This is *exactly* what I predicted would happen. I said Chinese models would have advanced cyber capabilities within a matter of months and the only thing to do about it was to use AI-powered cyberdefense to protect our systems. Trying to gatekeep models doesn’t work.
This is concerning. For the first time, a Chinese model Kimi K3 has taken #1 on the Frontend Code Arena and is scoring at or near the frontier on other benchmarks.
Meanwhile America is tying itself in knots: politicians and bureaucrats are banning new data centers, piling on state regulations, and pushing for new federal agencies to pre-approve frontier models.
This is how you lose the AI race. The rest of the world won’t play by our rules if we bog ourselves down. Permissionless innovation is how America won the internet and became the technological envy of the world. We can do it again with AI -- while addressing risks in a targeted way -- or we’ll watch our lead evaporate.
Interesting what grows faster than average hourly earnings.. it’s not the inflation you hear about in the news.. if it’s “subsidized” by the government it grows faster than inflation.. go figure 🤔
Here's my conversation with Anthony Kaldellis about the deep history of the Roman Empire in the west and the east (the Byzantine Empire). This was a truly fascinating conversation with a lot of wisdom for the modern world and for the future of human civilization. The Roman state lasted over 2,200 years. If we want to understand human nature, the modern world, and how humanity can flourish, it is valuable to study history, especially the history of why societies survive and why they collapse.
It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment).
Timestamps:
0:00 - Episode highlight
1:24 - Introduction
1:51 - The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire
5:49 - 2,200 Years of Roman History
26:12 - Power, violence, and civil war
47:27 - Edict of Caracalla
1:00:23 - Crisis of the Third Century
1:14:52 - Constantine and the new Roman Empire
1:26:53 - Christianity in the Roman Empire
1:52:21 - Fall of the Western Roman Empire
2:05:17 - Eunuchs, Taxes, and Power
2:30:24 - Emperor Justinian and wars of conquest
2:47:26 - The Arab conquests
3:07:01 - Why the Roman empire survived so long
3:33:08 - Lessons from history
Flaw is an assumption that the economic pie is the same and the definition of what is work is static. AI is a productivity tool no different then the PC and the internet came together to replace brick and mortar stores. Do we have less retail workers.. do we have less economic consumption? AI will grow the pie faster than we have ever seen
Jerry Sanders, in a 2002 interview, on the future of companies with wafer fabs
Predicted consolidation similar to the aircraft industry, leaving only companies needing specialized process technology & Taiwan foundries that have subsidized capital
Still looks that way today!
BREAKING: Nvidia and PulteGroup are partnering with startup Span to install mini data centers on the walls of new homes
Each unit packs 16 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs, and 3TB of RAM - and taps unused home electrical capacity to run AI inference workloads
Noyce was the visionary and Moore was the technologist. They needed Grove, the operator to scale the business. Together, they became the Intel Trinity.