this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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I am biased as I work in AI but the reason I do so is because I think a lot of its applications are hugely beneficial, the last part talks about AI as enablers of democracy but the other paragraphs are essential to see how we keep it in control.
I usually don't engage in discussions about the blockchain because 99% of the time it is about the promotion of a scam. I used to like these tech that enable some new kind of decentralization but I totally moved away from them when I realized that bitcoin's main usage now is to dodge taxes and international sanctions.
In general I am interested in cryptoanarchism (from which blockchains and DAO come from) without really being a proponent of it: I feel like it is a solution looking for a problem. But then, I live in a relatively free country where I can open easily a bank account, make a non profit, associate with who I want. The whole cryptoanarchism thing shines more in cases where you consider governments to be an enemy but this is a double edged sword: going this way means you don't mind enabling criminal groups in the process.
When I talk about it to people from more authoritarian countries or from countries where inflation is very high, their perspective in a parallel system is different.
I don't see a place for them in a functional, cooperative society. They can be useful but to me, their existence is the indication of a problem. In an utopia, they can be useful as a backup system: "we can always revert to a cryptocurrency if you fuck up your currency policy" but ideally we should do better than them.
And let me just add that I agree with what you say in your linked post about open source AI models as an enabler for democracy. There are a lot of things to consider of course, but it aligns well with my own positive take on the future of coexisting with AI. Still the leaves the problem of how we effectively counter the corporatocracy that seems to be steering all of us toward a very dystopian future, but that is another headache altogether
"Model alignment seems like an easier problem than corporate alignment" :-)
I have been dreaming about the AI era for 20+ years and I must say that we are currently in one of the most positive timeline I could hope for. Yes, we talk a lot about the companies because clueless journalism has a hard time measuring innovation but prefers to look at market cap, but for once the open source community in the field is incredibly active and reactive and we have reached a point where several big companies have understood that they can't keep the pace up if they don't play the openness game.
Open source is the way to go. I’m still concerned with the amount of corporate influence though and the lack of transparency. I will certainly be stressing the importance of openness and collective ownership when communicating to the general public.