#Tech Cult

[cutebrittie]

What would you do? 😚

[msclaritea]

OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

Once upon a time, nobody outside tech circles had heard of Sam Altman. But then his company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT, and suddenly he was everywhere – touring the world, giving interviews to gushing journalists, granting audiences to awestruck politicians etc. Whiplash-thin, with a charmingly wide-eyed baby face, he instantly became the acceptable face of digital capitalism.

Then the OpenAI board abruptly fired him, apparently on the grounds that he had not been, er, entirely candid with them.

When Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO (who had invested $13bn in OpenAI), heard about it, though, he was mightily pissed off. And in no time all, Altman was unsacked and reinstated in the OpenAI driving seat. And the world was transfixed by the drama of it all. Which only goes to show that appearances can be deceptive.

If the world had read Tad Friend’s profile of Altman, which appeared in the New Yorker in 2016, it might have been less overawed.

“I have narrow interests in technology,” he told Friend. “I have no patience for things I’m not interested in: parties, most people. When someone examines a photo and says, ‘Oh, he’s feeling this and this and this,’ all these subtle emotions, I look on with alien intrigue.” Altman’s great strengths, concluded Friend, “are clarity of thought and an intuitive grasp of complex systems. His great weakness is his utter lack of interest in ineffective people, which unfortunately includes most of us. I found his assiduousness alarming at first, then gradually endearing.”

Two recent events suggest that it might be time to dial down the “endearing” bit. The first was the revelation that OpenAI was rowing back on its previous aversion to “military and warfare” use of its technology. The second was the announcement that Altman was wooing the United Arab Emirates for up to $7tn (£5.6tn) for the business of chips and AI. To put Altman’s aspirations in context, the sum he’s seeking to raise is just under a third of US GDP and pretty close to its £6.3tn federal budget for 2022. And, on a historical note, it’s $3tn more than the $4tn (adjusted for inflation) that the US spent on the second world war.

His aspiration seems crazy. And yet the Silicon Valley crowd think he’s a genius. So what’s going on?

So what would $7tn get you? Well, as the Register helpfully points out, it’s enough cash “to gobble up Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, ASML, Samsung, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and every other chipmaker, designer, intellectual property holder, and equipment vendor of consequence in their entirety – and still have trillions left over”. But Altman doesn’t just aim to become the John D Rockefeller of our times – owning everything. He wants to make things – specifically the GPUs (graphics processing units) that machine-learning systems require. That means building semiconductor fabrication units (fabs). These cost about $20bn each and take four or more years to commission and become productive. They also require very highly skilled staff – which the US semiconductor industry is short of by about 70,000.

In addition, these plants are huge consumers of water, in a world that is rapidly running short of it. But Altman would have enough dosh to build 350 of the monsters. I could go on, but you get the message. This aspiration seems crazy. And yet the Silicon Valley crowd thinks he’s a genius. So what’s going on?

The answer is that most of them belong to the church of technocracy, of which Altman is a charismatic member. Devout members of this sect believe that the world is terminally screwed-up, and that the only way to fix it is with tech. They are ecstatic about AI because finally a technology has arrived that apparently could fix everything – economic growth, healthcare, productivity, education, even the climate crisis. Strangely, though, warfare seems to be missing from the list.

The only difficulty is that this magical technology needs unconscionable quantities of data and computational power. Our future, apparently, depends on infinite amounts of what the industry now calls “compute”, and Altman is lauded because only he has had the courage to say out loud how much of it is needed in order to save civilisation.

He is deeply conscious of the responsibility he carries.

“Democracy only works in a growing economy,” he told Friend in 2016. “Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail.” If it does, though, Altman will be ready. In a discussion about aggressive AI and nations fighting with nuclear weapons over scarce resources, he said: “I try not to think about it too much. But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

Nice to know that that $7tn will be in safe hands."

What I’ve been reading

Tech groupthink

Adrienne LaFrance has written a terrific essay in the Atlantic on the underpinning techno-authoritarian ideology of Silicon Valley.

[transbella1]

Would have been in jail if being sexy was a crime

[bluerosefox]

Test Tube Babies, Spleens, and Fruitloop Father?! NOPE. No thanks.

Danny and Ellie take a small, reincarnation, vacation from their duties in the Infinite Realms (King Danny and his most trusted Knight/Princess Ellie). Don't worry, they leave the Realms in good hands (Jazz, Pandora, Frostbite, CW, etc, basically Danny's main council takes over for a few years)

They both weren't expecting to wake up in an assassin cult though.... Nor to find out they're five year old twins now... Twin, somewhat clones of the leader and this guy Red Robin their 'father' is kinda obsessed with....

Great their 'father' is an insane assassin leader fruitloop and their 'dad' is named after a fast food joint... whose barely out of his teens btw.

Danny al Ghul Danyal, cast a glance as his full blooded and twin sister this time around Helen Ellie al Ghul who rolled her eyes as they listened to their 'father' ramble on and on about their 'dad' and how they were created to be his heir (Danny mostly, though he had plans on Ellie going to be trained to be his body guard by someone named Lady Shiva soon)

Yeah, no. Ellie dealt with one evil fruitloop father who cloned her once before, she's not dealing that again or falling for the 'I created thus I love you but not really' bs. They need to leave, like yesterday.

Hopefully their 'dad' is... okay he doesn't need to be okay with it at first but hopefully comes around to it, okay with the two of them showing up on his doorstep soon.

And you know what, they're gonna bring him a gift.

His spleen. Yeah it'll be good to give that back to him.

Since you know that was how they got clones to begin with... Maybe don't leave your DNA with people that can make clones next time.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie

[scipunk]

Repo Man (1984)

[daisylamode]

missed you did you miss me 🥺

[fuckyeahordoxenos]

Gender and the Adeptus Mechanicus

Oh boy! Time to probably turn off my inbox two hours after posting this question!

So I am running a Dark Heresy one-shot campaign over Discord, to introduce a good friend to the setting. Said friend has chosen to play a Tech Priest (yay! I love cog-boys!) which is especially fun because it gives me an instant-in for the character, and because they asked me about the topic of gender in the Cult Mechanicus.

I have some opinions on the topic. @a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark said it pretty well, though: "There's great scope for gender fuckery with the Mechanicus that GW has scrupulously avoided exploring." As, you know, they generally do. Because we can't have a mature discussion about LGBTQIA2S+ things in Warhammer, especially gender queerness (or even gender, period) without someone crying "bUt SpAcE mArInEs CaN't Be FeMaLe!!?"

Anyway. Snarkiness aside, I thought I'd throw the question out to tumblr for your opinions! I know there's likeminded and/or queer fans of Dark Heresy and Warhammer 40k here on the site.

Do you have any thoughts on gender in the Cult Mechanicus? Bonus points if they're on the topics of gender transition augmentations (side quest: "transcending the flesh").

[adrenajhonson]

[itscolliebean]

note to trans girls: see through bras go hard

[transbella1]

I look good even in a broken mirror 🥰

[daisytaylorrrr]

What would you do? 😚

[scipunk]

Repo Man (1984)

[cuda-cuda]

[ts-torture]

Console Me Hun! 💨🌳

[felicia-trenny]