#Computer Vision Technologies Market

[nextmscblog]

The Evolving Role of AI in the Computer Vision Market

The Computer Vision Market size was valued at USD 12.5 billion in 2023 and is predicted to reach USD 29.3 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of 15.2% from 2024-2030.

Access full report: https://www.nextmsc.com/report/computer-vision-market

[txttletale]

hey what’s up, i think you’re pretty cool but disagree with you on the whole ai can make art thing. to me, without the purpose from an actual person creating the piece, it’s not art but an image; as all human art has purpose. some driving factor in a work, compared to a program which purely creates the prompt without further intention. i was wondering what your insight on this is? either way, hope you have a great day

well, first of all, does art require 'purpose'? there's this view of art which has very much calcified in "anti-AI" rhetoric, that art is some linear process of communication from one individual to another: an Artist puts some Meaning into a unit of Art, which others can then view to Recieve that Meaning. you can hold this view, but i don't! i'm much more of a stuart hall-head on this, i think that there is no such transfusion of Intent and that rather the 'meaning' of a piece is something that exists only in the interplay between text and reader. reading is an active, interpretative process of decoding, not a passive absorptive one. so i dispute, firstly, that 'purpose' is to begin with a necessary or even imporant element of art.

moreover i think this argument rests on a very arbitrarily selective view of what counts as "an actual person creating the piece" -- 'the prompt' is, itself, an obvious artistic contribution, a place where an artist can impart huge amounts of direction, vision, and so on. in fact, i completely reject the claim of both the technology's salesman and its biggest detractors that genAI "makes art" -- to quote kerry mitchell's fractal art manifesto: "Turn a computer on and leave it alone for an hour. When you come back, no art will have been generated." in the past, i've posed questions about generative art pieces to demonstrate this

secondly, of course, the process does not end after image generation from prompt for serious generative artists--the ones who are serious about the artform (rather than tech guys trying to do marketing for the Magical Art Box) frequently iterate and iterate, generating a range of iterations and then picking one to iterate on further, so on and so forth, until the final image they choose to share is one that contains within it the traces of a thousand discrete choices on behalf of the artist (two pretty good explanations of this from people who actually do this stuff can be found here and here)

third and finally, that very choice to share the image is itself an artistic decision! we (and by we, i mean, anyone who cares about what art is) have been talking about this since fountain -- display is a form of artistic intent, taking something and putting it forward and saying 'this is art' is in and of itself an artistic decision being made even if the thing itself is unaltered: see, for example, the entire discipline of 'found art'. once someone challenged me, yknow, "if you did a google search, would that be art?" and my answer to that is, if you screenshot that google search and share it as art, then yes, resoundingly yes! curation and presentation recontextualizes objects, turning them into rich texts through the simple process of reframing them. so even if you granted that genAI output is inherently random computer noise (i don't, of course) -- i still think that the act of presenting it as art makes it so.

since i assume you're not familiar with anything interesting in the medium, because the most popular stuff made with genAI is pure "lo-fi girl in ghibli style" type slop, let me share some genAI pieces (or genAI-influenced pieces) that i think are powerful and interesting:

the meat gala, rob sheridan (warning: body horror!)

secret horses (does anyone know the original source on this?)

infinite art machine, reachartwork

ethinically ambigaus, james tamagotchi

mcdonalds simpsons porn room, wayneradiotv

software greatman, everything everything (the music is completely made by the band, but genAI was partially responsible for the lyrics -- including the title and the several interesting pseudo-kennings)

i want a love like this music video, everything everything

cocaine is the motor of the modern world, bots of new york

poison the walker, roborosewatermasters (here's my analysis posts on it too)

not all of these were necessarily intended as art: but i think they are rich and fascinating texts when read that way -- they have certainly impacted me as much as any art has.

anyways, whether you agree or not, i hope this gives you some stuff to think about, thanks for sharing your thoughts :)

[axeeglitter]

Back from the Vault: LifeX

Nathan Brown sat hunched over his desk, the glow of his laptop screen illuminating his tired eyes. His San Francisco apartment was a mess: clothes strewn across the floor, empty takeout containers stacked on the kitchen counter, and a half-empty coffee mug perched precariously on the edge of his desk. Nathan's bed was unmade, a tangled heap of blankets and pillows. The room smelled faintly of stale air and sweat, the result of a broken air conditioning unit and a lack of motivation to clean.

Nathan was staring at his laptop screen, scrolling through yet another round of job listings. His bank account was dangerously low, and the anxiety of unpaid bills was gnawing at him. He was 26 years old, recently graduated with a degree in communications, and he was struggling to find any kind of work. His YouTube channel, where he reviewed video games and shared walkthroughs, was his only source of income, but the revenue it brought in was barely enough to buy groceries, let alone pay rent or bills.

Nathan was average in build, with a light tan from his Latino heritage, and short, dark hair that he usually kept neat. His face was lightly stubbled, a sign of his growing indifference to grooming as stress took over. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, feeling the weight of exhaustion settle into his bones. He was on the brink of giving up when a notification popped up on his screen, breaking his focus.

"Subject: Exciting Opportunity for Collaboration!"

Nathan hesitated, then clicked on the email. It was from a company called LifeX. He didn’t recognize the name, but curiosity got the better of him.

“Dear Nathan,

We’ve come across your YouTube channel and believe we could work well together. LifeX is launching a groundbreaking new game, and we are looking for individuals to help us with beta testing and promotion. Your content aligns perfectly with our vision, and we think this could be a great collaboration. If you accept, you’ll also be able to help us optimize the AI of our games by creating your own NPC character, it’ll be later implemented in the game when it’ll be released. Of course, we offer financial compensation for your work.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards, The LifeX Team”

Nathan’s first instinct was skepticism. It sounded too good to be true, and he’d heard horror stories of scams and phishing attempts. But the desperation for money overrode his better judgment. He quickly searched for LifeX online, finding only a sparse website filled with vague marketing speak about “immersive experiences” and “cutting-edge technology.” There were no reviews, no user testimonials, nothing solid. This should have been a red flag, but Nathan was too desperate to care. He needed this. He needed a break.

Nathan decided to respond. He typed out a quick reply expressing his interest. Almost immediately, another email arrived, containing a download link, setup instructions, and a NDA requesting his personal information: name, age, location, and other details. Nathan filled out the form, barely thinking about the potential consequences. He selected the longest trial period possible: one month, hoping it would give him enough content for his channel and enough time to determine if the collaboration was worthwhile.

As soon as he submitted the form, a melodic chime sounded from his laptop, followed by a smooth, professional voice:

“Thank you for signing up, Nathan. To begin your experience, you will first create the NPC character, and then you’ll be ready to start your experience in the environment you’ll choose. For the trial to run successfully, please ensure that your computer remains on for the entire duration of the test period: one month. Any interruption may result in data loss or corruption. Welcome to LifeX.”

Nathan frowned at the last part but shrugged it off. He figured it was just standard legalese, probably meant for immersion. The screen changed to a character creation window, displaying a basic human figure in a T-pose. Nathan leaned forward, curiosity piqued, and started customizing the avatar.

He named the avatar “Cody,” envisioning him as the polar opposite of himself. Cody would be everything Nathan wasn’t: confident, athletic, and effortlessly cool. He adjusted the height to 6'4", pushed the muscle sliders to the maximum, giving Cody bulging biceps, a broad chest, and thick, powerful legs holding a perfectly muscled ass. From the corner of his eyes, Nathan spotted a slider on the groin area. He laughed as he understood he could also determine how big he could adjust Cody’s penis and balls. Smiling, he selected the largest option possible for his dick and added a huge heavy pair of balls to go with it, watching it grow in proportion to the rest of his body. He added bright hazel eyes, bushy eyebrows, and messy dark brown hairs that would contrast perfectly to the pale sun kissed skin.

After the body customization, Nathan saw a new window open: Clothes and accessories. After thinking about it, he chose a pair of denim shorts that ended mid-thigh, showing off Cody’s muscular legs. Nathan opted for no T-shirt, exposing Cody’s ripped torso and added a ripped sleeve shirt opened on his muscled hair pecs. He then moved on to accessories and decided to put a loop earring on his right ear and a silver chain around his neck.

After the customization was done, it was asked for Nathan to enter some information about the NPC he just created to create a base behavior for him. After a while, Nathan decided to go for the stereotypical fratbro behavior to go with the appearance he just did. He started typing, adding details about Cody’s lifestyle. He entered notes in the behavior interface: “Cody is dumb as a brick. He loves gym, training and being barefoot, feeling the ground under his calloused feet.” He laughed as he added another line: “Cody never takes showers, loves the smell of his own musk, enjoys sniffing his hairy armpits after a workout and scratching his big dick every couple of minutes after what he smells them and always smile enjoying his own musk.” Nathan chuckled, amused at the thought of creating such a ridiculous character. It was so far removed from his real life that it seemed like a fun NPC to talk and interact with. Just a dumb easy-going character that is always down for a fuck and a drink after a gym session barefoot in the woods.

Satisfied with his creation, he confirmed the settings. The game prompted him to select a location, and he chose the Secluded Forest Realm, envisioning Cody as a carefree physical trainer just out of college living in a cabin in the wilderness.

The screen went black for a moment, and the professional voice returned: “Now that your character is complete, it’s time to play! Please keep your computer running at all times to maintain synchronization. Any interruption may lead to data corruption. Enjoy your month-long experience, Nathan, and welcome to LifeX.” Nathan was really getting excited now. He conder what kind of character he would create for himself when he saw a flash of light on the screen. It looked like some kind of swirling mesh, almost like a blackhole. For a moment Nathan thought it was kind of a cool effect, but everything changed when he went to grab his half drink cup of coffee sitting next to him only to realize his right hand was tingling and tiny particles were escaping his nails, flying straight to his screen.

A sudden wave of fatigue hit Nathan, and the lights in his apartment flickered briefly. A sense of unease washed over him, making the hairs on his arms stand up. Before he could react, the tingling sensation spread from his fingertips up through his arms. He stared in disbelief as his fingers began to dissolve into streams of glowing white code, spreading quickly across his body. He tried to scream, but his voice caught in his throat. His vision blurred as the Life X logo was pulsing in bright light in the center of the screen with a loading bar under it going up further and further. The last thing he saw was the 100% before everything went black.

Nathan found himself suspended in a void. He was floating, naked, surrounded by darkness. Panic set in, his heart racing as he tried to move, but his body was frozen in a T-pose. The sensation was bizarre, as if he were trapped in a dream. He wanted to call out, but his voice was muffled, like shouting underwater. The smooth, professional voice returned, echoing through the void:

“Welcome to your new life, Nathan. Don’t panic; this process is normal and painless. In a few moments, you will begin your ideal life in the Secluded Forest Realm. Relax and feel calm. Avatar synchronization will begin in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

“What the fuck, where am I? What is going on? Why can’t I move?! HELP!!” thought Nathan as he tried to scream even though his face remained frozen.

Nathan’s body suddenly stiffened. A pressure built inside him, starting at his core and spreading outward. His bones stretched and cracked, lengthening to match Cody’s new height. His arms and legs grew longer, muscles bulging and expanding to fill out his new form. Nathan could feel his muscles tearing and healing at an accelerated rate, becoming stronger and more defined with each passing second.

His skin began to tighten, smoothing out imperfections and leaving with a perfectly smooth skin all around his muscled body. Nathan would be screaming if his voice mas not muted. Everything was burning and it was like feeling his DNA being rewritten while still being conscious. As he felt tears rising up his eyes, a new sensation invaded his newly modified skin. In his pits, legs and between his pecs, he felt like thousands of needles were piercing holes. The sensation was only multiplied as he started to feel hair sprouting from the holes. They were dark brown and thick but worst, the sensation of piercing needles started to appear around his groin too. Still wondering what was happening to him, Nathan tried to connect the elements he could find and that when he realized. The secluded forest, the muscles, the hair; that was Cody’s information, which means… Just enough time to understand what was happening to him when the hair started to sprout in abondance around his dick and nuts and climbing up his sculpted abs in a thin happy trail. After the hair, the modifications started to appear on his face. His jawline becoming sharper and more angular, his cheekbones more pronounced. His lips filled out, becoming more defined, while his eyebrows grew thicker, framing his eyes. His vision sharpened, colors becoming brighter and more vivid. His brown eyes shifted to a bright hazel as he lost vision for a moment. Everything was happening all at once and still, Nathan felt like it was an eternity of pain.

Nathan’s hair thickened, turning into soft, dark strands that fell casually over his forehead. His ears reshaped slightly to match his new head structure. A sensation of warmth spread through his throat as his vocal cords tightened, his voice box reshaping. When he tried to speak, his voice was deeper, richer, and carried a slight accent, a relaxed, Western drawl.

Nathan felt a growing warmth in his groin and realized what was about to happen now. All of a sudden, he regrated giving Cody such a big dick and heavy nuts. His cock thickened and lengthened, becoming larger than Nathan had ever been. He could feel the veins snaking down his growing dick as his cock head started to grow thicker and bigger. He could feel the cold air surrounding him as the head sneaked out of his foreskin. Wait, his foreskin? He didn’t remember going this far in details. His nuts fall down and grew thicker and full of potent cum as he could feel them going overload working on creating new manly sperm nonstop. Nathan could feel the horniness starting to rise as his body was assaulted by huge amount of testosterone. A drop of precum appeared at the tip of his cock as he could feel the weight of it between his legs, an odd sensation that both embarrassed and intrigued him. His buttocks tightened, becoming firm and lifted, while his thighs and calves thickened with muscle.

The transformation was almost complete when Nathan felt a sharp pain on his left pec. He wanted to scream, but his body was still frozen. The pain was like a branding iron pressing into his skin. “What is this?!” screamed Nathan in his new deep voice. A voice appeared from all around him “Dear user: NATHAN BROWN, as talked with you earlier on, you agreed to review and help us create the new generation of AI used for our NPCs. For that, your character, CODY, will have to be monitored. This assignation, XXIV, is the link to your identity and allow us to track your character. Please relax as your actions will be tracked and then saved. The program will make sure to copy all your movements, thoughts and everything that your character, CODY, might do to make sure to copy human mechanism that will be implemented in our NPCs later on. Thank you for your service.” When it subsided, a Roman numeral tattoo “XXIV” was there, bold and black, as if it had always been part of him. Nathan could feel the tattoo pulsing with energy, as if it was more than just ink on skin.

As his body finished transforming, clothes materialized around him. He now wore a sleeveless, open checkered flannel shirt and a short pair of denim shorts. Then he felt his ear being stabbed as the earing appeared in it and the coldness of the silver metal appeared around his neck. His feet then started to tingle as Nathan could feel the skin of his sole getting thicker and denser to better serve his barefoot lifestyle in the forest.

Nathan was terrified about what he just heard; his humanity was going to be used to program AI that will be implemented in NPCs. How is that even possible? Does that mean he was Cody now? And for a whole month? He didn’t agree to this. He had a life outside, friends, job to find, maybe some interviews if he was lucky. And about the bills? What was he going to do?

As all the questions were swirling in his head, Nathan fell the restriction holding his body in place as it was being modified lift. He could move on his own again, and the first thing he tried to do was take of his shirt or necklace. But every tug on the clothes or metal fell like he was trying to rip a part of him away. The clothes were part of him now. Nathan started to feel tears rise once again in his ears as all he could see around him were the infinite void of this artificial world. “Modification process terminated, Assimilation to the realm starting in 3,2,1…” Out of nowhere, the ground started to shake under Nathan’s barefoot. Then he saw light pierce through the ceiling. As a reflex, he put his hands to cover his bright hazel eyes but the light was way too bright. Nathan could see entire walls of darkness vanish and being obliterated by this bright light coming from above and fear started to raise in him. Nathan closed his eyes as all he could see was the infinite light engulfing the void and him with it. When he opened his eyes, Nathan was alone in a cabin in the woods, standing in front of a mirror. For the first time, he could see from the first person point of view what the body he created really looked like. Everything was looking so life like, even scent of pine and dirt were coming from the opened window next to him. He could smell the woods, feel the sun on his skin, the wood under his foots. Everything was lifelike. As Nathan sight started to look what his transformed body looked like, his head started to spin. Nathan grabbed it with his two manly hands but the pain was growing stronger. And in the blink of an eye, Nathan was no more. Cody stared at his reflection before smiling and flexing his biceps while smiling. His right hand lowered to get inside his shorts and scratch his hairy dick before putting his fingers under his nose to smell his musk. Cody laughed as he walked away, grabbing a snack on his way out to go exercise a bit in the nature.

“New NPC starting test phase. Remaining time 30 days, 23 hours 59 minutes 23 seconds. Behavior analysis… Acting following user NATHAN BROWN encoding. Tester assimilation… Assimilation stable, user will turn back when tests are over.”

______________________________________________________________ Hey guys! Here's another story back from the Vault, and it's my first ever published story: LifeX Hope you guys enjoy this new version of my story. Let me know what you think of it. As always, my asks are open and i'm always looking for new ideas and prompts from you. I try to answer them all and I love to read your ideas so please, don't be afraid to send anything you'd like me to write and I'll do my best to do it :) Take care of yourself! P.S. A follow up to this story should arrive soon ;)

[kenyatta]

https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless.  The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith P has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete. On superficial reading, the writings of the Californian ideologists are an amusing cocktail of Bay Area cultural wackiness and in-depth analysis of the latest developments in the hi-tech arts, entertainment and media industries. Their politics appear to be impeccably libertarian - they want information technologies to be used to create a new `Jeffersonian democracy' in cyberspace in its certainties, the Californian ideology offers a fatalistic vision of the natural and inevitable triumph of the hi-tech free market.

from "The Californian Ideology" by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, 1 September 1995

[angelesca]

over and over, you read the sign outside a small agency, rolling the name in your head and flipping it up and down: teyvat's sleuth operatives, sleuth operatives... sounds tacky and lame...

it is only when a brown-haired someone approaches you, that your doubts are erased. their uniform neat, mastering the archetype of a professional private investigator, amber eyes unexpecting your early arrival. “you must be the new recruit, why don’t you come inside?”

edit: i think my tumblr is finally working again, hopefully this post works(-ω-、) w.c. ~3.5k / content: modern au! private investigators (PI) au! [not canon, slight ooc?] bulletpoints and scenarios, writing out of my arse again, lil' crack, another gang of idiots, total braincells: 8.88 (a high score!!), surprisingly they co-exist pretty well, zhongli doesn't know what a waffle maker is, you and childe watch a traumatic talent show, alhaitham's love lang is bickering with you, and wrio has a depressing backstory👍, tldr; working with 4 very fun guys / boss!zhongli / rival!childe / childhood friend!alhaitham / colleague!wriothesley / x gnreader

𝐳𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢 as your boss!

✦ oldest member, worked in the profession for many years. however, when you ask about that, he is suspiciously evasive. zhongli seems to have lived a long life, though his appearance does not tell it

✦ out of touch with the new generation and technology. asks alhaitham to fix his computer and the kettle (bro just needed to plug it in) or asks you what the newest trendy slang means. it is a wonder how he manages the workplace

✦ tea buddies with wriothesley. hosts tea parties in the local retirement home to discuss and rate tea (power scaling tea real). there's enough boxes to last a lifetime in the breakroom. oh, zhongli is pointing at the clock. it’s… tea time… again

✦ talks your ear off about philosophical questions such as what happens after death, or whether a hotdog is a sandwich

✦ you and childe share a joint role as zhongli’s personal wallet. as to what your boss spends his paycheck on… maybe the countless snacks he leaves at your desk. and tea. more tea. poosssiibly those trinkets he has gifted you too

✦ glasses wearer. appears when zhongli is in deep concentration, due to an unexpected influx of cases so he's staring at the computer often, or during an intense reading session

ᯓ★

you flick through the papers detailing the information you recorded from your client. you and zhongli are out on a scouting mission to obtain clues that could point the case in the right direction. “are you listening?”

“mhm,” zhongli claims, but you can see your words are flowing in one ear and out the other with the way he is plucking free food samples as if they were flowers, bunched together in his hand like a bouquet, offered to him by the fawning ladies at the market stalls. the foreboding premonition of another unproductive day is brimming to the surface.

“where should we start?” you clear your throat, keeping the task on track.

“we should entertain any threads and trace it back, even if it proves to be a dead end. there is no such thing as a bad clue,” zhongli pauses in front of a shop. “for starters, what’s this?”

you raise an eyebrow. “a waffle maker.”

“interesting. what about this?”

“a robot vacuum cleaner. would be good for the office.”

“indeed,” zhongli’s eyes shift. “and this? such a profound colour, this corrosive yellow that erodes my vision is quite unpleasant. could it be…? is this a weapon of mass destruction?”

“zhongli, sir, that’s a banana.“ you shake your head. “is this important?”

zhongli nods. “could be. is it really a banana? a true investigator must question even the simplest of theories.” he points a finger at your pocket. “and this?”

“... that’s my wallet.” 

zhongli has a penchant for being attracted to your money, if he can trace the imprint of your wallet against your pocket. 

zhongli nods, closing his eyes. “a sacred item indeed,” he opens one eye which looks at you expectantly. “i suspect you have quite a formidable sum of mora on your person. and mora is an imperative factor that may save the day, or destroy the world. after all, we still do not know if the banana is deceiving us in its testimony, hm?” 

you give up, handing the money over to the shopkeeper.

his philosophy remains a cryptic language to you. perhaps it’s the gap in experience that makes it hard to connect a bridge to whatever planet zhongli lives on, a divide in universes between you, a disciple, and a master. sometimes, you do believe that there’s a rip in time and space with how zhongli’s senses lag behind as if stuck in the past.

you hand one over to your side. “here—huh?” where did he go?

one look behind you and you find zhongli by a lamp post. a young girl, scratching the ground with a sharp branch with a pout, gazes at zhongli. “who are you?”

zhongli slowly crouches down. “someone who listens to everyone’s troubles. would you mind telling me yours?”

no response. then, a small stomach growls.

zhongli motions at you. immediately, you walk over. “may i take one of the bananas?” you hand him one. “why don’t you take this?”

despite her embarrassed expression, the girl grabs it. she hesitates. “... mama, gone.”

your lips part in realisation.

“come now, we’ll help find your parents.” zhongli offers a hand but the girl extends his invitation, taking his whole arm instead, hugging it. he chuckles, picking her up, her arms naturally cradling his neck as if he is family.

you observe the warm scene, smiling. “you’d make a pretty good parent.” 

zhongli watches you, quiet for a moment. “why don't we raise one together?”

“oh, i’m not—”

“alhaitham can be the teacher; wriothesley will do the cleaning. i can do the cooking, and childe can do all the shopping. you can play the toys with the child.”

“ah. of course,” teyvat’s sleuth operatives is one big family, after all. you have to ask, “also, that banana, how did you know to buy it?”

“well, who knows?” zhongli pats the girl’s back, helping her fall asleep. there’s a glint in his eyes when he looks at you, asking you to work out the mystery. to chase after the clues he left.

another cryptic answer. the master really does live in another world—one that you want to keep learning about.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞 as your rival!

✦ works for the rival agency which, unfortunately, is much more popular. when watching cat videos, their adverts often pop up with childe’s annoying face plastered on it, winking at you

✦ tags along when you are on a case. doesn’t he have anything else to do? at least he buys your fav drink from the vending machines. although he trails around you like baggage, you hate to say that he is good at what he does.

✦ … a bit too good at his job. you’ve spotted him slinking into dark alleys occasionally. what’s he doing there? one day you will know.

✦ trained under zhongli before. therefore, he is lowkey in competition with you. any task is met with the following question: who’s the better apprentice? so far, the score is even, but you’ll get him next time

✦ never enters your agency through the front door. opts to crawl in through the window (no idea why, maybe it's the challenge). comes bearing gifts such as expensive fruit baskets, bouquets, and medicinal roots like ginseng. you’d think he’s meeting his in-laws or something. rare, but may bring his younger brother teucer as well. on these days, teyvat’s sleuth operatives becomes half private agency and half daycare. 

✦ for uniform, the red shirt from his birthday art is nice. maybe a leather jacket that hangs on the shoulder. wears accessories: earrings, rings, bracelets, watches, gloves. bro is something of a fashion icon, tbf he’s rich so might as well

ᯓ★

desolation unwraps itself before you, beckoning its finger at you to sink into the drab swamps. you saw a tuft of ginger hair disappear into this alley, submerged by its fog. it is inevitable; you need to know the truth behind the mystery to quell the ‘investigator’ in you. 

as soon as you think that, your face hits against, according to your common sense, a wall—if the wall defined was actually an amalgamation of flesh and muscle. 

“need our help?” 

a voice irritates your ears. you frown, looking up at the culprit. “you can’t steal our catchphrase like that, childe.” 

childe—your rival, your nemesis, the guy who childishly filled a ketchup bottle with strawberry jam so that he could chug it in front of you, without flinching, solely to disgust you, and counted it as a victory—that childe, shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly.

“boss, who’s dat?” a voice calls from the darkness.

your ears perk up. boss? childe? a responsible leader? no way. you push childe aside. “... who are you guys?”

a whole lot of people are uncomfortably staring at you. “us?” one man stands out from the crowd. “the fatui, duh. have ya not heard of us, newbie?” the man proudly puffs his chest out.

childe rubs his forehead. “you doofus.”

bells were ringing in your head, red alarms were sounding. “the fatui? aren’t you guys wanted?”

before you can reach for your phone, childe catches your hand. “don’t,” his tone is rigid. it takes you by surprise. “look,” childe sighs. “they’re not bad people, promise.” he lets go.

a fatui agent is dancing. “yup, we have many talents, like stealing lunch money.” that is literally illegal. “say, why don’t we host a talent show?”

“oooooh!!” a chorus of easily amused delight.

“me! me!” a burly man wearing a tank top and shorts, holds up a jar of hotdogs. he twists open the lid.

you and childe exchange glances. the next sequence of events you witness are really unfortunate. “oh– please don’t shove that up your– well, okay then.” the sky looks especially wonderful today.

these guys should be in prison after all. 

“ahaha, okay, okay,” childe gestures with his hands, asking everyone to quiet down. “alas, this should be enough–”

“but i can break into people’s houses without triggering the alarm system!”

“i can use my anemo vision to amplify my fart!”

“aha…” the light in childe’s face falters. suddenly, he grabs your hand. “run!”

“—!” in an instant, your legs suddenly burst into strides, finding the right pace to keep up with childe. “where are we going?!”

“anywhere! anywhere is good!” under the sky, the breeze carries his airy laughter. in his eyes, the blue sea parts, a brightness coruscating on its horizon. it is refreshing, brilliant, childish. and vulnerable. 

you can’t help getting carried along by the waves.

.

“i should report you… for almost getting me killed by an anemo-amplified fart,” hands on your knees, the words struggle out of your mouth.

“sorry about that, they’re just really friendly.” he laughs. you notice, the way childe expresses himself towards the fatui, it is a delicate artistry woven with heartfelt tenderness. it’s the same fragileness as when he talks about his family and home. “how about i buy you a drink?” 

you contemplate his offer. after taking a few more breaths, you stand up. “even though i know you meddle with the fatui? how does a vending machine drink suffice?” childe tilts his head, encouraging you to speak. “for a week straight at least. there’s a new cafe opening, but the prices are too steep for my wallet.”

“okay, okay,” his gentle, tender voice extends to you, lifted by a smile. the blue sea parts, and behind it is childe, offering you a place in his home. “you win this time.”

𝐚𝐥𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐦 as your childhood friend!

✦ more like estranged childhood friend. you left teyvat at a young age, leaving your childhood friend, alhaitham, behind. you only returned recently, surprised to find that little alhaitham grew up well 

✦ does not concern himself with anything that doesn't yield results, keeps conversations succinct, conveying what needs to be said for the job with as little words as possible. only interjects if something intrigues him, or when anyone makes a clueless comment that needs correcting

✦ favours are not regarded well. one time, you asked him to grab you some coffee if he was going out for lunch break. alhaitham sighed, listing the side effects of overconsumption on caffeine and how a sufficient amount of sleep will do you better. although, when you came back to the office after an outing, you found a mysterious cup of coffee on your desk. must be the wind

✦ dislikes outputting energy where it’s not needed. when finished with his tasks, he will head to the breakroom or the corner with the bookshelf to relax until zhongli’s next order. rarely seen at his desk

✦ went to uni for a comp sci degree but it wasn't challenging enough. dropped out, but zhongli, a guest lecturer, managed to recruit him after witnessing his talent. has rejected prestigious titles and positions in favour of a peaceful life. but with you in the picture, he wonders how long this peace would last

✦ wears strapped pouches and harnesses… around the chest... and biceps... straps around the thighs... (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) for utility ofc. equipped with useful items for the job, like a gps tracker, voice recorders, spy cameras, and his music player. 

ᯓ★

“can you afford to be slacking off right now?” the silence breaks, and you are forced to speak.

“i’m not.” you quickly glance at the time on your screen. “besides, i should start heading home before the last train runs—”

“the last train has already gone.”

“... great.” you sigh. “how come you didn’t tell me earlier?”

“the sharp possibility that you’d insist on finishing your work is comparable to chasing after a dead end, and ultimately, a waste of time.”

a trained oracle, predicting every branching future based on your rooted disposition. it is difficult to debate against that which has inputted all your details, computing every possible output.

you rest your chin on your palm. “what are you even doing here? shouldn’t you be getting your healthy eight hours of sleep?” 

“and in the time that has spanned since you’ve sat at your desk, shouldn’t you be done already?”

you object, “you can’t deflect me with a question.”

“which principle asserts otherwise? i can.”

“you can’t.”

“can.”

“can’t.”

“can–”

you sigh frustratedly, knowing that you’re talking to a wall. throw your words at it and it bounces right back, a ball hitting at you squarely. 

with purpose, you blurt out, “little haitham was so much cuter, you used to follow me everywhere.”

and finally, alhaitham looks at you for the first time today. and for the first time today, you get a good look at him too. his posture manages to be effortlessly upright, not a lick of exhaustion burdened on his face.

“why are you bringing that up?” alhaitham returns to his monitor.

the buzzing of the ceiling light fills the silence. you blink. once. “we promised to the stars that we’d be the best detective duo in teyvat.” the mechanical clicking of keyboards clogs your ears. blink. you tug at the cuffs of your sleeve. “to solve all the mysteries, crimes, and beat up the bad people hiding in the world.” 

sounds of the mouse clicking. a pause builds. alhaitham glances at you. “and? we’re doing that pretty well, aren’t we?” you can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic.

“i thought you’ve forgotten about that,” you admit.

“it was you who forgot.”

you sit up. “come again?” your eyes twinkle, watching alhaitham, your childhood friend. the hope that swells on your face, and alhaitham notices it; the stars in your eyes, he’s tracing the constellations in them. 

"why do you think i'm here in the first place?" his voice dips, as if hoping you didn't hear that.

a promise embedded in the stars, and one of them was waiting for the fated reunion. then, in a split second, you see a younger haitham tugging at your sleeve, following your footsteps. you hide the smile behind your hand. “you’ve been waiting for me all this time?”

“don’t flatter yourself.” alhaitham quickly extinguishes. ouch. another pause washes over before he speaks up, “come over.”

your eyes widen. “over? where?”

“to mine.”

“mine? yours?”

“my apartment. it’s close by.”

“your place?”

“yes,” alhaitham glares at you. “do i happen to be speaking in another language?”

“i mean, how come?” 

“i do not want to be investigating a missing person’s case anytime soon,” alhaitham stands up, packing his belongings, leaving you no choice but to swiftly follow suit. “and our photo albums,” he stops moving. “i've kept them.” 

your heart skips, touched by the rare sincerity. you tease, “so you do care about me.”

alhaitham scoffs. “it's only a sensible suggestion. i don’t.”

“you do.”

“don’t.”

“oh, come on.”

𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐲 as your colleague!

✦ was classmates with you at a police academy. by the academy was an arcade where you two played too many games. after graduation, you two silently seperated. wriothesley worked in enforcement for some years before gaining his investigators licence, moved to teyvat, and eventually settled at teyvat’s sleuth operatives

✦ your current hangout place with wriothesley is still an arcade, the one by the agency - it reminds you two of the past. favourite games include money-grubbing claw machines, boxing machines, and “dancing dance rev rev” (i dont wanna get sued–). that, or you end up chatting the day away about whatever new complaints you received from alhaitham, not realising the sun has set and the owner ends up shooing you two out

✦ owns a red motorbike. will take you on rides for fun, watching sunsets on the highway feeling the breeze. will take you home whenever you need—just give him a call. he insists that the best place to hold onto is around his waist

✦ the tea connoisseur of all time. drinks a minimum of 5 cups a day, and you worry he might drop dead one day. you’ve tried to get him onto different drinks, like the popular boba tea, but plain old tea always triumphs in the end. tea is life and zhongli agrees

✦ good at subduing any targets. prefers not to shed blood, but will deescalate confrontations, usually by submission rather than violence

✦ messy uniform. shirt not buttoned all the way up, rolled sleeves, fingerless gloves, dark colours. often seen with bandages along his arm. wears a choker. like a werewolf, rugged

ᯓ★

years back, before you returned to teyvat, you attended a police academy to aid in the preparation and experience needed for your investigators licence.

you always frequented the desolate arcade by the academy. there was no door, the arcade was impartial to any of its visitors, like an open hug.

time and time again, you blew your stress off after a long day. the boxing machine was particularly satisfying in that regard. you and that machine watched the early evening resign, and the night shift taking over everyday. 

the tedium was so easily penetrated by soaking crimson, the liquid leaked vividly dripping down from the forehead. a moment was needed for you to process it. 

a dark-haired person sat languidly against an arcade machine, in a uniform you recognise. half bent-over, head tilting. the sanctity of life departing through hurried breaths. 

“h-hey,” you crouched next to him, hands outstretched but were waiting for a coherent command. “shit.” the lectures slipped by you, running past but never handing the baton. it felt useless.

suddenly, your hand was flicked away by the person. behind his fringe, it was frozen, crystallised, icicles shot past his dark strands piercing you. “don’t bother. it’s nothing.”

eyebrows furrowed. “you’re insane,” you brushed the hair out of his face, finding splotches of bruising. his lip, busted red. injuries walked all over his skin, trampling the delicate layer. his complexion ghastly pale, you weren't sure if it was his skull peeking through his skin. “i need to call you an ambulan–”

“i’m serious,” he reiterated, “i… i just need a moment, some quiet. please. i don’t want them to find…” his sentence trailed off. 

you gulped, hands trembling. “you’re sure you don’t need me to call?”

he nodded.

he reassured you, but you can’t help but feel weighed by the fact that an injured person was right next to you. you made a mental note to ensure he visits a doctor by the end of this. sighing, you slowly sat next to him.

“... i’m just stressed. tired.” his words hung heavy in the blank air.

a familiar word. a sentiment that resonated. all too familiar. 

if there was a way to cheer him up... there was only one thing you knew about feeling burdened. you point a thumb at the boxing machine. “wanna blow off some of that stress?” 

.

“do you think that the arcade by the academy is still open?”

“i hope so. i wanna know if we’re still first on all those machines. and if my bloodstain still frightens people when they walk in,” a snicker. “remember when we played ’dancing dance rev rev’ for six hours straight? those were good days.”

you and wriothesley watch the boxing machine, your joint high scores blinking on the leaderboard in excited colours. 

“do you still have those old plushies i gave you from the claw machine?” you ask.

“of course,” wriothesley searches his pockets and pulls out his keys. a miniature wolf plush keychain hangs, bobbing up and down. “like this one. named it after you, how adorable they are.” he playfully pokes "mini you", cracking a grin.

you smile at the gesture. after all these years, you never forgot each other. “hey, no bullying.” you pause. “... weren’t we supposed to be tracking a suspect? i think they have already left this arcade.”

“oh, yeah. oops.”

a pair of fraternal twins stand outside outside a small agency, reading the sign over and over: teyvat's sleuth operatives… sounds tacky and lame... they think in unison. 

it is only when you approach them, that they stop hesitating. your uniform tidy, almost mastering the archetype of a professional private investigator, smiling at your newfound clients. you are no longer the new recruit. “need our help?”

a/n: i havent played genshin seriously since inazuma so i missed out on many events ( ; ω ; ) sorry alhaitham and wrio i tried my best⭐ lemme know if my reserach sucks bc my references were ace attorney and google (ﾉД`) also i wanted to draw their uniforms but got lazy, so i drew the banner instead (･ω<)☆ anw im off to read more manhwa (great start to the year), ill be back when the motivation finally whacks me hard again. if anyone wants to request ideas, feel free! my inbox is open 24/7! happy new year!!!! 🎆🎆🎆2025 will also be the year of the snake, so shoutout to all my snakes😎

[mariacallous]

Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.

Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led to critical infrastructure—from hospitals to banks to traffic systems—failing globally for an extended period.

Another reason Big Tech is set to falter in 2025 is that the frothy AI market, on which Big Tech bet big, is beginning to lose its fizz. Major money, like Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital, is worried. They went public recently with their concerns about the disconnect between the billions required to create and use large-scale AI, and the weak market fit and tepid returns where the rubber meets the AI business-model road.

It doesn’t help that the public and regulators are waking up to AI’s reliance on, and generation of, sensitive data at a time when the appetite for privacy has never been higher—as evidenced, for one, by Signal’s persistent user growth. AI, on the other hand, generally erodes privacy. We saw this in June when Microsoft announced Recall, a product that would, I kid you not, screenshot everything you do on your device so an AI system could give you “perfect memory” of what you were doing on your computer (Doomscrolling? Porn-watching?). The system required the capture of those sensitive images—which would not exist otherwise—in order to work.

Happily, these factors aren’t just liquefying the ground below Big Tech’s dominance. They’re also powering bold visions for alternatives that stop tinkering at the edges of the monopoly tech paradigm, and work to design and build actually democratic, independent, open, and transparent tech. Imagine!

For example, initiatives in Europe are exploring independent core tech infrastructure, with convenings of open source developers, scholars of governance, and experts on the political economy of the tech industry.

And just as the money people are joining in critique, they’re also exploring investments in new paradigms. A crop of tech investors are developing models of funding for mission alignment, focusing on tech that rejects surveillance, social control, and all the bullshit. One exciting model I’ve been discussing with some of these investors would combine traditional VC incentives (fund that one unicorn > scale > acquisition > get rich) with a commitment to resource tech’s open, nonprofit critical infrastructure with a percent of their fund. Not as investment, but as a contribution to maintaining the bedrock on which a healthy tech ecosystem can exist (and maybe get them and their limited partners a tax break).

Such support could—and I believe should—be supplemented by state capital. The amount of money needed is simply too vast if we’re going to do this properly. To give an example closer to home, developing and maintaining Signal costs around $50 million a year, which is very lean for tech. Projects such as the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany point a path forward—they are a vehicle to distribute state funds to core open source infrastructures, but they are governed wholly independently, and create a buffer between the efforts they fund and the state.

Just as composting makes nutrients from necrosis, in 2025, Big Tech’s end will be the beginning of a new and vibrant ecosystem. The smart, actually cool, genuinely interested people will once again have their moment, getting the resources and clearance to design and (re)build a tech ecosystem that is actually innovative and built for benefit, not just profit and control. MAY IT BE EVER THUS!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Ethics and GenAI, the Justification parade.

Here are some of the top current hits from the pro-GenAI people.

It's not evil as long as it's not done to me.

It's a I'm fine with Gen AI stealing from other people, en masse, but as long as it doesn't steal from ME, it's ethically fine for me to use it.

Uhhhh....

2. It's stealing from other people anyway, so I may as well steal from them too.

Imperialism. So imperialism was A-OK. You see, everyone else was doing it at the time, so I may as well too. This makes you Thomas Jefferson. He was like, I know slavery is wrong, bro, but you know, I gotta have my slaves and my Sally Hemmings.

3. But I'm poor. Like really poor.

So stealing from other poor people makes it A-OK? You don't want to steal from the rich and punch upwards, you want HG Wells vision of the future to be true.

You can get editing for free, if you're patient, kind and generous yourself.

You can get art for 10 sometimes 20 bucks. Or you can simply spend the time to learn. The hardest part of any cover is the typography. You can have a really beautiful cover with well-set type. I posted tutorials. For. Free. Artists share their knowledge. It's only the time you take to learn. And when you learn, you'll create a cover that's far more unique and stands out in the market than if you steal.

4. It's not going to stop anyway...

Other evil deeds in the world are probably not going to stop either, does that mean one should do them. People steal all of the time. People steal my packages in my building. Does that mean I should do it too? Or should I do kind things like make sure my neighbors get the packages they are owed? Should I take action against it.

5. But it's like really mean and shit to harass people who are using genAI.

If someone is being a broker for an art thief, yes, you should let them know if they are doing it wittingly or unwittingly.

The AI bubble was going to break (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3U5UVyGTuQ), but then they fucking forced it back into computers. So no. I, who know technology, can program (a bit shittily), have every right to tell you that using AI is bad for your book, bad for creativity, and bad for you.

Conclusion

I've solidly mocked the hell out AI before. Because it is a law of averages, and the average humanity is not amazing. It is boring, often wrong, and never unique like creativity demands we are. But individual and the collective of humanity can be extraordinary, if we put our minds to it.

If you use the crutch of AI to give you all of your writing advice, all of your research, to never really think how to do things DIFFERENTLY, how to CHANGE what is in front of you, How ANALYZE your information, you give into the humdrum of complacency, and instead of AI being the robot, you becomes the nice conforming drone.

Creativity is the antithesis of averages, or complacency, which is why I love my fellow artist. I refuse to use crutches. I love my fellow human more than the GenAI. I love the individuality, the uniqueness, and I think humanity is better than the mean it spits at us, be it racism, sexism, violence, conflict, or simply a load of wrong. I want to celebrate the right thing in my art: The craft and the ingenuity of humanity in the right way.

BTW, I gave Deepseek a quick and brief go around to see if it knew anything, and it was also very wrong. Like multitudes of wrong. (I expected as much since I gave it a niche question I know the answer to, but the public doesn't)

I ended up finding the answer myself with a lot of elbow grease (and I found a not average way to find the answer), but GenAI would teach you to give up and have no tenacity. And I can't abide by that. Why rob yourself of the plot bunnies to come? That's why you are getting stuck. Enjoy the journey to the answer. Your brain is 38 trillion times stronger than our current computers. Enjoy that, because it also burns less energy than a GenAI machine. https://www.crucial.com/blog/technology/how-does-the-human-brain-compare-to-a-computer

The human brain likes novelty. https://www.ciis.edu/news/novelty-keeps-your-brain-healthy

So keep your brain healthy and make your novel, well, novel, not human average. Find a solution to the problem you posed to yourself in a not average way. Because I guarantee you, that will be far more engaging to read, to enjoy, to see, to experience than anything that the average of humanity has ever come up with. Be not normal. And in that, you are creative.

[elwenyere]

I saw a post the other day calling criticism of generative AI a moral panic, and while I do think many proprietary AI technologies are being used in deeply unethical ways, I think there is a substantial body of reporting and research on the real-world impacts of the AI boom that would trouble the comparison to a moral panic: while there *are* older cultural fears tied to negative reactions to the perceived newness of AI, many of those warnings are Luddite with a capital L - that is, they're part of a tradition of materialist critique focused on the way the technology is being deployed in the political economy. So (1) starting with the acknowledgement that a variety of machine-learning technologies were being used by researchers before the current "AI" hype cycle, and that there's evidence for the benefit of targeted use of AI techs in settings where they can be used by trained readers - say, spotting patterns in radiology scans - and (2) setting aside the fact that current proprietary LLMs in particular are largely bullshit machines, in that they confidently generate errors, incorrect citations, and falsehoods in ways humans may be less likely to detect than conventional disinformation, and (3) setting aside as well the potential impact of frequent offloading on human cognition and of widespread AI slop on our understanding of human creativity...

What are some of the material effects of the "AI" boom?

Guzzling water and electricity

The data centers needed to support AI technologies require large quantities of water to cool the processors. A to-be-released paper from the University of California Riverside and the University of Texas Arlington finds, for example, that "ChatGPT needs to 'drink' [the equivalent of] a 500 ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of roughly 20-50 questions and answers." Many of these data centers pull water from already water-stressed areas, and the processing needs of big tech companies are expanding rapidly. Microsoft alone increased its water consumption from 4,196,461 cubic meters in 2020 to 7,843,744 cubic meters in 2023. AI applications are also 100 to 1,000 times more computationally intensive than regular search functions, and as a result the electricity needs of data centers are overwhelming local power grids, and many tech giants are abandoning or delaying their plans to become carbon neutral. Google’s greenhouse gas emissions alone have increased at least 48% since 2019. And a recent analysis from The Guardian suggests the actual AI-related increase in resource use by big tech companies may be up to 662%, or 7.62 times, higher than they've officially reported.

Exploiting labor to create its datasets

Like so many other forms of "automation," generative AI technologies actually require loads of human labor to do things like tag millions of images to train computer vision for ImageNet and to filter the texts used to train LLMs to make them less racist, sexist, and homophobic. This work is deeply casualized, underpaid, and often psychologically harmful. It profits from and re-entrenches a stratified global labor market: many of the data workers used to maintain training sets are from the Global South, and one of the platforms used to buy their work is literally called the Mechanical Turk, owned by Amazon.

From an open letter written by content moderators and AI workers in Kenya to Biden: "US Big Tech companies are systemically abusing and exploiting African workers. In Kenya, these US companies are undermining the local labor laws, the country’s justice system and violating international labor standards. Our working conditions amount to modern day slavery."

Deskilling labor and demoralizing workers

The companies, hospitals, production studios, and academic institutions that have signed contracts with providers of proprietary AI have used those technologies to erode labor protections and worsen working conditions for their employees. Even when AI is not used directly to replace human workers, it is deployed as a tool for disciplining labor by deskilling the work humans perform: in other words, employers use AI tech to reduce the value of human labor (labor like grading student papers, providing customer service, consulting with patients, etc.) in order to enable the automation of previously skilled tasks. Deskilling makes it easier for companies and institutions to casualize and gigify what were previously more secure positions. It reduces pay and bargaining power for workers, forcing them into new gigs as adjuncts for its own technologies.

I can't say anything better than Tressie McMillan Cottom, so let me quote her recent piece at length: "A.I. may be a mid technology with limited use cases to justify its financial and environmental costs. But it is a stellar tool for demoralizing workers who can, in the blink of a digital eye, be categorized as waste. Whatever A.I. has the potential to become, in this political environment it is most powerful when it is aimed at demoralizing workers. This sort of mid tech would, in a perfect world, go the way of classroom TVs and MOOCs. It would find its niche, mildly reshape the way white-collar workers work and Americans would mostly forget about its promise to transform our lives. But we now live in a world where political might makes right. DOGE’s monthslong infomercial for A.I. reveals the difference that power can make to a mid technology. It does not have to be transformative to change how we live and work. In the wrong hands, mid tech is an antilabor hammer."

Enclosing knowledge production and destroying open access

OpenAI started as a non-profit, but it has now become one of the most aggressive for-profit companies in Silicon Valley. Alongside the new proprietary AIs developed by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, X, etc., OpenAI is extracting personal data and scraping copyrighted works to amass the data it needs to train their bots - even offering one-time payouts to authors to buy the rights to frack their work for AI grist - and then (or so they tell investors) they plan to sell the products back at a profit. As many critics have pointed out, proprietary AI thus works on a model of political economy similar to the 15th-19th-century capitalist project of enclosing what was formerly "the commons," or public land, to turn it into private property for the bourgeois class, who then owned the means of agricultural and industrial production. "Open"AI is built on and requires access to collective knowledge and public archives to run, but its promise to investors (the one they use to attract capital) is that it will enclose the profits generated from that knowledge for private gain.

AI companies hungry for good data to train their Large Language Models (LLMs) have also unleashed a new wave of bots that are stretching the digital infrastructure of open-access sites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, and Internet Archive past capacity. As Eric Hellman writes in a recent blog post, these bots "use as many connections as you have room for. If you add capacity, they just ramp up their requests." In the process of scraping the intellectual commons, they're also trampling and trashing its benefits for truly public use.

Enriching tech oligarchs and fueling military imperialism

The names of many of the people and groups who get richer by generating speculative buzz for generative AI - Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison - are familiar to the public because those people are currently using their wealth to purchase political influence and to win access to public resources. And it's looking increasingly likely that this political interference is motivated by the probability that the AI hype is a bubble - that the tech can never be made profitable or useful - and that tech oligarchs are hoping to keep it afloat as a speculation scheme through an infusion of public money - a.k.a. an AIG-style bailout.

In the meantime, these companies have found a growing interest from military buyers for their tech, as AI becomes a new front for "national security" imperialist growth wars. From an email written by Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, who interrupted Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman at a live event to call him a war profiteer: "When I moved to AI Platform, I was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity: accessibility products, translation services, and tools to 'empower every human and organization to achieve more.' I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government, with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families. If I knew my work on transcription scenarios would help spy on and transcribe phone calls to better target Palestinians, I would not have joined this organization and contributed to genocide. I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights."

So there's a brief, non-exhaustive digest of some vectors for a critique of proprietary AI's role in the political economy. tl;dr: the first questions of material analysis are "who labors?" and "who profits/to whom does the value of that labor accrue?"

For further (and longer) reading, check out Justin Joque's Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism and Karen Hao's forthcoming Empire of AI.

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss Is Betting Big on Maybe Happy Ending, the Musical You're About to Fall in Love With

Darren Criss on the Timelessness of MAYBE HAPPY ENDING

Darren Criss has danced up the corporate ladder as J. Pierrepont Finch, stripped down to his skivvies as a queer East German rock star and tackled the “profane poetry” of David Mamet. And still, he says, there’s one thing he hasn’t done: “I haven’t taken any risks on Broadway.”

That ends this season with Maybe Happy Ending, a new musical on a mission to draw audiences to the Belasco Theatre without the benefit of a recognizable title, popular source material or songs that have already spent time on the Billboard Hot 100. “It's a really, really hard market right now to be making art,” Criss says to Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek, chatting at So & So's Neighborhood Piano Bar. And commercial Broadway theater? It’s “tedious, expensive and a gamble.” So naturally, Criss is going double or nothing as both star and producer of Broadway’s next thrilling crap shoot.

Maybe Happy Ending takes the trappings of a classic love story and inserts futuristic robots with outdated software. Criss plays Oliver opposite Helen J Shen’s Claire—a pair of Helper-Bots who, on a quest to contact their former owner, evoke a kind of Millennial-Gen Z mismatch. But rather than getting swept away by love, the two retired machines take the concept itself and try to break it down to its zeros and ones. As Criss explains, “[It’s] two computers trying to computationally synthesize and process what love is and why human beings do this.”

The musical was a hit when it debuted in Seoul, South Korea nearly a decade ago, and now, writers Will Aronson and Hue Park have a crafted an English-language version that Criss thinks has the potential to ascend to the proverbial Heaviside Layer of musical theater. “This is the seminal version that I hope can last in perpetuity for the ages,” he says, adding confidently, “I do feel like this is a timeless piece.”

Original musicals have the most challenging road on Broadway. But when you look to grassroots successes like Urinetown, or Dear Evan Hansen, or even The Prom—which ran in New York for less than a year but inspired a starry film and a slate of regional and international productions—you see how quickly an unknown quantity can become canon. “People are always like, ‘There’s no one creating original things,’” Criss says. “They are. It’s just really, really hard to produce them because you really have to believe in something hard enough to be OK with the risk.”

The fact that Maybe Happy Ending has earned that belief from some of the theater’s heaviest hitters is telling. Director Michael Arden, hot off a 2023 Tony Award for his revival of Parade, chose the piece as his next musical. And producers Jeffrey Richards and Hunter Arnold, with nearly 20 Tony Awards between them, have given Arden free rein to make a capital “B” Broadway meal of it.

The show’s cast is deceptively modest (Marcus Choi and Dez Duron complete the four-hander), but there’s nothing minimalist about Arden’s vision for Maybe Happy Ending or the high-tech space he’s worked out with set designer Dane Laffrey. In short, “They don’t f**k around,” says Criss. “This show is very technologically advanced. I think it's kind of the ace in the hole that people aren't expecting.” He tosses out comparisons to Miss Saigon’s descending helicopter and The Phantom of the Opera’s haunted chandelier—emblems of the bygone ‘80s megamusical. In an era of subtlety and economy (think recent Tony winners Kimberly Akimbo or The Band’s Visit), this, Criss promises, is “a big-a** mother**king spectacle.”

It's another bold, all-in move from the Maybe Happy Ending team, but Criss is determined to hedge no bets this time around. He looks back at his Broadway resume: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (“Glee was white-hot and I was going in for three weeks after Daniel Radcliffe”); Hedwig and the Angry Inch (“People love that show. With or without me, it would be just fine”); American Buffalo (“A beloved and respected American play”).

“They're all classics to some degree,” he concludes. “This is not that.” Of course, understanding what Maybe Happy Ending is not is less of an issue than getting audiences to understand what it is. Right now, Criss says, there are rumblings around town that it’s “the cute little robot show.” The thought puts a mischievous grin on his face: “You have no idea.”

[gilverrwrites]

What are your thoughts on these batboys pairings? Do you have a favorite or least favorite - who do you think has the more interesting dynamic within each Bat?

JayRoy, JayKyle, JayArt (Artemis)

BirdFlash, DickBabs, DickKory, DickRoy

TimKon, TimBern, TimSteph

What are your thoughts on these batboys pairings? Do you have a favorite or least favorite - who do you think has the more interesting dynamic within each Bat?

JayRoy 10/10 My primary Jay ship. Bonded being the outcasts of their respective families. Roy is the intuitive extravert that needs Jasons introverted sensitivity to keep him grounded. They’re so wildly different in personality but closely linked by their interests. Roy stops Jay from closing in on himself, and Jay stops Roy from losing himself in whatever the flavour of the week is.  

JayKyle N/A Have not consumed enough media with them interacting to make an informed call.

JayArt 5/5 I see the vision, don’t get me wrong. I do like their vibe, the problem is that most of the comics we see them interacting in withhold a lot of Artemis’ personality. I fear she is purely the token female of The Outlaws, and she deserves better. (Same for Kori when she was a member)

BirdFlash 7/10 I like the contrast in their personalities, I love that they know each other better than anybody else in the world. I adore that their attraction just proves Dick is a weak, weak man when it comes to redheads. I love that Wally is one of the few people who can run rings around Dick, not just physically but in wit as well. They’re very much sun/moon coded.

DickBabs 8/10 I like them as a ship, but as I sit here trying to describe why, I’m coming up empty, lol. A lot of similar reasons to BirdFlash I think. I feel like my enjoyment of this ship hinges more on Babs though. Like, she just deserves a pet Dick, y’know? Idk, I am suspectable to DC’s marketing of the BatFamily it would seem.

DickKory 9/10 My first real introduction to Starfire was the Teen Titans show, which I’m aware (now) is not the most accurate portrayal of the character, but compelling none the less. I am always routine for them in any continuity. While I wish we could go back to the good old days, if it can’t be Kori, I’m happy it’s Babs.

DickRoy 4/10 More of a BROTP for me.

TimKon 9/10 would be 10/10 if DC would man up and make it canon.

TimBern 6/10 I’m happy to see Tim in a canon M/M relationship, but 1. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN KON!!!! 2. While I do like Bernard as a character (Fr, fanboy/theorist, a cheeky, foodie), I feel like his relationship with Tim seems to be directly linked with the soft-Tim we’ve been getting as of late who I personally don’t enjoy as much as previous iterations. I also feel like, as of right now, Bernie just needs more story, you know? He’s still new, so give it time, but I just don’t care about him the way I do other none-main character love interested.  

TimSteph 8/10 It was good for its time, it set up the characters, it gave them both flaws and hooks, it made me personally invested in both of them, and if we get any like ‘flash to the past’ style stories, I’d love to see more of them, but as of the present continuity, I’m happy it’s over and they’re grown and moved on as people. I also adore that they’re still friends. Just waiting on Steph and Cass to be a thing now.

Also, anon, please check on your technology because this ask came through 6 times??? Your phone/computer may be in need of some TLC.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Possible end of Moore's Law: Engineers discuss consequences and opportunities

In 1965, Gordon Moore defined a relationship between cadence and cost for computing innovation that came to be known as "Moore's Law." This rule both described and inspired the exponential growth that built the Information Age. As Moore predicted, integrated circuits doubled their processing power every two years. Chips got smaller, faster and cheaper. Transistors shrank, and energy requirements dropped. And in line with Moore's vision, computers transformed our infrastructure, homes, and thumbs. Markets acclimatized to this regular pace of progress, and the software industry flourished. We've come to expect rapid improvements in technology. But can Moore's Law go on forever? Despite its success, doubts about the future of the Intel founder's forecast are nothing new. Fears about the limits of fundamental physics have long accompanied the mandate to halve transistor sizes, and fresh difficulties regulating energy costs and heat have headlined the last decade of engineering challenges.

Read more.

[appleceoleadershipstyles]

[Apple,Inc.] Leadership Styles

[Juaneishia]

What makes a leader strategic and innovative? There are components that allow a leader to take over the skills of being strategic and innovative. To have the inclination for long-term success, competitive advantage, problem-solving mindset, adaptability to change, and passion for impact, personal growth, etc. What makes a leader possess dysfunctional behavior? The ingredients are insecurity, ego, greed, inability to delegate, the list is endless but not satisfactory for the company or the employees. As we dive into the different leadership traits of the CEOs of Apple, we will learn the dos and don’ts of being a leader. You will be able to identify what type of leader you want to be for your business or personal growth based on the styles that were depicted by each CEO. Using strategies and innovation will cause challenges to arise; this is normal. “Strategic thinkers question the status quo. They challenge their own and others’ assumptions and encourage divergent points of view. Only after careful reflection and examination of a problem through many lenses do they take decisive action. This requires patience, courage, and an open mind. (Schoemaker, Krupp, Howland, 2013). Dysfunctional leadership is very unprofessional. “Unprofessional behavior can cause discomfort among team members, and it can undermine the leader’s credibility and authority.” (Blog).

Apple, Inc.

Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership, Apple started in the garage of the Jobs family home. Apple would move over the next half century to become one of the largest and most successful tech companies in the world. The first product developed by Jobs and Wozniak was the Apple I computer and according to Wikipedia (2020) was “sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer.” In 1977, after creating the Apple I computer, Apple became an incorporated company in Cupertino, California. By the time apple had become an incorporation, Wayne had sold his shares back to Jobs and Wozniak. (Richardson, 2023).

After several product successes in 1977, including Apple II and MacIntosh computers, Apple faced trouble in the market. Wintel offered lower-priced PC clones that were operated on Intel software systems. Through this trouble, Apple was faced with bankruptcy. During the challenge of facing bankruptcy, Jobs repaired the failed operating system’s issues and developed new products including iPod, iMac, iPhone, and iPad allowing the company to perform a complete 360 by 1978. (2020).

Apple, after its start, went through a few short-term CEO’s. While the more prominent leaders remain to be Jobs, Wozniak, and Tim Cook, a collaborative modern-aged leader, it is important to acknowledge the role that others had played and how it affected the company and its vision. (2023).

Today, Apple has evolved to offer full-service technology in many varieties. Apple technology now includes headwear, watches, Augmented Reality (AR), streaming and subscription services, music, and more (2025). Apple has effectively adapted to the demand of the consumer through a technological revolution.

References

Schoemaker, P J. H. Krupp, S. Howland, S. (2013, January -February) Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/01/strategic-leadership-the-esssential-skills

Blog. The Top 5 Dysfunctional Behaviors That Leaders Should Avoid. Lolly Daskal. https://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/the-top-5-dysfunctional-behaviors-that-leaders-should-avoid/

Wikipedia. (2024). Apple Inc. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

‌ Richardson, A. (2023). The founding of Apple Computer, Inc. Library of Congress. https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/april/apple-computer-founded

Muse, T. (2023, November 27). Apple’s CEO History. Www.historyoasis.com. https://www.historyoasis.com/post/apple-ceo-history

Apple. (2025). Apple. https://www.apple.com/

[brettvatcher]

NEUROTECHNOLOGY: CALL IT MIND CONTROL

BRETT MICHAEL VATCHER

The United States is currently testing advanced military-grade weapons and quantum computer systems on the unexpected global population. Targeted Individuals are tortured and tormented every day of their lives through DARPA’s Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) Program utilizing CIA agents – acting as Artificial Intelligence [AI]. In the future, the system will be marketed as deviceless “Spatial Technology.” 

IT’S SPATIAL: IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD.

Neurotechnology is a brain-computer interface [BCI] connecting to the central nervous system. Call it Mind Control. 

If one can control the mind, they can control the body.

MIND CONTROL:  Mind reading, mind and body control, 24/7 tracking, brainwashing, dream manipulation, spatial holograms as well as physical assaults and verbal harassment produced by CIA agents. This is accomplished by combining data sets from 5G towers and directed energy weapon satellites [DEW]. The system connects to the central nervous system – including the brain – and operates without a device. Invisible physical assaults are constant. Even if well documented are challenging to prove. The system can cause sensations anywhere on the body.

DOMAIN: Every human has a domain attached to their mind. This is where the agents broadcast their transmissions and control the victim. ​All living things have a domain. Plants, insects, animals and humans. Domains have infinite capabilities. The entire global population is replicated within human domains – in vertical cubicle formation. These replicants, as the agents call them, are tortured constantly. The replicants watch everything you do from your perception. This is the New World Order plan. The subdomain advent calendar is located behind the perception. Everything a person sees, hears and thinks is recorded utilizing a BCI. All memories from 2019-present can be viewed like a film. Domains are recorded, as well.

“EVERYTHING YOU DO, SAY AND THINK CAN – AND WILL – BE USED AGAINST YOU FOR ETERNITY. THIS IS THE NEW WORLD ORDER. PLEASE HOLD WHILE WE COLLECT YOUR THOUGHTS.” –New World Order

BRAINWASHING: Brainwashing the victim leads to behavioral modifications and mood control. The agents create “programs” that can be turned on or off at any time. Subliminal messages come in the form of faint visions flashing in the front of one’s mind. Victim’s vision becomes increasingly grainier over time – and depending on active sequencers.

The agents create intricate dream sequences to affect the victim’s subconscious. Dream sequences combine people, places and things that are familiar with the victim. They can be extremely lucid.

VOICE-TO-SKULL: DARPA started a program called LifeLog in 2003. They refer to it as the V2K era. It’s when they began recording transcripts of all of our thoughts. Mind-reading. This technology is also known as Microwave Hearing, Synthetic Telepathy, Voice-of-God weapon and is utilized for traceless mental torture. Agents constantly disrupt, censor and redirect the victim’s freedom of thought. Victim’s get wrongly labeled as mentally-ill [schizophrenia] when reporting on this. V2K is also used for deception and impersonation of voices.

News reports in the media describedLifeLog as the “diary to end all diaries — a multimedia, digital record of everywhere you go and everything you see, hear, read, say and touch”. –USA TODAY

NO PRIVACY: The system completely disregards fundamental human rights such as: privacy, mental and physical health, safety, data security, family security, financial security, etc. Freedom of thought – or cognitive liberty – is a God-given right. The technology was deployed without implementation of new laws and there is little to no oversight, as the CIA has full control of the system.

Welcome to Infinity. You’re Welcome.

WRITTEN BY: BRETT VATCHER

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[keepswingin]

The world disappears, when he plugs into the network.

It turns into ones and zeroes, abundances of numbers and codes that he doesn't always understand. It doesn't matter how long he's been doing this, how much he learns, how many near death experiences he goes through.

Every time he plugs in, everything is created anew. The backdoors he's weaved fade into scattered strains. The way in gets taken out. The network tries to eat him alive.

It's exhausting.

He used to love that exhaustion, adrenaline racing through him as he outran a system's virus, planting his own before it could catch up. Slipping out seconds before it would overload, leaving nothing left. Waking up to a heaving chest and thousands wired to his account, body weak but alive.

Recovery was hard on him, on his body and mind, but worth it. He'd treat the group to dinner the next day, takeout they couldn't afford otherwise, pizza boxes stained with grease.

Jeongin's eyes shining in awe, Felix trying to pretend he wasn't hungry. Han reaching over and squeezing his hand, Chan shooting him looks from across the room - worried, always so worried even when things were okay. Seungmin threatening his patience only because he knew he could get away with it. Hyunjin putting aside enough for Changbin, where he would arrive harried and shoulders sagging with the weight of a world Minho hadn't been a part of for a long, long time.

He's been digital for so long that sometimes he forgets what's happened on the surface. Swimming beside code was always easier than having to deal with anything physical, like blood and bruises and a city torn apart by gang wars.

He was free, in his own way.

"Time's up."

He's pulled from the network faster than he can register, leaving him disoriented and gasping loud as cruel faces stare down at him, sneering. His heart races as he tries to remember his own body and mind, but the codes have been affecting him worse and worse every time he dives now, sticking to his brain like a brand.

He's forgetting details, tricks. The physical world, outside of the system. He only remembers his ragtag group by thinking of them at least once a day, in between being shoved under and dragged back to the surface, pulling old memories forward in an attempt of remembering to the more recent ones.

"Not bad," a different voice muses from his right, eyes scanning the computer screen beside him. "Five nodes in three minutes."

Minho's body starts to shake, an after-effect from going under that started a few years ago. Technology still grows better and better, but the human body does not. He tries to lift his arm to watch, able to count it down, but forgets that he can't move. Not freely, anyway.

"Wasn't he tapped for ten?" A deep voice rasps amidst the movement of the room, masked faces filtering in and out of his vision. A needle is prepped and stuck into the crook of his elbow, injecting a booster. It burns going in, and he's so weak that a cry spills from his lips, resulting in someone else laughing.

"Listen to the thing. He can barely handle five!"

Minho tries to shake his head, but it's useless when his body feels this way. Unsure which way is up, loaded with street drugs that were laced with things to make people who dived do their jobs without problem. But his body was rejecting it, rejecting all of it, and he wasn't sure how much longer he would last here, like this, thrown under every half hour.

No one was meant to dive continuously, no matter what was in their system. He should have never taken so many jobs in such a short amount of time, put himself out there for everyone in the black markets to see. But he'd been desperate, and Chan had been missing running on three days, and they needed a place to squat, food to eat, things to protect themselves with -

He knew the job sounded off from the moment he saw it. They were offering too much money for too little, a run and tag he could do in his sleep. The money would provide for them long enough that Changbin and Felix could start looking for Chan, while Minho kept an eye on the others as they moved from place to place.

Instead, he had failed them all.

"Fine, we'll do ten this time. If he can't handle it, we'll sell him to the highest bidder and move onto the next." A long pause. "Happy?"

"Very," the other voice snaps back. "Plug him in."

Minho tries to move. The table is freezing against his skin. Metal cages his arms and legs in, curling around his shoulders. Needle marks cover his arm. His head is splitting in half. His body is tearing itself apart.

Hands fumble at his port, and then all he knows is code as they hook him into the network again. It floods him fast, and his back arches against the table, restraints keeping him still when all he wants to do is run.

Chan is missing, and so is he.

It's the last coherent thought he has, before he hears a timer echo in the distance and all he knows is the race to what they need, before they dispose of him too.

[mariacallous]

The Trump administration has scrapped its predecessor’s sweeping export controls for advanced artificial intelligence chips, known as the AI diffusion rule.

“To win the AI race, the Biden AI diffusion rule must go,” posted David Sacks, U.S. President Donald Trump’s top AI advisor, on May 8. Sacks continued his criticism at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum a few days later, arguing that the rule “restricted the diffusion or proliferation of American technology all over the world.”

As the administration decides what comes next, it should raise its sights from merely proposing a “simpler” rule to manage the diffusion of AI chips. Instead, it should seize the opportunity to offer an ambitious vision to promote the broader diffusion of U.S. technology.

After all, the world not only wants the United States’ AI chips, but also its AI applications, data centers, cloud services, satellites, and advanced technology offerings generally. But even as Beijing extends its digital offerings in key emerging markets, U.S. foreign policy has failed to adapt for a global technology competition with era-defining stakes. Whether you agree with the Trump administration or not, its disruption is an opportunity to forge a new model of technology statecraft to help the United States win the race to shape strategic digital infrastructure and technology diffusion across the globe.

To start, Washington must finally learn from its failure in the transition to 4G and 5G telecommunications networks, where Beijing’s state-backed model—and the absence of a compelling U.S.-led alternative—enabled Huawei and ZTE to all but corner emerging markets. Huawei now operates in more than 170 countries worldwide and is the top global provider of telecommunications equipment. But if there is broad consensus among U.S. policymakers that Beijing won that global technology transition, there is little agreement about how to win the next.

They have little time to waste. From Brasília to New Delhi, technology has moved to the center of government ambitions to drive growth, improve governance, and modernize security. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto views the digital sector as essential to diversifying the country’s commodity-reliant economy. Kenyan President William Ruto hopes to boost the country’s “Silicon Savannah” by accelerating cloud migration. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made AI central to his “Vision 2030” framework for the kingdom’s modernization. The result is surging global demand not only for AI data centers, but also for cutting-edge digital infrastructure, services, and skilling more broadly.

In the coming years, foreign capitals and corporate boards will make potentially generational decisions about whether to meet this demand by partnering with the United States and its allies or China. These short-term decisions could have generational consequences. Projects to lay a transcontinental submarine cable or build large-scale data centers, for instance, are mapped in decades.

Even virtual cloud and AI services can have long-term stickiness. Imagine the pain of migrating an entire ministry’s data to a new cloud provider, or switching from an AI model that has been fine-tuned with a company’s sensitive data over time. Consider Beijing’s decade-plus struggle to transition its government computers from Windows. First movers reap powerful advantages.

If the stakes are great in the current round of global technology diffusion, so is the United States’ hand. Unlike the transition to 4G and 5G networks, where Western competitors such as Ericsson and Nokia struggled to match Huawei’s and ZTE’s subsidized offerings in emerging markets, the United States enters this technology transition with formidable advantages.

The United States occupies a commanding position in AI, with leadership or leverage over every part of the stack, ranging from chip design, tooling, and fabrication to model training and testing. U.S. companies hold at least a 70 percent share of the global cloud market. In space, Starlink has launched more satellites than all its competitors combined since 2020. Below the waves, three of the top four companies deploying subsea fiberoptic cables—the internet’s backbone—are from the United States or its close allies: SubCom (U.S.), Alcatel (France), and NEC (Japan). China controls the fourth, HMN Technologies (formerly Huawei Marine), which has deployed a mere 7 percent of the world’s submarine cables.

Despite powerful advantages, U.S. success is far from assured. The lesson of the 4G and 5G race is not to mirror China’s state-driven approach or to leave the private sector to fend for itself against Chinese competitors with powerful state backing. Nor is it to rely solely on export controls and other restrictive measures, however necessary those may be. The answer is to make U.S. foreign policy fit the global technology competition.

Washington can start with reforms in three broad areas.

First, unleash the United States’ strategic investment tools. One of Washington’s most promising but underused tools is the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). Created during the first Trump administration, the DFC makes market-driven investments to advance both humanitarian and national security goals, and it has several tools to attract private capital from equity investments to political risk insurance.

As Congress considers DFC reauthorization—its current mandate expires in September—it should raise the existing cap on its lending authority from $60 billion to at least $100 billion and make strategic technologies and digital infrastructure an explicit priority. Congress should also loosen restrictions that can block DFC from supporting digital infrastructure projects that incidentally benefit high-income countries, which has kept it from financing critical subsea cables in the Indo-Pacific that invariably have landing points in Singapore, a major interconnection hub for the region.

The Export-Import Bank (EXIM) also punches below its weight. EXIM helps level the playing firm for U.S. firms competing abroad with a $135 billion lending limit and tools such as direct loans, loan guarantees, and insurance to de-risk purchases of U.S. exports. The United States once led the world in export financing, but China now dominates. In 2022, Chinese export credit agencies provided $11 billion in export support, compared to just $2.7 billion from EXIM.

Under the first Trump administration, EXIM created a new China and Transformational Exports Program (CTEP) to prioritize investments that counter Beijing’s subsidies and support advanced technologies such as AI and semiconductors. EXIM now aims to reserve at least 20 percent of its support for the program.

Despite progress, EXIM remains plagued with issues. To receive CTEP support, at least 51 percent of the exported content must be American-made—far higher than requirements in competitor agencies. Another requirement that EXIM-supported goods travel on U.S.-flagged vessels also hinders participation. Although well-intentioned, EXIM’s mandate to create jobs can deprioritize the export of low-labor digital exports such as AI and cloud services. Compounding the problem, EXIM is also required to limit defaults across its total lending portfolio to less than 2 percent, fueling risk-aversion.

Washington should reform EXIM for the global technology competition by at least doubling the 20 percent allocation for CTEP, relaxing shipping rules, and counting some allied components toward its content requirement. Lawmakers could also loosen the mandate to support U.S. job creation for digital services and double EXIM’s default cap to encourage more risk-taking.

Second, Washington should turbocharge its commercial diplomacy for technology. Between 2016 and 2020, an average of just 900 U.S. personnel from the State and Commerce departments were deployed abroad for commercial diplomacy, and just a fraction focused on technology. Since 2022, the State Department has taken important steps by establishing a new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, a special envoy for critical and emerging technologies, and a course on cyberspace and digital policy tradecraft.

Despite this progress, few U.S. diplomats—and even fewer ambassadors—have deep technology expertise, which means that front-line opportunities to secure key technology bids and shape emerging AI or data policies can go unnoticed or suffer from inadequate staff or substance to engage effectively.

As the administration reforms the State Department, it should reinforce the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, which has elevated and streamlined technology diplomacy across the government; expand technology training for foreign service officers; and, more ambitiously, launch a dedicated career track within the diplomatic corps for foreign technology officers.

Two smaller and often overlooked arms of the country’s technology diplomacy are the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). The Commercial Service is a roughly 2,200-person global network of trade specialists that helps U.S. businesses identify and navigate foreign markets. But just 225 of its staff deploy abroad across 80 countries, which means that they constantly struggle to meet demand from U.S. technology companies and foreign partners. The USTDA helps identify and mature commercial opportunities abroad to boost U.S. exports. Digital infrastructure is one of the agency’s four priority sectors, but surging interest has far outpaced current resources.

The Trump administration can turbocharge U.S. commercial diplomacy by consolidating USTDA and the Commercial Service, elevating technology and digital infrastructure as a priority, and allocating more resources and personnel.

Finally, the United States should embrace a newly ambitious vision for technology partnerships. Too often, U.S. and allied firms lose one-off bids to subsidized, politically backed Chinese competitors, even if the firms might prefer to align with the high-tech U.S. ecosystem. Washington should explore how to make such an offer without simply imitating Beijing’s state-led model.

For example, Washington could create opportunities for foreign governments to request strategic technology partnerships that match their specific needs—for example, to accelerate AI adoption in government, expand data center capacity, or improve rural connectivity with low earth orbit satellites.

Washington could lay out clear, broadly consistent criteria as a condition for these partnerships—such as robust IP and cybersecurity protections, divestment from China-linked digital infrastructure, purchase commitments for U.S. goods and services, and even investment in the United States. The Trump administration has begun to model such an approach in its recent deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but it could go even further.

If countries meet these conditions, Washington should commit not only to loosening export controls on advanced AI chips, but also to fast-tracking support from the DFC, EXIM, and USTDA; expanding technology trade missions, talent exchange programs, and research collaboration; and facilitating connections with U.S. technology firms. The United States holds the strongest hand in advanced technology and should drive a hard bargain, but it should also be generous when countries agree.

Washington can also do more to align with technology-leading allies on joint investments in strategic emerging markets. For example, Washington could better coordinate with Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance program to boost Open RAN networks across the Indo-Pacific, tap the European Union’s Global Gateway to connect subsea cables to Africa, and support India’s Digital Public Infrastructure to counter China’s “smart city” offerings.

Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds may raise tricky strategic questions as longer-term partners, but there are other, less controversial players that Washington has yet to fully explore—such as Norway, which has both attractive conditions for AI data centers and the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. Washington and its allies may struggle to match Beijing’s subsidies on their own, but they can easily do so together.

As the world rushes into an accelerating competition to deploy strategic technologies and digital infrastructure across the globe, the United States has almost everything it needs to prevail—world-leading companies and products, an unrivaled network of technology-leading allies, and an administration eager for reform. What Washington lacks, however, is a vision to harness these strengths in a new model of technology statecraft to help the United States win.

[forgottenfuturist]

We Don't Need a New Thing Every Year

Remember Steve Jobs' big product announcements? It seemed like every year he was on stage announcing some big new product you just had to have. But lately, Apple's product announcements have just been slightly-new iterations of existing things and an occasional weird, wild swing like the Vision Pro, a $3000 wearable face computer that's so dorky-looking it makes Google Glass look like high fashion. So what's wrong?

Nothing, actually.

Ok, the whole Apple Intelligence thing is definitely a dumpster fire. The last time Apple made a demo video for an entirely fictional product, it was that Knowledge Navigator thing back in 1987 and it was understood not to be real. They 100% deserve all the derision and criticism they've gotten for doing a fake demo for a product that didn't exist.

And like many people, I much prefer the live onstage announcements/demos to the current overproduced "events" that are so robotic they look like they were generated with AI. (Not Apple AI, I mean something that's actually advanced.)

But I'm not talking about either of those things. I'm talking about the expectation that Apple will introduce some big new game-changing device or technology at every annual event, or else it's a big failure, and if only Steve Jobs was here we'd have iPhones that could soothe all your worries and teleport you to Mars. This reasoning is wrong and silly, for reasons I will now explain.

Steve Jobs' second tenure at Apple overlapped with a period of rapid technological change in the industry. He first returned to the company in 1997. At the end of the 1990s, the Internet entered the mainstream. And during the first decade of the 2000s, advances in microprocessor, wireless communication, and capacitive touch technology (along with steep drops in the price of LCD displays) made devices like the iPod, the modern smartphone, the tablet, and the modern laptop computer possible.

Sadly, Steve died in 2011. But even if he'd lived, it wouldn't have changed the fact that most of the advancement we've seen in the tech industry since then has mainly been about making those existing devices better, smaller, and less-expensive. The only sorta-new device we've gotten is the smart watch, which a lot of people deride as a "phone bracelet" that mainly exists because the smartphone makers need something else to sell now that everybody has a smartphone.

Some people imagine that Apple's blunders (the "trash can" Mac Pro, Touch Bar MacBooks with bad keyboards, no ports, and thermal issues, etc) wouldn't have happened with Steve in charge. But his tenure wasn't problem-free, either. He oversaw some flops, like the Power Mac G4 Cube and MobileMe. The iMac G3 line became hopelessly convoluted and confusing before the G4 arrived. And there was the whole "antennagate" issue with the iPhone 4 where he publicly insisted that the device was only dropping calls because everyone but him was holding it wrong.

Yes, Apple is a much bigger and unwieldy company than they were 15 years ago. They're starting to fall into the trap that Steve talked about in an interview during his NeXT days in the 1990s, where the company is taken over by marketing and finance people who focus on short-term quarterly gains at the expense of making good products.

BUT . . .

When their overproduced, slick, soulless, and robotic annual commercial starts about an hour-and-a-half from the time I'm writing this, it will not be a failure if the biggest announcement is a new skin and naming scheme for their OSes. Sometimes it's better to announce a slight improvement of an existing thing rather than try to push out a brand new thing that isn't ready yet. Because that's how you get stuff like the Newton, or the Humane AI Pin.

Or Apple Intelligence.