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Swap that point about AI with "electricity". Everything runs on electricity it's "a technology that tends to concentrate power" (no pun intended). The electrici

Swap that point about AI with "electricity". Everything runs on electricity it's "a technology that tends to concentrate power" (no pun intended). The electricity providers must be too powerful... But somehow electricity providers aren't that powerful. Unless there is no competition in sight... The point "AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power" is not that correct. They need this statement to be true, otherwise no way to justify the trillion evaluations.

simgt 2mo ago
Competition is only one of the ways to keep a corporation aligned. In the case of France, having a state monopoly on electricity even worked very well until we broke it for the sake of competition.
fredoliveira 2mo ago
> The point "AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power" is not that correct. They need this statement to be true, otherwise no way to justify the trillion evaluations. How is it not true? The biggest companies in the world are, quite obviously (just look at the numbers) going to be AI companies. The most powerful governments in the world are quite clearly going to be those that are close to (or in control of) AI companies. People have a very hard time seeing the second order effects of the control of intelligence - we need to fix that.
XorNot 2mo ago
Except that's a bad analogy: electricity is the means by which to do work. The outputs of models in AI datacenters are the work. The electricity company does not get the entirety of my useful input to the work as a result of me using electricity, but an AI company does.
RugnirViking 2mo ago
but its difficult to use more electricity directly to get more utility. There are some rare ways - things like PtX systems - but even those are linear at best. AI is concentrating power in the sense that nobody wants to use the twentieth smartest AI - so if you can use the most compute, you get an outsized share of the rewards (in terms of paying customers) - over and above your share of the compute. There are other business sectors where similar dynamics exist - where the biggest capital tends to win - a sort of natural monopoly type situation, its nothing about hyperscaling or whatever.
pjc50 2mo ago
Swap that to "oil" and everyone goes "well, yes, obviously, oil is so powerful that people start wars over it". Iran has hit the Amazon data center in Bahrain. The Ukranian deep drone bombing campaign has hit refineries, but also Wildberries, the "Russian Amazon" warehouses. The US campaign against Iran now, Iraq and Serbia previously, targeted power infrastructure. It will obviously be a target in the next war, and AI goes on that list too. Every time the US completes an AI data center, someone in the Chinese nuclear command updates their target priority list. And vice versa.
- mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
  >Every time the US completes an AI data center, someone in the Chinese nuclear command updates their target priority list You might have stumbled on the way to convince people that more data centers are a good thing
  - Iolaum 2mo ago
    Especially with many of those datacenters being built next to residential areas ... </s>
inigyou 2mo ago
Trump already banned solar and offshore wind, in order to concentrate power (literally) with the oil companies.
andersonl 2mo ago
You realize utilities are arguably the most regulated industry in the US, right? Like this isn't just a bad counter, it's the example of necessary regulation due to concentration.
atleastoptimal 2mo ago
The fact that essential commodity providers aren't the emperors of the universe does not imply the same thing could not be true about AI. Electricity needs transformation to be useful. AI is the transformation layer, a sufficiently advanced AI system could secure an advantage in practically any economically relevant domain. If you have the best AI in world where embodied robotics are sufficiently advanced, you also have the best doctors, lawyers, engineers, logistics network, PR, weaponry, tactical leverage, etc.
- AlexandrB 2mo ago
  You say that AI is transformation layer, then list out physical things that would be necessary to transform AI into something useful such as sufficiently advanced embodied robotics. How is this different than electricity?
  - atleastoptimal 2mo ago
    AI would oversee the creation of those physical things, in the same way humans + machines do now

simgt 2mo ago

Competition is only one of the ways to keep a corporation aligned. In the case of France, having a state monopoly on electricity even worked very well until we broke it for the sake of competition.

fredoliveira 2mo ago

> The point "AI is structurally a technology that tends to concentrate power" is not that correct. They need this statement to be true, otherwise no way to justify the trillion evaluations. How is it not true? The biggest companies in the world are, quite obviously (just look at the numbers) going to be AI companies. The most powerful governments in the world are quite clearly going to be those that are close to (or in control of) AI companies. People have a very hard time seeing the second order effects of the control of intelligence - we need to fix that.

XorNot 2mo ago

Except that's a bad analogy: electricity is the means by which to do work. The outputs of models in AI datacenters are the work. The electricity company does not get the entirety of my useful input to the work as a result of me using electricity, but an AI company does.

RugnirViking 2mo ago

but its difficult to use more electricity directly to get more utility. There are some rare ways - things like PtX systems - but even those are linear at best. AI is concentrating power in the sense that nobody wants to use the twentieth smartest AI - so if you can use the most compute, you get an outsized share of the rewards (in terms of paying customers) - over and above your share of the compute. There are other business sectors where similar dynamics exist - where the biggest capital tends to win - a sort of natural monopoly type situation, its nothing about hyperscaling or whatever.

pjc50 2mo ago

Swap that to "oil" and everyone goes "well, yes, obviously, oil is so powerful that people start wars over it". Iran has hit the Amazon data center in Bahrain. The Ukranian deep drone bombing campaign has hit refineries, but also Wildberries, the "Russian Amazon" warehouses. The US campaign against Iran now, Iraq and Serbia previously, targeted power infrastructure. It will obviously be a target in the next war, and AI goes on that list too. Every time the US completes an AI data center, someone in the Chinese nuclear command updates their target priority list. And vice versa.

mohamedkoubaa 2mo ago
>Every time the US completes an AI data center, someone in the Chinese nuclear command updates their target priority list You might have stumbled on the way to convince people that more data centers are a good thing
- Iolaum 2mo ago
  Especially with many of those datacenters being built next to residential areas ... </s>

inigyou 2mo ago

Trump already banned solar and offshore wind, in order to concentrate power (literally) with the oil companies.

andersonl 2mo ago

You realize utilities are arguably the most regulated industry in the US, right? Like this isn't just a bad counter, it's the example of necessary regulation due to concentration.

atleastoptimal 2mo ago

The fact that essential commodity providers aren't the emperors of the universe does not imply the same thing could not be true about AI. Electricity needs transformation to be useful. AI is the transformation layer, a sufficiently advanced AI system could secure an advantage in practically any economically relevant domain. If you have the best AI in world where embodied robotics are sufficiently advanced, you also have the best doctors, lawyers, engineers, logistics network, PR, weaponry, tactical leverage, etc.

AlexandrB 2mo ago
You say that AI is transformation layer, then list out physical things that would be necessary to transform AI into something useful such as sufficiently advanced embodied robotics. How is this different than electricity?
- atleastoptimal 2mo ago
  AI would oversee the creation of those physical things, in the same way humans + machines do now