Xi, Putin declare intent to rule the world of AI, infosec Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have set themselves the goal of dominating the world of information technology. The two despots met earlier this week and have since issued a document titled the "Joint Statement between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation on …
It's the latest hype for attracting-scaring investors, so that they will invest into a publicly traded company.
Actually, it has been around for decades in certain applications and its limitations are also quite clear. Lots of stories of "AI" breaking down in spectacular fashion in "corner cases".
The scarier something, the more investment money you can receive.
Like mRNA for innoculation.
See the purpose of AI ?
"Freedom is more than a word, more than the base coinage
Of statesmen, the tyrant's dishonored cheque, or the dreamer's mad
Inflated currency. She is mortal, we know, and made
In the image of simple men who have no taste for carnage
But sooner kill and are killed than see that image betrayed.
Mortal she is, yet rising always refreshed from her ashes:
She is bound to earth, yet she flies as high as a passage bird
To home wherever man's heart with seasonal warmth is stirred:
Innocent is her touch as the dawn's, but still it unleashes
The ravisher shades of envy. Freedom is more than a word."
C Day-Lewis, "The Nabara"
That's nice, but internet standards are only as good as the willingness of others to follow them. Even if the ITU where by accept NewIP how many non-authoritarian countries are going to seriously adopt it? It will just discredit the ITU even further after their last attempt to hijack the internet.
Even if the ITU where by accept NewIP how many non-authoritarian countries are going to seriously adopt it? It will just discredit the ITU even further after their last attempt to hijack the internet
But this time, it's different. I think I first heard the term 'Balkanisation of the Internet' back in the '90s from a paper by.. Lawrence Lessig? But it's something that has been happening. It's not the ITU, it's the IETF and originally concerns were over US dominance of critical elements of the Internet. Since then, we've had countries self-balkanising by inserting 'Great Firewalls' between the public Internet and their country's portions of it. We have 'liberal' governments like the UK and EU demanding their bits of the Internet become nanny-nets, free of "disinformation" that hasn't had prior approval. We've had demands that Russia should be given the UDP and de-peered from Internet.
So it's perhaps inevitable that countries finding themselves on the "sanctions" list look at ways to route around the problem. It's something that's always happened with sanctions, ie the country(s) affected focus on becoming more self-reliant and route around the problem.
Or from the article-
So there you have it: two autocracies planning to work together to build tech the rest of the world is increasingly reluctant to sell them,
That assumes there's just two. We've been very generous with our sanctions, and countries will be looking at how we've been flexing our political and economic muscles, and might be considering alternatives like BRICS. We've just had Indonesia telling people to ditch Mastercard & Visa. We've had a Chinese-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi. There's been a warming of relations between Middle Eastern countries and Syria.
But the problem is not tech we're increasingly reluctant to sell them, it's the tech that we've been relying on and now can't buy. Or BRICs may decide no longer sell, or impose punitive tariffs on. Most of India's mobile network depends on Huawei because they 'stole' a significant lead on 5G tech and getting that to market at reasonable prices. We may have decided to rip & replace Huawei's tin, other countries aren't doing this. We love our iThings, but they're mostly made in China. Manufacturers have been trying to diversify and shift production to countries like Vietnam, but they may end up joining BRICS.
Eventually our politicians might realise that their authoritarian policies have backfired massively, and simply accelerated a transition towards a more multi-polar world.. But I get the feeling it's too late.
Other countries will fall over themselves to implement NewIP by another name if the behavior of 5 Eyes is an example. The rest of any protestations about democracy are mere words. Think of the children, while allowing Facebi??h et al unrestricted snoopage. Also have a look at the links of a government web page. In Oz the trackers are endemic.
They are old men burning the future for vanity, one thicker than the other: Putins special contribution to the World Domination Plan is to drive the Russian talent out of the country - or off to the trenches in Ukraine. Xi would certainly lend Putin's Russia some engineers in the future - to help with extracting those Chinese ressources.
China is not at the bleeding edge of AI, but they do provide vital manufactured goods to the societies at the bleeding edge of AI. There is no guarantee that China will not eventually lead in the application of AI to manufacturing, making their work force much more productive. It wasn't the USA that first put transistors into mass produced goods, was it?
What did I read about Sam Altman's [CEO of OpenAI] other project today?
As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cleptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets. Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world['s politicians*] to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human’s smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determine whether someone is a unique human. Worldcoin is aiming to make their proof-of-personhood network in the least dystopian way possible. That being said, it still requires scanning a billion people’s eyeballs with a five-pound chromatic sphere called “The Orb”.... [Worldcoin] started with a discussion that universal basic income will eventually be something that is very important to the world, and in general, getting access to the internet economy will be much more important than is obvious at this point,” Blania says
* edited for clarity
After reading this I began to wonder if Sam Altman and friends might not be a ChatGTP session gone off the rails.
There is Silicon Valley dream of a society of malleable consumer aphids trapped in a web of digital devices, milked for profit by their ant overlords. The aphids live on a diet of manufactured goods imported mostly from China, which grow on trees.
Well no, Silicon Valley dreamers don't really believe that literally, expect the part about manufactured goods growing on trees.
To use of russian and chinese technology right now is quantifiably INSANE. That includes social. You are relying on governments that spy and deceive and weaponize technology against the general population.
Try to remember that truth is owned by the russians, tik tok is owned by the chinese, and twitter is owned by the saudis, and they are all spying on you, and manipulating you.
The use of chinese and russian tech is empowering the autocracies of this world against you. They WILL use it against you. It's their very definition. Even apple is moving to India.
Perhaps this dynamic duo might be in the market for some recycled soviet era five year plans ;)
Replace tractors with cpus or gpus and apply coat of marketing varnish good to go.
For a few extra dollars I will throw in a Great Leap Forward - always a crowd pleaser.
The leopard never really changes his shorts.
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