshaftgap 10y ago
Are any HN users stupid enough to say they will leave the country if he is elected?

tiler 10y ago

One interpretation of this interview: If Machiavelli had had a prince for a disciple, the first thing he would have recommended him to do would have been to write a book against Machiavellism. --Voltaire Another interpretation of this interview: P.T. for POTUS.

andrewfromx 10y ago

"From 1982 to 2007, that 25 year period, NYC was the world center for globalization, moving money around to do things we already know how to do. Now from 2008 to Present the center is Silicon Valley. Moving money around to do things we don't yet know how to do."

some_guy1234 10y ago

Well, I am working on hard science. Neuroevolutionary development algorithms for reinforcement learning. Online unsupervised learning. I can't get funding. He talks big but he doesn't invest in the research. He still wants some business plan dropped in front of him. It doesn't work that way until the hard science is done first.

kwisatzh 10y ago
He's a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. He never grew up beyond 16. It's not worth bothering about what he says or means.
jk4930 10y ago
Check out http://www.breakoutlabs.org/ http://www.breakoutlabs.org/

dredmorbius 10y ago

Innovation discussion at 20m38s Transcript: http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thiel-ii-transcript/#innovation http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/peter-thi...

codingmyway 10y ago

Peter mentions Robert Gordon and his theory that all the good innovation is done but the one I'm looking forward to is the coming revolution in brain research. Wait until procrastination, anxiety, depression and fatigue can be turned off by a device behind your ear that controls your amygdala and instantly puts you in the zone. See see how much productivity goes up when everyone has the energy and motivation of the Richard Bransons of the world.

codingmyway 10y ago

His bit about wisdom of crowds won't please The DAO fans.