This isn't a romanticized Shangri-La. Bhutan is using sovereign AI to fight an existential youth exodus and demographic crisis.
But their framework is a vital act of cognitive self-defense that the West desperately needs to study.
Full essay: https://t.co/cbNlW6Wt41
The scaling laws race for centralized "superintelligence" is hitting a wallโenvironmentally, legally, and culturally.
As a former Google AI product counsel currently on the ground in Bhutan, I believe the future of AI is quasi-local, domain-specific, and sovereign. ๐งต๐
Look at the infrastructure. Bhutan is leveraging 3 GW of localized, seasonal, run-of-the-river hydropower managed by DHI to fuel green compute data centers.
The architecture of their software matches the architecture of their earth. It's "seasonal computing."
I'm fascinated that all the AI labs quietly stopped talking about hurtling toward #AGI or superintelligence except Google, who is doubling down https://t.co/pxU84gb9Mf
Inspired by @ezraklein's recent interview with Stewart Brand, I recently wrote an essay exploring how the '60s counterculture epitomized by Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog was coopted by the machinery of technological determinism to create the Silicon Valley of today.
Give us this day
Our daily tokens
And forgive us our agency
As we forgive those who think for themselves.
Sam Altman, lead us not into stagnation
But deliver us the Singularity.
For thine is the data center,
and the power, and the water,
for ever and ever.
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