> We certainly need to partner with industry. Because they are so far ahead and are making such giant investments, that is the only possible path.
And therein lies the risk: research labs may become wholly dependent on companies whose agendas are fundamentally commercial. In exchange for access to compute and frontier models, labs may cede control over data, methods, and IP—letting private firms quietly extract value from publicly funded research. What begins as partnership can end in capture.
monkeyelite · 4h ago
> research labs may become wholly dependent on companies
They already are. Who provides their computers and operating systems? Who provides their HR software? Who provides their expensive lab equipment?
Companies are not in some separate realm. They are how our society produces goods and services, including the most essential ones.
hdivider · 4h ago
I fail to understand the sentiment here.
This is the intention of tech transfer. To have private-sector entities commercialize the R&D.
What is the alternative? National labs and universities can't commercialize in the same way, including due to legal restrictions at the state and sometimes federal level.
As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair and transparent -- and not concentrated in say OpenAI or with underhanded kickbacks to government -- commercialization will benefit productive applications of AI. All the software we're using right now to communicate sits on top of previous, successful, federally-funded tech transfer efforts which were then commercialized. This is how the system works, how we got to this level.
dekhn · 1h ago
What do you mean universities can't commercialize in the same way (I may have misunderstood what you meant)? Due to Bayh-Dole, Universities can patent and license the tech they develop under contract for the government- often helping professors start up companies with funding, while simultaneously charging those companies to license the tech. This is also true for National labs run by universities (Berkeley and a few others). the other labs run under contract by external for-profit companies.
worldsayshi · 3h ago
> What is the alternative?
Reasonably there should be a two way exchange? It might be okay for companies to piggyback on research funds if that also means that more research insight enters public knowledge.
rapind · 2h ago
I’d be happy if they just paid their fair share of tax and stopped acting like they were self-made when they really just piggybacked on public funds and research.
There’s zero acknowledgment or appreciation of public infra and research.
No comments yet
delusional · 4h ago
> As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair and transparent
I think that's the crux of the guy you're responding to's point. He does not believe it will be done fairly and transparently, because these AI corporations will have broad control over the technology.
hdivider · 4h ago
If so, yes indeed, fair point by him/her. It's up to ordinary folks like us to push against unfair tech transfer because yes, federal labs and research institutions would otherwise provide the incumbents an extreme advantage.
Having been in this world though, I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs with companies at any level of scale. From startup to OpenAI to defense primes, they're open to all. So part of the challenge here is simply engaging capable entrepreneurs to go license tech from federal labs, and go create competitors for the greedy VC-funded or defense prime incumbents.
cogman10 · 4h ago
> I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs
My reluctance is when we talk about fraud, waste, and corruptions in government, this is where it happens.
The DoD's budget isn't $1T because they are spending $900B on the troops. It's $1T because $900B of that ends up in the hands of the likes of Lockhead martin and Raytheon to build equipment we don't need.
I frankly do not trust "entrepreneurs" to not be greedy pigs willing to 100x the cost of anything and everything. There are nearly no checks in place to stop that from happening.
lovich · 3h ago
Not that it fully takes away from your argument but a lot of that high price tag is also due to requiring much better controls on material to prevent supply chain attacks ala getting beepers with explosives in the hands of all your leadership
cogman10 · 2h ago
All the more reason to bring such initiatives inhouse and not outsource them.
You can hope that a defense company is doing the right things in terms of supply chain attacks, but that's a pretty lucrative corner to cut. They'd not even need to cut it all the time to reap benefits.
The only other alternative is frequent audits of the defense company which is expensive and wouldn't necessarily solve the problem.
BurningFrog · 4h ago
R&D results should be buried under a crystal obelisk at the bottom of the ocean, to warn to future generations.
hahajk · 52m ago
In the case of huge frontier LLMs, the public labs will likely never be able to compete. In my experience, govt orgs are ardent rule-followers and wouldn't be as willing to violate copyright.
godelski · 2h ago
There's a risk but there's also great reward if it is done properly. The only way to maximize utility of any individual player is to play cooperatively[0]. A single actor might get a momentary advantage by defecting from cooperation, but it decreases their total eventual rewards and frankly it quickly becomes a net negative in many cases.
That said, I'm not very confident such a situation would happen in reality. I'm not confident current industry leaders can see past a quarter and nearly certain they can't see past 4. Current behavior already indicates that they are unwilling to maximize their own profits. A rising tide lifts all ships, but many will forgo the benefit this gives them to set out to explore for new and greater riches and instead are only able to envy the other ships rising with them. It can be easy to lose sight of what you have if you are too busy looking at others.
[0.1] Can explain more if needed but I don't think this is hard to understand.
catigula · 1h ago
What's the "reward"?
I want to interrogate AI optimist type people because even if AI is completely safe and harmless I literally see only downsides.
Is your perception that living in theorized extreme comfort correlates to "reward"?
christophilus · 1h ago
You really see only downsides? I’m no AI optimist, but it is a useful tool, and it’s here to stay.
catigula · 1h ago
Yes, I only see downsides.
It's mostly because the actual stated and actualized goal of real AI is clearly bad.
It's like if you approached me and said "I'm going to erase meaning from your life. You will want for nothing. The entire paradigm of reality will be changed: your entire evolutionary struggle, made meaningless. You will want for nothing: "be" nothing. Also this might potentially kill you or some rich person or more likely nation-state could enslave you."
The actual stated goals seem negative to me. I'm not very interested in erasing and surpassing human achievement in every way. It seems inherently bad. I don't think that's an absurd perspective.
I think the disconnect here is asked in "what is the purpose of life" and I don't think any reasonable interpretation of that is "be obscenely comfortable".
This is literally THE scam Elon, Thiel, Sacks and others are running as they gut the government.
Sell assets like government real estate to themselves at super cheap rates and then set up as many dependencies as they can where the government has to buy services from them because they have nowhere else to turn.
To give an example this missile dome bullshit they are talking about building which is a terrible idea for a bunch of reasons.. but there is talks at the moment of having this run by a private company who will sell it as a subscription service. So in this scenario the US military can’t actually fire the missiles without the explicit permission of a private company.
This AI thing is the same scam.
FilosofumRex · 1h ago
Right on target, publicly funded research always ends up in the hands of private profiteers via private university labs.
If LLM/AI is critical to national security, then it should be funded solely via the Dep of Defense budget, with no IP or copy right derivatives allowed.
tantalor · 4h ago
I was a bit puzzled what "1663" is. Here's what I found:
> The Lab's science and technology digital magazine presents the most significant research initiatives and accomplishments from national-security-related programs as well as projects that advance the frontiers of basic science. Our name is an homage to the Lab's historic role in the nation's service: During World War II, all that the outside world knew of the top-secret laboratory was the mailing address - P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
candiddevmike · 3h ago
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
ben_w · 3h ago
To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI.
To the extent that further improvements to AI are either snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything else first is of course the best idea.
Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things impressive, it's not at all clear to me that the people funding their development will be able to monopolise the return on the investment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus etc.
Also: the way the biggest enthusiasts are talking about the sectoral growth and corresponding electrical power requirements… well, I agree with the maths for the power if I assume the growth, but they're economically unrealistic on the timescales they talk about, and that's despite that renewables are the fastest %-per-year-growth power sector and could plausibly double global electrical production by the early 2030s.
haswell · 2h ago
> To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI.
The major question is: at what point will unaddressed climate change nullify these economic gains and make the fact that anyone worried about them feel silly in retrospect?
Or put another way, will we even have the chance collectively enjoy the benefits of that work?
TeMPOraL · 2h ago
Still, another two big questions are:
- To what extent AI will actually be helpful in solving the climate crisis?
- To what extent the power generation growth fueled by AI will be critical to solving the climate crisis, and conversely, how badly we'll be screwed without it?
"Degrowth" is not an option. It hasn't been for a long time now. We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.
temp0826 · 2m ago
The fastest way to solve the climate crisis is to DESTROY ALL HUMANS
Retric · 2h ago
We can very quickly and reasonably cheaply ‘solve’ global warming without AI. Wind, solar, batteries + existing hydro and nuclear can hit a 95% clean electricity grid with capacity to scale in EV’s and heat pumps.
Electricity + home heating + cars is not 100%, but cutting emissions in half means you double the time before reaching any given threshold. For many problems the last 10% is the most challenging but we get 10x as long to solve it and 10x as long to implement mitigation strategies.
That’s what makes climate change critical, the next year is more important than what happens 10 or 20 years from now.
daedrdev · 1h ago
Electricity is only part of energy use and emissions production. In no way is there a simple and cheap solution, all proposals have tradeoffs and costs
Retric · 27m ago
Electricity can replace the need for gasoline, diesel, natural gas, fuel oil, coal etc across a wide range of applications while saving money. Thus the talk of heat pumps and EV’s in that post. Which then further reduces the need to extract, transport, and refine oil, natural gas, and coal further reducing methane from leaking pipes etc.
However, doing so requires ramping up electricity production and storage.
drdrey · 48m ago
electricity generation is only ~20% of emissions
Retric · 22m ago
Replacing gasoline and diesel use in cars and trucks drops that 10% directly and another 3-5% indirectly. But EV’s need electricity thus clean electricity can offset more than its current 20% share. The actual calculation depends on unknown factors like how we ramp down oil production, ethanol use, and how refineries adjust to changing demands.
Add heating for buildings + hot water + industrial processes that can use electricity instead of fossil fuels alongside indirect effects like methane leaks from pipelines and drumroll.
We can get to ~50% reduction while saving money over using fossil fuels.
ngangaga · 29m ago
> "Degrowth" is not an option.
This is not helpful. There are many reasons degrowth won't generally help humanity, but the benefits are particularly aplicable to western nations and their diplomatic relations. Certainly many western nations can bear degrowth without significant loss in quality of life. The wealthy just gotta take a significant cut to their waistlines.
> We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.
This certainly seems to be the liberal solution. Short of evicting them from our society what better choices do we have?
haswell · 1h ago
I think those are the right questions to be asking, with emphasis on the fact that these remain questions.
Too many AI accelerationists are treating these questions as foregone conclusions, which seems like an enormously dangerous bet without a clearer pathway to a truly beneficial outcome.
It may very well be that some form of AI (which form? hard to say - probably not LLMs) are a part of the solution. It may just as well be that they are not. But when building software, the age old advice to “start with the problem, not the solution” comes to mind.
The number of engineers I’ve worked with over the years (I’ve been one of them) who are convinced that the feature they’re building is the right thing to build, only to realize later that it doesn’t solve a problem people care about…is a very large number.
Regarding degrowth, I’m not advocating for it. With that said, that will be the unwanted result forced on us by the realities of the environment if we can’t put a lid on the climate issue.
grey-area · 2h ago
Is generative AI economically useful? More economically useful than switching to renewable energy?
rudolph9 · 1h ago
There are notable similarities between a wartime economy and one continually adapting to global warming. While perhaps not sustainable long-term, we may observe short-term economic growth driven by government spending, followed by extended inflationary periods. We might currently be experiencing the first cycle of this kind, with more likely to follow.
ngangaga · 3h ago
Well yes, nationalism will be the dagger in the heart of humanity. But AI won't do anything to address this; in fact, leaning into the concept of competing rather than cooperating economies will accelerate pushing the dagger in.
CooCooCaCha · 1h ago
That’s why I wonder if a planetary government is inevitable sometime in the future. We can’t address species-wide issues if we’re constantly worried about competition, and if market forces aren’t going to work then the only other solution I can think of is a bigger, more powerful entity laying down the law.
dale_glass · 2h ago
Who "we"?
The people qualified to fix global warming aren't the same people qualified to work on ML.
threeseed · 1h ago
Yes they are.
I've worked with hundreds of Data Scientists and every one had the ability to work on different problem areas. And so they were working on models to optimise truck rollouts or when to increase compute for complex jobs.
If as a society we placed an increased emphasis on efficiency and power consumption we would see a lot more models being used in those areas.
michaelt · 44m ago
Seems to me, we know pretty well what we need to do about climate change. It has already been data scienced many, many times.
The problem is we don't want to do it.
XorNot · 2h ago
Don't you know? Humanity can only solve one problem at a time in order of importance.
And it's corollary: something being in the news or social media means everyone else has stopped working on other problems and is now solely working on whatever that headline's words say.
85392_school · 3h ago
You'd probably meet the talking point that if we don't accelerate AI development China will win.
No comments yet
whatever1 · 2h ago
This is the plan. Build all the clean infrastructure with the fake promise of AI and once the bubble bursts, boom. We have spare clean capacity for everyone.
_heimdall · 2h ago
We can't just switch to clean energy, we would need to drastically reduce our energy use per capita.
dlivingston · 1h ago
Absolutely not. We would be moving backwards as a society. Increased energy usage is a bellwether of societal advancement. See the Kardashev scale and Dyson sphere for example.
I don't think we should be setting artificial limiters on energy usage or anything but you're using circular reasoning as justification.
These scales use energy usage as the measure of progress which you are saying is proof that reducing energy use is reducing progress.
threeseed · 1h ago
Which is actually a problem AI is perfect for.
bcoates · 3h ago
1. Build atomic power plants sufficient to supply electricity needs for projected future AI megaprojects
2. Inevitable AI winter
3. Keep running the plants, clean energy achieved, stop burning coal, global warming solved
No comments yet
bobxmax · 47m ago
It's going to be fun when China rules the world because western democracies have gone so batshit anti-tech
engineer_22 · 2h ago
Let's also cure cancer and stop all wars while we're at it.
threeseed · 1h ago
There is no one cancer but we are working to cure as many variations as we can.
madaxe_again · 1h ago
Don’t forget world hunger.
I don’t understand this line of reasoning - it’s like saying “you’re not allowed steam engines until you drain all of your mines”. It’s moralistic, rather than pragmatic.
godelski · 2h ago
This isn't an "either or" situation. You can do both.
The absolute dollar value might seem high, because we're working with the budget of not just a country but the wealthiest country, but as a percentage it is quite low. You can certainly pull funds from other areas too, like the military, which also greatly benefit from such research endeavors.
Even if these were exclusively non-weapons and non-military based technologies being developed it'd be naive to not recognize that the best military defense is to stop a war before it happens. That comes through many avenues, but notably the development of new technologies, especially those that benefit people as a whole (e.g. medicine or see the Taiwan strategy). But even then, it would also be naive to think that the same technology couldn't be adapted to military uses. Anything can be a weapon if you use it wrong enough.
But note that we're also seeing a reduction in federal research funding. We're also seeing less fundamental research and these types of problems need a strong pipeline through the classic TRL scale[0]. I think you'll find some of that discussion over in yesterday's thread about Bell Labs. The pipeline doesn't work if you don't take risks and are rushing. You need a fire under your ass but too hot and you get burned. It's easy to be myopic in today's settings, and that's not a great idea for an organization who needs to have an outlook in terms of decades and centuries (i.e. government) as opposed to the next election cycle or next quarterly earnings report.
Mind you, we've done these things before. Both the Space Race and Manhattan Project. At the height of the Space Race NASA's budget was over 4.41% of the federal budget[2]. I'm not sure what percent the Manhattan Project's budget was, but it is very clear that this is A LOT cheaper than what actual war costs[3]. We're talking about less than a month of war costs. Remember, we spent over a $750bn over in Iraq[4]. The question is not if we have the money, but what we want to spend it on. Personally I'd rather stuff like this than bombing people. Frankly, you can eat the cake too, as it makes it cheaper to bomb people as well...
AI doesn't yet exist as far ad we know, and LLMs will only be helpful at generating a massive amount of guesses at how a human may describe the solution.
At best its a needle in a haystack approach, and one that seems to toss out methodical, reasoned science in favor of a blunderbuss.
gosub100 · 2h ago
what's wrong with global warming? If you're asking me to put animals' lives before my own, I say "no thanks".
babyent · 2h ago
I think climate change is legit. But I also think that a lot of it is just a mechanism to knee cap other countries from progressing. I don’t mind, because it keeps us at the top.
Even more importantly, they are GPU based. The US has 3 exascale computers (out of 3 in the world). I should stress that these measurements are based on LINPACK, and are at fp64 precision. This is quite a different measurement than others might be thinking of with recent announcements in AI (which are fp8)
LLMs seem to be plateauing. I'd rather let the markets chase AI.
swalsh · 1h ago
How do you make that assessment? I'll admit, the knowledge base is not 10x every few months anymore, but the agent capabilities keep getting better. The newer models can do a lot of useful work accurately for a while. That wasn't true several months ago.
overgard · 1h ago
Wake me up when they solve hallucination.
voidspark · 1h ago
"LLM" is not mentioned anywhere in the article.
nyarlathotep_ · 1h ago
There's a serious issue around naming here, I'll agree.
I assume "AI" in contemporary articles, especially as it pertains to investments, means "Generative AI, especially or exclusively LLMs."
voidspark · 1h ago
In this case it means research, as it pertains to universities.
therealpygon · 2h ago
LLMs, maybe. AI? Hardly.
apwell23 · 1h ago
>AI? Hardly.
what are some examples of 'hardly' ?
falcor84 · 1h ago
There are a ton of big examples of advances across all subfields of AI over the last year, but the first one that came to my mind was AlphaGeometry2 [0], which combines Gemini with a symbolic agent to solve (offer proofs for) the vast majority of IMO geometry problems. I believe that this sort of approach can be applied to many other types of problems.
The article explains that the lab would support universities by providing infrastructure.
woah · 1h ago
HN commenters in 1960:
> Clearly computer networking is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by military industrial interests, how can we be sure that public networking funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
myhf · 49m ago
There was literally a vaporware "AI" hype cycle in 1960. Propositional logic programming was poison to investors for 50 years because of that one, just like LLMs will be poison to investors for 50 years because of this one.
dekhn · 1h ago
Check out the history of BBN, who was deeply involved in the creation of the modern internet. There was an open revolving door between BBN employees and granting agencies, and BBN was even charged with contract fraud by the government . It's owned by Raytheon- a classic defense company.
Our country's tight relationship between the government, military, academia, and industrial has paid off repeatedly, even if it has some graft.
This does feel like a step change in the rate at which modern AI technologies and programs are being pushed out in their PR.
paradox460 · 38m ago
Fwiw, LANL saw some of it's heaviest layoffs this year, even heavier than those that happened under Nanos in the post Cerro Grande investigation. From what I gather, the feeling up on the hilltop is one of anxiety
zkmon · 4h ago
I like how he says that AI is a general-purpose technology like electricity.
quakeguy · 2h ago
They should invest in natural intelligence first.
LAsteNERD · 5h ago
PR in here for sure, but some smart context on the scientific and nat security potentional the DOE and National Labs see in AI.
andy99 · 5h ago
The real title is "Q&A with Jason Pruet"
lp251 · 5h ago
wonder if they still train all of their models using Mathematica because it was impossible to get pytorch on the classified systems
pphysch · 5h ago
AFAIK that was mostly due to a silly detail about MD5 hashing being restricted on FIPS compliant systems? Or something like that. I'm pretty sure there's an easy workaround(s).
lp251 · 4h ago
there were a bunch of reasons. couldn’t bring compiled binaries onto the red, so you had to bring the source + all deps onto a machine with no external internet.
it was unpleasant.
candiddevmike · 3h ago
Just have Hegseth run PyTorch for them
levocardia · 1h ago
>pip install *
stonogo · 4h ago
The actual reason is "because they're being told to." Before that, there was a massive public-cloud push DOE-wide. Nobody outside of ASCR is interested in computing, and there's a lot of money to be made if you can snag an eternal rent check for hosting federal infrastructure.
bawana · 2h ago
When will we get AI CEOs? I am tired of seeing corporate decisions driven by quarterly bonuses.
falcor84 · 1h ago
How is this related to TFA which focuses on national (public) labs?
In any case, if you want to take a stab at it, feel free to go ahead and start a company whereby you as the owner would assign the CEO responsibilities to an AI.
ArthurStacks · 2h ago
Because its hard to keep up the grift and the money rolling in if they don't
zzzeek · 2h ago
> Over the last two years, we’ve more or less run out of benchmarks where AI isn’t better than humans.
this whole "benchmarks" thing is laughable. I've been using Gemini all week to do code assist, review patches, etc. Such impressive text, lists of bullets, suggestions, etc., but then at the same time it makes tons of mistakes, which you then call it on, and it predictably is like "oh sorry! of course!" yes of COURSE. because all it does is guess what word is most likely to come after the previous word. is there a "benchmark" for "doesn't hallucinate made up BS?" because humans can do very well on such a benchmark.
And therein lies the risk: research labs may become wholly dependent on companies whose agendas are fundamentally commercial. In exchange for access to compute and frontier models, labs may cede control over data, methods, and IP—letting private firms quietly extract value from publicly funded research. What begins as partnership can end in capture.
They already are. Who provides their computers and operating systems? Who provides their HR software? Who provides their expensive lab equipment?
Companies are not in some separate realm. They are how our society produces goods and services, including the most essential ones.
This is the intention of tech transfer. To have private-sector entities commercialize the R&D.
What is the alternative? National labs and universities can't commercialize in the same way, including due to legal restrictions at the state and sometimes federal level.
As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair and transparent -- and not concentrated in say OpenAI or with underhanded kickbacks to government -- commercialization will benefit productive applications of AI. All the software we're using right now to communicate sits on top of previous, successful, federally-funded tech transfer efforts which were then commercialized. This is how the system works, how we got to this level.
Reasonably there should be a two way exchange? It might be okay for companies to piggyback on research funds if that also means that more research insight enters public knowledge.
There’s zero acknowledgment or appreciation of public infra and research.
No comments yet
I think that's the crux of the guy you're responding to's point. He does not believe it will be done fairly and transparently, because these AI corporations will have broad control over the technology.
Having been in this world though, I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs with companies at any level of scale. From startup to OpenAI to defense primes, they're open to all. So part of the challenge here is simply engaging capable entrepreneurs to go license tech from federal labs, and go create competitors for the greedy VC-funded or defense prime incumbents.
My reluctance is when we talk about fraud, waste, and corruptions in government, this is where it happens.
The DoD's budget isn't $1T because they are spending $900B on the troops. It's $1T because $900B of that ends up in the hands of the likes of Lockhead martin and Raytheon to build equipment we don't need.
I frankly do not trust "entrepreneurs" to not be greedy pigs willing to 100x the cost of anything and everything. There are nearly no checks in place to stop that from happening.
You can hope that a defense company is doing the right things in terms of supply chain attacks, but that's a pretty lucrative corner to cut. They'd not even need to cut it all the time to reap benefits.
The only other alternative is frequent audits of the defense company which is expensive and wouldn't necessarily solve the problem.
That said, I'm not very confident such a situation would happen in reality. I'm not confident current industry leaders can see past a quarter and nearly certain they can't see past 4. Current behavior already indicates that they are unwilling to maximize their own profits. A rising tide lifts all ships, but many will forgo the benefit this gives them to set out to explore for new and greater riches and instead are only able to envy the other ships rising with them. It can be easy to lose sight of what you have if you are too busy looking at others.
[0] Simplified example illustrated by Iterative Prisoner's Dilemma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3Vf_ibHD0
[0.1] Can explain more if needed but I don't think this is hard to understand.
I want to interrogate AI optimist type people because even if AI is completely safe and harmless I literally see only downsides.
Is your perception that living in theorized extreme comfort correlates to "reward"?
It's mostly because the actual stated and actualized goal of real AI is clearly bad.
It's like if you approached me and said "I'm going to erase meaning from your life. You will want for nothing. The entire paradigm of reality will be changed: your entire evolutionary struggle, made meaningless. You will want for nothing: "be" nothing. Also this might potentially kill you or some rich person or more likely nation-state could enslave you."
The actual stated goals seem negative to me. I'm not very interested in erasing and surpassing human achievement in every way. It seems inherently bad. I don't think that's an absurd perspective.
I think the disconnect here is asked in "what is the purpose of life" and I don't think any reasonable interpretation of that is "be obscenely comfortable".
I'm kind of disappointed that their dashboard has been moved or offline or something for the past few years. https://b2510207.smushcdn.com/2510207/wp-content/uploads/202... is what it used to look like.
Sell assets like government real estate to themselves at super cheap rates and then set up as many dependencies as they can where the government has to buy services from them because they have nowhere else to turn.
To give an example this missile dome bullshit they are talking about building which is a terrible idea for a bunch of reasons.. but there is talks at the moment of having this run by a private company who will sell it as a subscription service. So in this scenario the US military can’t actually fire the missiles without the explicit permission of a private company.
This AI thing is the same scam.
If LLM/AI is critical to national security, then it should be funded solely via the Dep of Defense budget, with no IP or copy right derivatives allowed.
> The Lab's science and technology digital magazine presents the most significant research initiatives and accomplishments from national-security-related programs as well as projects that advance the frontiers of basic science. Our name is an homage to the Lab's historic role in the nation's service: During World War II, all that the outside world knew of the top-secret laboratory was the mailing address - P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
https://researchlibrary.lanl.gov/about-the-library/publicati...
To the extent that further improvements to AI are either snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything else first is of course the best idea.
Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things impressive, it's not at all clear to me that the people funding their development will be able to monopolise the return on the investment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus etc.
Also: the way the biggest enthusiasts are talking about the sectoral growth and corresponding electrical power requirements… well, I agree with the maths for the power if I assume the growth, but they're economically unrealistic on the timescales they talk about, and that's despite that renewables are the fastest %-per-year-growth power sector and could plausibly double global electrical production by the early 2030s.
The major question is: at what point will unaddressed climate change nullify these economic gains and make the fact that anyone worried about them feel silly in retrospect?
Or put another way, will we even have the chance collectively enjoy the benefits of that work?
- To what extent AI will actually be helpful in solving the climate crisis?
- To what extent the power generation growth fueled by AI will be critical to solving the climate crisis, and conversely, how badly we'll be screwed without it?
"Degrowth" is not an option. It hasn't been for a long time now. We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.
Electricity + home heating + cars is not 100%, but cutting emissions in half means you double the time before reaching any given threshold. For many problems the last 10% is the most challenging but we get 10x as long to solve it and 10x as long to implement mitigation strategies.
That’s what makes climate change critical, the next year is more important than what happens 10 or 20 years from now.
However, doing so requires ramping up electricity production and storage.
Add heating for buildings + hot water + industrial processes that can use electricity instead of fossil fuels alongside indirect effects like methane leaks from pipelines and drumroll.
We can get to ~50% reduction while saving money over using fossil fuels.
This is not helpful. There are many reasons degrowth won't generally help humanity, but the benefits are particularly aplicable to western nations and their diplomatic relations. Certainly many western nations can bear degrowth without significant loss in quality of life. The wealthy just gotta take a significant cut to their waistlines.
> We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.
This certainly seems to be the liberal solution. Short of evicting them from our society what better choices do we have?
Too many AI accelerationists are treating these questions as foregone conclusions, which seems like an enormously dangerous bet without a clearer pathway to a truly beneficial outcome.
It may very well be that some form of AI (which form? hard to say - probably not LLMs) are a part of the solution. It may just as well be that they are not. But when building software, the age old advice to “start with the problem, not the solution” comes to mind.
The number of engineers I’ve worked with over the years (I’ve been one of them) who are convinced that the feature they’re building is the right thing to build, only to realize later that it doesn’t solve a problem people care about…is a very large number.
Regarding degrowth, I’m not advocating for it. With that said, that will be the unwanted result forced on us by the realities of the environment if we can’t put a lid on the climate issue.
The people qualified to fix global warming aren't the same people qualified to work on ML.
I've worked with hundreds of Data Scientists and every one had the ability to work on different problem areas. And so they were working on models to optimise truck rollouts or when to increase compute for complex jobs.
If as a society we placed an increased emphasis on efficiency and power consumption we would see a lot more models being used in those areas.
The problem is we don't want to do it.
And it's corollary: something being in the news or social media means everyone else has stopped working on other problems and is now solely working on whatever that headline's words say.
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
These scales use energy usage as the measure of progress which you are saying is proof that reducing energy use is reducing progress.
2. Inevitable AI winter
3. Keep running the plants, clean energy achieved, stop burning coal, global warming solved
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I don’t understand this line of reasoning - it’s like saying “you’re not allowed steam engines until you drain all of your mines”. It’s moralistic, rather than pragmatic.
The absolute dollar value might seem high, because we're working with the budget of not just a country but the wealthiest country, but as a percentage it is quite low. You can certainly pull funds from other areas too, like the military, which also greatly benefit from such research endeavors.
Even if these were exclusively non-weapons and non-military based technologies being developed it'd be naive to not recognize that the best military defense is to stop a war before it happens. That comes through many avenues, but notably the development of new technologies, especially those that benefit people as a whole (e.g. medicine or see the Taiwan strategy). But even then, it would also be naive to think that the same technology couldn't be adapted to military uses. Anything can be a weapon if you use it wrong enough.
But note that we're also seeing a reduction in federal research funding. We're also seeing less fundamental research and these types of problems need a strong pipeline through the classic TRL scale[0]. I think you'll find some of that discussion over in yesterday's thread about Bell Labs. The pipeline doesn't work if you don't take risks and are rushing. You need a fire under your ass but too hot and you get burned. It's easy to be myopic in today's settings, and that's not a great idea for an organization who needs to have an outlook in terms of decades and centuries (i.e. government) as opposed to the next election cycle or next quarterly earnings report.
Mind you, we've done these things before. Both the Space Race and Manhattan Project. At the height of the Space Race NASA's budget was over 4.41% of the federal budget[2]. I'm not sure what percent the Manhattan Project's budget was, but it is very clear that this is A LOT cheaper than what actual war costs[3]. We're talking about less than a month of war costs. Remember, we spent over a $750bn over in Iraq[4]. The question is not if we have the money, but what we want to spend it on. Personally I'd rather stuff like this than bombing people. Frankly, you can eat the cake too, as it makes it cheaper to bomb people as well...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957010
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Cost
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
At best its a needle in a haystack approach, and one that seems to toss out methodical, reasoned science in favor of a blunderbuss.
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https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2024/11/
I assume "AI" in contemporary articles, especially as it pertains to investments, means "Generative AI, especially or exclusively LLMs."
what are some examples of 'hardly' ?
[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03544
> Clearly computer networking is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by military industrial interests, how can we be sure that public networking funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
Our country's tight relationship between the government, military, academia, and industrial has paid off repeatedly, even if it has some graft.
And discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43765207
This does feel like a step change in the rate at which modern AI technologies and programs are being pushed out in their PR.
it was unpleasant.
In any case, if you want to take a stab at it, feel free to go ahead and start a company whereby you as the owner would assign the CEO responsibilities to an AI.
this whole "benchmarks" thing is laughable. I've been using Gemini all week to do code assist, review patches, etc. Such impressive text, lists of bullets, suggestions, etc., but then at the same time it makes tons of mistakes, which you then call it on, and it predictably is like "oh sorry! of course!" yes of COURSE. because all it does is guess what word is most likely to come after the previous word. is there a "benchmark" for "doesn't hallucinate made up BS?" because humans can do very well on such a benchmark.