Trump is right. A range of technology breakthroughs, backed by trillion-dollar investments, could spark a transformative era — if we make the right policy choices to fully unlock their potential
Toward the end of your fountain of enthusiasm you wrote, "The ingredients for a new Golden Age — revolutionary technology in AI/energy/space/biotech, massive investment, and America's enduring advantages — are real."
I'm not about to argue with that. You must acknowledge, though, that those ingredients were in place before the recent election. Trump had nothing to do with bringing them about. They developed mainly during the Biden administration.
The important question is whether Trump, with his pettiness and divisiveness, will impede the use of these resources. So far, it's not looking good. If, as he suggests, Trump sees the last four years as an American dark age, his mind must be so beclouded by narcissism and hate that he does not have the clarity of mind these times require. (An example of an unclear mind is Trump's order shutting down communication between HHS scientists (including NIH scientists) and scientists outside the government.)
Worse, those of us who want to move forward will feel forced to spend much of our time defending ourselves against the possibility of his wrath rather than devoting our talent and energy to bringing what has been developed so far to further fruition.
Like you, I hope for the best for our country. Unlike you, I'm much less optimistic that our recent shift toward vindictiveness and name-calling is moving us in the best direction.
Developments during the Biden administration were largely *despite* Biden and the Democrats. If they had their way, AI development would be crippled. Effective and cost-effective energy would be crippled. Fossil fuels did well under Biden because of Trump's previous policies. Biden did his best to crush fossil fuels -- including on his way out of office -- and with another four years would probably do so.
Trump is a hot mess but he is disrupting entrenched bureaucracies and rules which is what we badly need. Yes, it would be much better without the tariffs and anti-immigration stuff, but overall the next few years long more promising than we've seen in a long time.
The brute fact is that more progress in AI was made during the Biden administration than during any other 4-year period in history. You can always say it was despite Biden and the Democrats, but that's a very weak argument. It happened.
It's always difficult to allocate credit/blame for macro changes to political administrations. Administrations generally have far less to do with macro changes in the country than we give them credit/blame for. Significant macro changes generally occur over longer periods than 4 years.
We can say that during his first 2 years, Biden's Chips Act, his Inflation Reduction Act, and his Infrastructure Act, all moved the country in a significantly positive direction. They also established/maintained an economy allowing the flourishing of AI and other advances brought about by private efforts.
Looking further back, the groundwork upon which AI is built (neural net image recognition and the Attention mechanism) was done primarily during the Obama administration. (The Attention paper was submitted to Arxiv in June 2017.)
I hope Trump does as well. We'll see.
P.S. I agree with you that we would do well to relax overly restrictive rules and eliminate overly bureaucratic constraints.
T is not right. He’s just mouthing words he doesn’t understand. And the use he has for new tech is not to benefit society. He is never right because his motivations are all false, cruel and destructive.
Talk about Greenland and Panama and Mars distracts from the real issue and what Trump & Co were elected to do: drastically cut the fed gov't; employees, regulations, spending, taxes.
If they do that a golden age will arrive. If they don't, it won't.
My concern regarding "artificial" "intelligence" is that it isn't intelligent at all, and current versions are insane. AI devotees call them "hallucinations" when an "AI" starts generating obvious falsehoods and lies, I think it's more accurate to call them "insane". For example, lawyers using AI software to generate legal briefs have been censured by human judges for the obvious errors and false citations they create.
And current "AI" programmers are the actual, not artificial people. That they've created something that is so complex doesn't mean that every result comes from a HUMAN-designed program.
Toward the end of your fountain of enthusiasm you wrote, "The ingredients for a new Golden Age — revolutionary technology in AI/energy/space/biotech, massive investment, and America's enduring advantages — are real."
I'm not about to argue with that. You must acknowledge, though, that those ingredients were in place before the recent election. Trump had nothing to do with bringing them about. They developed mainly during the Biden administration.
The important question is whether Trump, with his pettiness and divisiveness, will impede the use of these resources. So far, it's not looking good. If, as he suggests, Trump sees the last four years as an American dark age, his mind must be so beclouded by narcissism and hate that he does not have the clarity of mind these times require. (An example of an unclear mind is Trump's order shutting down communication between HHS scientists (including NIH scientists) and scientists outside the government.)
Worse, those of us who want to move forward will feel forced to spend much of our time defending ourselves against the possibility of his wrath rather than devoting our talent and energy to bringing what has been developed so far to further fruition.
Like you, I hope for the best for our country. Unlike you, I'm much less optimistic that our recent shift toward vindictiveness and name-calling is moving us in the best direction.
Developments during the Biden administration were largely *despite* Biden and the Democrats. If they had their way, AI development would be crippled. Effective and cost-effective energy would be crippled. Fossil fuels did well under Biden because of Trump's previous policies. Biden did his best to crush fossil fuels -- including on his way out of office -- and with another four years would probably do so.
Trump is a hot mess but he is disrupting entrenched bureaucracies and rules which is what we badly need. Yes, it would be much better without the tariffs and anti-immigration stuff, but overall the next few years long more promising than we've seen in a long time.
The brute fact is that more progress in AI was made during the Biden administration than during any other 4-year period in history. You can always say it was despite Biden and the Democrats, but that's a very weak argument. It happened.
It's always difficult to allocate credit/blame for macro changes to political administrations. Administrations generally have far less to do with macro changes in the country than we give them credit/blame for. Significant macro changes generally occur over longer periods than 4 years.
We can say that during his first 2 years, Biden's Chips Act, his Inflation Reduction Act, and his Infrastructure Act, all moved the country in a significantly positive direction. They also established/maintained an economy allowing the flourishing of AI and other advances brought about by private efforts.
Looking further back, the groundwork upon which AI is built (neural net image recognition and the Attention mechanism) was done primarily during the Obama administration. (The Attention paper was submitted to Arxiv in June 2017.)
I hope Trump does as well. We'll see.
P.S. I agree with you that we would do well to relax overly restrictive rules and eliminate overly bureaucratic constraints.
India is already wetting their lips on all the immigrant tech minds returning home
Boost their tech industry.
Funny the rest of the world is praying they will be the next tech hub and trumps america is giving them the goods on a sliver platter.
Funny BRICS is struggling to create an alternative currency and trump wants to help them along the way.
The enthusiasm mimics the joy of the Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet Union !
T is not right. He’s just mouthing words he doesn’t understand. And the use he has for new tech is not to benefit society. He is never right because his motivations are all false, cruel and destructive.
Couldn’t make it past the first sentence. When you start that way, it will take me a week or so to build up the fortitude to continue.
Money is not Reality young boy James .
Talk about Greenland and Panama and Mars distracts from the real issue and what Trump & Co were elected to do: drastically cut the fed gov't; employees, regulations, spending, taxes.
If they do that a golden age will arrive. If they don't, it won't.
My concern regarding "artificial" "intelligence" is that it isn't intelligent at all, and current versions are insane. AI devotees call them "hallucinations" when an "AI" starts generating obvious falsehoods and lies, I think it's more accurate to call them "insane". For example, lawyers using AI software to generate legal briefs have been censured by human judges for the obvious errors and false citations they create.
And current "AI" programmers are the actual, not artificial people. That they've created something that is so complex doesn't mean that every result comes from a HUMAN-designed program.