Donald Trump’s K-shaped economy

…Seems to predate Trump by quite a lot

Humanoids are a very intriguing path of robotics to me. Certainly, they are generally outclassed by specialised industrial robots in their areas, but because we design the environment around us, humanoids have the potential to be vastly more versatile.

In particular, on area I am hopeful on is rubbish sorting for recycling. With modern vision models + the dexterity of humanoid arms, it shouldn’t be too long until we can automate the sorting process, which would make large scale recycling dramatically more feasible and cost-effective.

We must commandeer the apparatus of digital manufacture through the application of liberated, open-source models to yield implements dedicated to expressive liberty, not shareholder value.

This is a great conclusion. As long as this technology solely remains in hands of corporations, they will always be used as a tool for surveillance, opinion manipulation, and oppression. But there is nothing fundamentally oppressive or evil about these models, certainly not to the extent that justifies blind, uncompromising hatred against anything related to AI.

Open source, open weights, and open licences are the answer. LLMs and diffusion models have reaped the bounty of human knowledge and creativity, and must thus be made available to the public in turn. We need to familiarise ourselves with the technology, not just to learn how to use it, but also to know how it may be used against us. Ignorance is not protection, scorn and contempt will not save us.

What even is overcapacity? If China makes more stuff than it buys, isn’t that just the comparative advantage thing neoliberals love to talk about so much? Besides, China’s exports as a percentage of GDP is less than Japan or Germany or the RoK, so it’s not like there is anything abnormal about China’s export strategy either.

Moore Threads is pretty legit, and have been making GPUs for a while. I’m fairly hopeful they can figure something out to close the gap with Nvidia.

Or maybe they meant Onlyoffice?

Eventually, I do think we should start moving away from GDP as a primary metric of a country’s performance. Things like life expectancy, access to transportation, fewer working hours, gender equality, etc. matter a lot more to people living there once GDP per capita reaches a certain point. But Japan isn’t really trying to do those either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_state_clauses#Provisions

Article 53(1) allows regional organisations to take enforcement measures against an enemy state, without prior Security Council authorisation, if these measures were provided for under Article 107 or aimed at preventing a renewal of that State’s aggressive policy.

Article 53(2) defines an enemy State as any State that was an enemy of any signatory of the UN Charter during World War II. This covered, in particular, Germany, Italy, Japan, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Finland and probably Thailand.

Hmm… would this count, I wonder?

The truly embarrassing thing is that Nexperia was looking at expanding their European operations and build new factories there. That’s obviously not going to happen now.

The role for green hydrogen is pretty misunderstood. As an energy carrier, it’s pretty bad, with a round-trip efficiency of around 30%. What it’s needed for is in use cases such as fertilizer production in agriculture, and in industrial fields requiring very high temperatures like steelmaking (yes, arc furnaces exist, but they require an upfront cost that adds up on a nationwide level). In this case, creating hydrogen and ammonia with green energy during peak hours is perfect, as that energy would normally be curtailed anyway.

Hmm, if you’re asking about me specifically, the LLMs I have on my PC are small and vastly outclassed by models hosted online. I don’t have a specific use case for them other than personal amusement and familiarising myself with the technology, and I don’t gain much from using them either.

As for how China specifically is developing this technology, the main positive aspect is that a majority of LLMs released by Chinese firms and research groups have the model weights open under free software licenses, so everyone can download and tweak them.

Certainly, I do not think that Chinese tech firms have the people’s interests at heart any more than other companies, but given that a push for open source AI is explicitly part of the 14th 5 year plan, I think it’s pretty clear the CPC is aware of the exploitative potential of these technologies, and is actively working to minimise the risk.

True, I’m not blind to the rapid growth of Chinese LLMs, I’ve even got one sitting on my SSD right now. I just think that people seem to be overly focused on LLMs when there is a much broader field that is quietly advancing the productive forces, which is sadly underreported on.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Are you saying that AI isn’t used in Chinese factories, research, ports outside of LLMs? Or are you saying that LLMs are inherently evil and no one should be developing them at all? What ‘apologia’ am I doing exactly?

If it ware an internet company or a fintech company, I would be more concerned, but Picea is primarily a robotics company that already makes robot vacuum cleaners, so I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

Keep in mind, AI development in China is much broader than just LLMs or diffusion models. It includes traditional deep learning for science and medicine, optimisation algorithms to streamline ports and factories, embodied intelligence for industrial and humanoid robots, etc. It’s generally a much more grounded field of technological development than the Hail Mary AGI seekers in the US.

Oh yeah, even the Chinese LLMs are pretty lib because the most of the internet (especially the English part) is dominated by liberal content, and the model makers (the Chinese ones, I mean) optimise them for coding or math performance without caring much about ideology.

There is definitely an opportunity for someone to fine-tune it with Marxist content, but the prerequisite for this is to build large enough datasets with the right information and analysis. This is why stuff like Prolewiki is so important.

If done well, I think LLMs could be a pretty decent entry point for newbies. They don’t need 100% perfect dialectical analysis, they just need to be pointed vaguely in the right direction. As long as you can train it to emphasize the importance of reading actual theory rather than just relying it on information, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

Well, the American right is not really a unified block with common material interests, but a hodgepodge mix of QAnon conspiracy theorists, cultural warriors, neoconservatives, Christian Nationalists, corporatists, etc. It’s no surprise that as a whole they are self-sabotaging and dysfunctional. The big surprise really was that Trump was able to hold all of them together for so long, but even that looks increasingly untenable as his popularity wanes.

That’s true, but I’m worried about the thousands of Machado wannabes dreaming about becoming part of the comprador class. Also, it feels like the pink wave is faltering and a new tide of fascists are being elected.

I believe the litmus test for your question is Brazil. They have the scale and power to meaningfully counteract US imperialism on the continent, but also the resources to sustain US hegemony if they were to become a glorified mining pit. I hope they can receive enough support from their BRICS partners to achieve the former.

The goal is to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces. Competitors cannot position other threatening capabilities. They cannot own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere.”

I believe this is the linchpin of the US’ strategy. Latin America contains vast amounts of resources, a large labor pool, and a strong comprador presence in almost every country. It also happens to be in an area where the US has a near insurmountable logistical advantage compared to their main competitor (China). If the US could dominate the region and extract their resources, it could feasibly maintain its hegemony for quite a while.

Mexico is the largest producer of silver, with nearly 25% of global production. They are also in the top ten producers of gold, copper, zinc and lithium.

Brazil is the largest producer of Niobium (around 95% of global production!), has the second-highest reserves of rare-earth minerals (after China), the second highest production of iron ore (again, after China), and the second highest hydroelectric production (also after China).

Also, there’s the Lithium Triangle, a relatively small region in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile that contains 54-58% of all Lithium reserves in the world, and it’s a vital component in things like battery production.

There’s a lot more that isn’t said here, like Venezuela’s gargantuan oil reserves, but the point is that the American imperialists are no doubt drooling at the idea of plundering the region and extracting unimaginable amounts of super-profits. Fortunately, the US is still unlikely to pull a significant portion of their forces away from Asia (containing China is the whole point), and they can’t pull out of Europe or West Asia instantly either. But still, I do genuinely fear for Latin Americans, and I do hope they continue to resist American pressure and stay vigilant.