patternpulse

My views on AI have radically shifted over the past few weeks, after spending way too much time reading about it and watching interviews of industry leaders and experts. First, I really love the tools. I spend $200 on Claude every month and the product is worth every penny for me. Probably even more. I think the existing tools can deliver significant increase to future GDP and help us solve major global challenges faced by humanity. However, I just cannot comprehend why the industry is not much more regulated, as its leaders and employees seem to request themselves. I meet a lot of people who have heard of the hugging face incident but don’t know the actual chain of events. If you don’t, you definitely should spend a least an hour reading about it. I also do not know why we need to follow the path that frontier labs are following, to develop ever more powerful models. It seems to me that they are enormous gains that are readily available if we deploy the current technology in economic and scientific organizations without pursuing a super intelligence that they say might kill us and more likely wreak havoc in society. I know a lot of people think these warnings are marketing tricks, and that’s a reasonable assumption. But I don’t see the point of taking such risks. My median scenario is that of many economists: AI will diffuse slowly and lift gdp growth by a percentage point or so, will cause some economic disruption on the way, but ultimately people will get new jobs and maybe work less. However, I am deeply uncomfortable with the absolutely wild level of uncertainty around this prediction. And to be honest, even setting the doom scenarios aside, I find the utopia scenarios of some industry leaders actually dystopian. And I think a large majority of the public would agree if they paid attention to what they’re saying. To their credit, they themselves agree publicly that they should not be the ones making these choices. A large majority of the public is now very skeptical of AI as a source of human progress, in particular among younger adults who use it the most. They should have a say. I don’t want to convince you of anything but to get informed about this topic, express yourself and vote accordingly.

AI can recognize patterns, but it can't decide which questions are worth asking. MacArthur President John Palfrey argues that democracy runs on people showing up and asking the next one, and when we outsource that, it stops. Read the full piece in @ProSyn: project-syndicate.org/commen…

The hard, unfiltered truth 👇for disabled Canadians in any province.

Ok, I'll bite. I grew up in Montreal and I want Canada to win in AI. I'm just not sure if this is actually good for Canadian AI industry/startup ecosystem. - idk how canada as the lead investor is a good thing/signal for the canadian ecosystem. - It tells young founders the way to win here is to get close to Ottawa. - When the government owns part of a company, every other Canadian AI startup is now competing with a company their own government owns. - "We're not American" works as a pitch in almost every country except the biggest market in the world. Would love to see more Canadian startups be #1 globally like how Shopify is a great model. - How Canadian is the "Canadian champion" after a German retailer leads the round and it merges with a German company? - Does "sovereign" mean the models are built in Canada, or just hosted there? - Why share 165% ARR growth but not what the ARR actually is? - What does the government’s stake come with, like a board seat or a say in decisions? Congrats on the round, its massive but just thinking about the Canadian ecosystem and what's best for it

Turns out AI can cause more problems than it solves. 36% of AI execs at companies with $1B+ in annual rev reported an AI incident that led to data loss, financial damage, brand damage or operational disruptions. Companies are now limiting employee AI usage.theguardian.com/technology/2…