https://archive.is/70IOq

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology.

The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

• anjel

  today at 2:54 PM

  In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

  Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

  Now AI (set loose in the wild at the AI industry's strategic choice so as to be irreversible) seems poised to disrupt and render a very significant part of the labor force disrupted on an unprecedented societal scale and it appears to be a foregone conclusion that collateral damages won't be the causal industry's expense. Nevermind that its also poised to easily afford those social costs, and don't even consider that maybe society should be considering this obvious cause and effect. For me at least the feudal suppression of this otherwise obvious and necessary discussion is perhaps more spectacular than the causal technological breakthrough itself.

  Now *that's* control.

  • arjie

    today at 3:30 PM

    Amusing. By yoking taxicab drivers to the other two, the argument attempts to make them seem like victims. However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment. This probably has the opposite effect and makes it seem like the AI companies aren’t so bad if they’re akin to the guys who freed us from cabs.

    • bittercynic

      today at 4:40 PM

      I've only used cabs a few times, but it seemed to be the operators were both. They were squeezed deep into the economic margins, and they were also often terrible to their passengers.

      Same for Uber/Lyft, but they really tried to earn a good review while still providing a pretty unpleasant experience.

    • KPGv2

      today at 3:57 PM

      I always feel like this take is exclusively made by New Yorkers. I never had a problem with taxies in Texas. I had to schedule a pickup time, yes, but they always showed up, the taxis were clean, they were fast, they were helpful, and they were kind. Like that whole "medallion" thing and taxi driver retirement livelihoods being destroyed because their medallion became worthless. Gotta be like five cities that use the system. Nowhere else does.

      Uber/Taxi discussion is so transparently centered around New York City, it makes all discussions irrelevant to most of the US.

      In fact, I still use a taxi to go to the airport with my family instead of taking an Uber. Uber is for being mid-run in city limits trails and running out of energy in the heat and the water fountains have stopped working due to low water pressure. Uber gets me to safety, and I tip big because I just sweated all over their car.

      • huhkerrf

        today at 4:29 PM

        I've taken plenty of taxis in both NYC and Texas, and pre-Uber they were terrible in both. Calling a taxi in Austin meant a 50% chance that it would get there on time, or you'd wait 30 minutes. Calling back didn't help, you would just get the dispatcher saying, "Well, I guess it's not coming then, huh?"

  • NitpickLawyer

    today at 3:19 PM

    I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities?

    The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights".

    The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more about Uber vs. the municipality. By the fact that almost all over the world people wanted Uber (or the other brands) over the imposed limitation of their municipalities, shows that the deal was wrong. In places where it was artificially limited, people have showed to prefer the alternatives. It has little to do with Bob the driver, and more to do with Alice the mayor who decided unilaterally that a taxi cab should require a 100k/yr medallion. That's what's changed, and society accepted it.

    The third example is weirder still. Again you pose it as AI provider vs. average Joe, but here I struggle to even see what rights / who's rights are being infringed upon. I don't see any. While we generally have a right to work, there is absolutely no right to work in a certain industry, if the industry doesn't have demand. If someone else doesn't need your output, your right to work in that particular field has absolutely no basis in reality.

    Unless you want to go back to the places and regimes that decided who works where, modern society has no place for such thinking. A right to work protects you from employers choosing not to hire you because of things that you are (race, age, gender, etc.) It absolutely doesn't protect you at all against "people don't need elevator operators anymore". And I say this as someone who's worked in this industry 20+ years. If tomorrow people don't need software done by hand anymore, tough luck for me. But it's absolutely not the problem of rights. I don't have a right to demand people wanting my services. That's not the social contract at all.

    • anjel

      today at 3:49 PM

      1st example was the progenitor of what eveolved into strict liability. (If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages. 2nd example is an illustration of that longheld legal precedent's being curiously ignored (nevermind the cost savings was a bum rush and livery costs are now higher than before the innovative advent) 3rd is a call to at least litigate who bears the downstream effects. Or perhaps we should just cancel public health measures and employ pestilence to solve the problem *organically.*

      • ahepp

        today at 4:51 PM

        > If you make money putting stuff into the stream of commerce, you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages

        So if you’re a business offering poor quality services, and I come along and start offering higher quality services, I owe you damages for the impact I have on your business?

      • NitpickLawyer

        today at 4:18 PM

        > you're liable for unintended and evenunforseeable downstream damages.

        so the people vs. otis, the people vs. IBM608, and so on? Has it ever worked?

    • ses1984

      today at 3:35 PM

      People especially wanted uber because uber charged below market rates by subsidizing rides with vc money.

      • NitpickLawyer

        today at 3:40 PM

        Maybe. But the fact that they're still in business shows that different people value different things. Be it rating schemes, payment alternatives, choosing their music, choosing their cars, one click hailing and so on. The people have spoken, the social contract has changed.

        • KPGv2

          today at 4:28 PM

          that's just goalpost shifting

          The argument was "governments restricted taxi availability so Uber won" and now you've mott-and-bailied yourself down to "people want to pick music they listen to on the ride"

    • KPGv2

      today at 4:24 PM

      > over the imposed limitation of their municipalities

      This was really just a few cities in the US. There's no artificial taxi scarcity in Houston or London or Tokyo.

      You might reflexively say London has strict regulations, but it regulates safety not imposing an artificial cap. That's a NY/Boston/Chicago/Philly thing.

      Uber won because:

      1. on-demand app

      2. VCs subsidized rides to destroy taxi companies by driving the customer cost to well below provider cost.

  • maxerickson

    today at 3:53 PM

    Say you own a well and sell the clean water.

    I learn that boiling the stream water makes it safe and tell people about it.

    What do I owe you?

    Uber and AI are certainly more complicated than that, but you are pretty close to arguing that the constructed rights of some people inhibit the rights of other people.

  • solenoid0937

    today at 3:10 PM

    > 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

    Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness.

    They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

    If you required every technological venture to cover the cost for every person it "disrupts," you would halt progress entirely.

    • andrepd

      today at 3:37 PM

      > They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

      They burned half a billion dollars a month of VC money at their peak to undercut taxis across the world; in quainter times this used to be called "dumping", now it's just the standard way of doing business. All the while basically flaunting the law with their whole "we're just a platform connecting people who happen to drive a car with people who happen to want to go some place, it's totally not a taxi guys". No regulations, no expensive licenses or professional certifications, no need even for a minimum wage or basic social security or insurance or any kind of protection. Amazing!

      Essentially the same in spirit as Airbnb, only this latter had far more destructive consequences than screwing over taxi drivers.

      • solenoid0937

        today at 3:42 PM

        Most businesses require sunk costs or debts, and it's also often what is required for new ideas take place in an established market. Whether they burn VC money or the bank's money to gain a foothold, is immaterial.

        Uber did a great thing here and made a product that people like more, for less money. More drivers, way more global availability, more customers, and better cars, all while being cheaper. That is a quintessential success story.

        If people liked taxis more, they'd use them. But taxis are still shit and the only reason we use them is because of the taxi cartel bullying weak city governments into restricting Ubers.

    • KPGv2

      today at 4:33 PM

      "B-but my philosophical argument was aesthetically pleasing," he shouted over the sound of eight billion people starving to death.

      Setting aside your implicit assumption that what nigh-unregulated AI is set to do to humanity is "progress," having a sound argument is pretty pointless if it leads to tremendous human suffering.

      Reminds me of the paradox of intolerance, where bad faith actors say "it's intolerant to be intolerant of intolerance" (i.e., argue for zero exceptions to a maxim) when it's much more preferable to say "you should be tolerant, except in the case where tolerance leads to tremendous suffering [as in the case of allowing the rise of fascism because you have to be tolerant of it]."

      See also libertarianism, where simple rules are preferable to good outcomes.

  • inglor_cz

    today at 5:15 PM

    "cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless"

    Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

    Good riddance to this sort of rent-seeking. I wonder if the NYC taxi service was provided by the mob.

    In Central Europe, I don't have to wonder. Prior to Uber, the local taxi services were operated by the mob, and the taxi drivers basically robbed naive tourists through exorbitant, illegal prices. Stories of rape or abuse of intoxicated women abound. Some of the drivers were so sketchy and creepy that people refused to board their cars. Scammy Prague taxi service was legendary, but by far the worst sort of tracksuit-and-gun wearing mobsters behind the wheel I ever encountered was in late 1990s Bratislava.

    This ugly rotten web was swept clean by Uber, where people have a reputation to maintain. Thanks god. My wife is no longer afraid to take a cab at night. Hooray.

  • Joker_vD

    today at 3:10 PM

    Welcome to the New (fifth, I believe) Industrial Revolution! It will not quite as brutal as the first and the second ones were, but it still won't be gentle.

• sealeck

  today at 1:02 PM

  > The technologists who create it believe they should control it

  I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.

  • SilverElfin

    today at 4:22 PM

    > a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman)

    What the hell is a “cum-captain”? Search isn’t helping.

    • huhkerrf

      today at 4:31 PM

      Probably this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum

      I.e. finance man as well as captain of industry

• skybrian

  today at 4:59 PM

  The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over.

  This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while to buy some time, but the competition isn’t going to stop.

  It’s also not always true that technologists think they should control AI. Some companies support legislation. But there’s not a lot of progress, so they end up making their own decisions in the meantime.

• steveBK123

  today at 1:49 PM

  > The technologists who create it believe they should control it

  I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments.

  • knollimar

    today at 1:55 PM

    Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now.

    We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

    • steveBK123

      today at 3:00 PM

      Democracies don’t necessarily pick the best leaders but they give a veto to the people such that the worst leaders don’t last long.

      A technocracy can build high speed rail in a decade but it can also institute multi decade one child policy, multi year zero-covid, barricade people into their own homes and ban entire industries at the whim of a single leader. There is less course correction.

    • notahacker

      today at 3:10 PM

      But would governments defined by a cadre of techno-authoritarians disproportionately close to Mr Tariff do a better job?

      • knollimar

        today at 3:47 PM

        Mr Tariff is probably slightly better to keep those around than not, but ideally I'd rather the government curate experts they employ to advise them.

        I guess I kinda walked right into handing technocrats power, but I really just want the government to understand the tech they regulate. We'd rather have populist zingers on TV though.

        • notahacker

          today at 3:59 PM

          Technoauthoritarians writing pretentious manifestos disavowing democracy explicitly don't want the government to understand the tech they regulate though, never mind curating experts, which is why they're so keen on the likes of Mr Tariff.

        • pstuart

          today at 5:19 PM

          Mr. Tariff was trying to replace the income tax with tariffs with a bonus of having personal power over other countries economies by whatever tariff he decree'd. The "more jobs" was a smokescreen, and I'm sure you're aware of that

          Trade policy should be as holistic as possible (tariffs, taxes, subsidies, etc), with the goal of aiding a robust domestic economy.

          The 70's neoliberalism took Smith's comparative advantage argument and stripped it of context — optimizing for quarterly returns and capital mobility while ignoring the industrial ecosystem those returns depend on. You can't offshore your entire manufacturing base and expect to retain the innovation, workforce capacity, and supply chain resilience that made those profits possible in the first place.

          Contrast this with "For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."

          That era was not without its issues as well, but there was a sense that "we're all in it together" vs the "greed is good" crowd.

    • wizzwizz4

      today at 2:03 PM

      I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?

      • knollimar

        today at 2:14 PM

        Sorry for being salty, a bit hyperbole perhaps in the 2:1 numbers.

        I draft and write some code for construction companies and personally saw layoffs and not taking work due to increased material costs. The structural companies we worked with similarly did a few layoffs. The average pay of these jobs was 60k+.

        Manufacturing of steel is very competitive and I haven't seen the American steel drop in price. I can't personally imagine it adding more than a few thousand jobs since it's so competitive (thin margins) and you would have to add a ton of production to add one job.

        Meanwhile, the profitability of building a building is a direct feed into whether buildings get built. A building not being built directly led to laying off about 100 field guys for us.

        • britzkopf

          today at 2:32 PM

          What is the alternative to buildings? Outdoor schools, factories and dental offices?

          • knollimar

            today at 2:42 PM

            That sounds like some reductionist hackernews question that tries to hint at some clever insight but I'll assume no snark and answer with as much insight as I can.

            You just make less of them. Some buildings are discretionary, like your big apartment buildings you probably want (these were the two that got cancelled).

            Person funding can make x profit over building per year. Person loaning loans x for y sum. Building costing more than interest amortized profit means it doesn't get built.

            And I just had a doctor's office fitout cancelled mid project (drafted it personally :) ). so apparently those are, too.

            Public projects like schools rarely get cancelled. Factories I personally don't draft so I really can't tell you.

            Healthcare absolutely has a ton of discretion for their buildouts.

            What's the alternative to steel? You just make less if it's not profitable to make.

            • britzkopf

              today at 2:56 PM

              Funny that you're accusation of snark was not without snark itself. I'll take your word on it for the level of discretion on some public building, though I would have thought/hoped that whimsy would play no more role than a rinsing error. Especially in the current economy. Maybe it's good there is less superfluous building going on?

              • knollimar

                today at 3:37 PM

                Sorry, the question seemed like one of those low effort "have you thought about just not building buildings, hmmmmm?" that requires more effort to address than it took to ask. That "combatative-without-seeming-combatitive-for-the-purpose-of-seeming-like-the-good-faith-one" hackernews pretend good faith socratic argument is what it read to me. Apologize if it wasn't the angle you were going for.

                If the stated goal is jobs, the tariffs aren't doing it from what I can tell.

                It seems to be hands have been put on the scales, and to call cancelling the building that would have otherwise been built due to market forces good needs some testing. If it were doctors offices in already served areas, sure, but these were not subsidized but lower end apartment buildings in NYC. I'm hoping the guys who were laid off moved to some other company rather than exiting the trade.

                • jubilanti

                  today at 3:44 PM

                  Both of you are being insufferable.

      • xp84

        today at 2:28 PM

        Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively screwing way more and larger companies who employ orders of magnitude more people here (and those jobs are better jobs too).

        And we are very competitive in machines, already set up to win.

        It’s also fantasy that even 4 years of tariffs will convince anyone to build brand-new smelting operations, as they’re very large, capital intensive, take a while to build. And again, mostly worse jobs.

    • dgellow

      today at 2:03 PM

      > If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

      They knew that was the case. They don't care. The maga crowd isn't acting in good faith. Nobody other than the cult members and people who aren't paying attention thought that would actually bring manufacturing back to the US. The point of the tariffs is to devalue USD (something Trump wants to do since circa the 80s) and to strengthen Trump power/influence. He wants everybody in the world to be forced to come and negotiate directly with him so he can see them bend their knees. The whole thing is a power play

      • jfengel

        today at 2:43 PM

        I do think they believed and believe it, though the reasoning is less economic than that. Manufacturing "belongs" in the US due to our inherent superiority, and has gone elsewhere only because of ill-conceived notions of niceness.

        By increasing tariffs they will have to pay their proper obeisance for their inferiority, and be inspired to actually work hard like us Americans.

        • idiotsecant

          today at 3:11 PM

          You need to be specific with 'they' in this case. Who are the 'they' that you think believed that steel tarrifs would improve domestic manufacturing?

  • pstuart

    today at 4:57 PM

    > I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk.

    This needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

    All the Web3 edgelords talk about how democracy is inefficient and how their magic blockchains will fix things but don't actually back up their claims with anything.

    Sure, it could be applied and might work, but the only thing blockchain brings is a distributed immutable ledger -- but all the trust actions happen outside that ledger. And that's not what slows us down, it's the people, ideas, power and process that makes it inefficient.

    Money is a hell of a drug.

• mentalgear

  today at 1:53 PM

  'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation.

  It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few.

  I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level).

  • jandrewrogers

    today at 5:17 PM

    > so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN

    This is a very naive and idealistic imagining of what international NGOs such as the UN are actually like and how they operate. I can't think of anything worse.

    The median country is a corrupt authoritarian state.

  • merelydev

    today at 2:01 PM

    Would you agree that to some extend, the ability to control technology is an incentive for companies to develop/innovate, and the more control they have the more profitable it is?

  • xp84

    today at 2:15 PM

    I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N.

    But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one.

  • amanaplanacanal

    today at 2:57 PM

    That's not what the UN is for. The whole purpose of the UN was as a place for nations to talk things out so they didn't go to war with each other. Trying to do other things usually either doesn't work very well, or distracts from what it was built for.

• fidotron

  today at 1:41 PM

  It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.

  • yonaguska

    today at 2:05 PM

    be the change you wish to see- share your thoughts.

  • sanderjd

    today at 2:20 PM

    Where will you?

  • booleandilemma

    today at 2:21 PM

    Please tell us what we should be thinking.

• NickNaraghi

  today at 1:58 PM

  Worth checking out the heart of what people were doing with DAOs

• lacunary

  today at 1:02 PM

  yes it's called "actually having democratic elections"

  • merelydev

    today at 1:23 PM

    What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics?

    • rebolek

      today at 1:39 PM

      Then vote for politicians who do.

      • xp84

        today at 2:34 PM

        Few of those are ever running. Mostly we have just two brands of smooth-brains whose only policy aim is “preventing that other group of assholes from gaining any power, because they and their supporters are pure evil!”

        • Joker_vD

          today at 3:13 PM

          Not a true democracy, then /s

• andrepd

  today at 3:37 PM

  Yes, politics was always about controlling power, be it military, economic, or other.

• bparsons

  today at 3:36 PM

  So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

  Political power has always about who controls economic production, and the tools of economic production.

• cornholio

  today at 4:09 PM

  > the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology

  Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history.

  Extend the definition of technology to the broadest sense, from the material that allow us control over the physical reality: steam, computing; to the organizational, that enable collective human action: states, factories and assembly lines; and the ideological, that legitimize certain power arrangements: religion, nationalism, democracy, human rights etc.

  A feudal lord's power rested on land (material), the manorial system (organizational), and the divine right of kings or religious sanction (ideological). Even if peasant revolts happen from time to time, the arrangement is stable because the peasantry accept it as legitimate and have no economic alternative; so even when revolting they cannot imagine a different political order. Technological (broad) leaps like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution change the political possibility space so arrangements like feudalism are no longer stable, but others like capitalism, liberal democracy etc. become possible.

  Political actors observe these technological shifts and struggle for control, relevance and power. The old elites are contested by the new kids on the block, wielding the new technologies: the aristocrat by the bourgeois, pastoralist tribes by agricultural states, autocrats stuck with traditional propaganda by the kids with smartphones and social media.

  The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

  Because if it's the latter, the entire idea that democracy will somehow manage to survive and influence who gets what becomes problematic. In the new technological-historical space, democracy becomes structurally unfavorable and thus, unlikely to persist long term.

• Borg3

  today at 1:06 PM

  Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too.

  Dark times ahead...

  • amelius

    today at 1:12 PM

    The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.

    • Chinjut

      today at 2:31 PM

      What's stupid about the disclaimer?

      • amelius

        today at 2:35 PM

        It basically says "we have no control over it", and "we don't know how it works".

        • miyoji

          today at 3:05 PM

          Both of those things happen to be entirely true, though.

          • amelius

            today at 3:11 PM

            Yes, that doesn't make it less embarrassing.

            My point remains: they can control it if they can control it. Because right now they can't even take responsibility for it.

• matusp

  today at 1:31 PM

  This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.

  • marcosdumay

    today at 3:05 PM

    And "the means of production belong to everyone" was the wrong answer. The problem was only solved by a different form of democratization.

  • wizzwizz4

    today at 2:04 PM

    And the Luddite movement, also in the 19th century.

    • Joker_vD

      today at 3:15 PM

      And the peasants' revolt of 1381, with John Ball's memorable "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

      But it's a perennial question, really, and it won't go away any time soon.

• nicechianti

  today at 1:41 PM

  [dead]

• ricardo81

  today at 1:02 PM

  I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps.

  Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism.

  The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.

  • krapp

    today at 1:04 PM

    What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.

    • ricardo81

      today at 1:05 PM

      The point being that's the solution. I didn't say it is decentralised.

      • krapp

        today at 1:23 PM

        How is it possible to decentralize a technology that needs data centers the size of Manhattan? It doesn't seem like a reasonable solution.

        A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense.

        • ricardo81

          today at 1:27 PM

          Because it has extremely plausible uses beyond the example you gave.

          More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything.

          If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model.

          It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP.

    • mike_hearn

      today at 1:41 PM

      Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download.

      • krapp

        today at 2:18 PM

        "only two search engines exist in the west" and "only two search engines in the west are of usable quality to me" are contradictory statements.

        The models free to download aren't the models used by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. You aren't going to get all of OpenAI downloaded to your desktop and running fully on just your hardware.

        And in each case (search and AI) the potential to decentralize and maintain "usable quality" is limited by these technologies requiring physical infrastructure at a scale that isn't available to the home consumer.

The real problem with Magnifica Humanitas is that it will be impossible to produce the first sentence of the canonical Latin version in which the first two words are "Magnifica humanitas" but carries the same meaning as the first sentence in the English version published.

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1]

> Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I.

> But I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one-world totalitarian state. Because I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance.

> [...]

> The atheist philosophical framing is “One World or None.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late ’40s. It starts with the nuclear bomb blowing up the world, and obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it — one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is: Antichrist or Armageddon? You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we’re sleepwalking toward Armageddon. “One world or none,” “Antichrist or Armageddon,” on one level, are the same question.

> [...]

> Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.

> In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say “stop” to this. And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.

> [...]

> Douthat: [...] You’re an investor in A.I. You’re deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on. And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building. Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far. Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?

> Thiel: Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.

---

We live in crazy times. The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. On the other side, Thiel says fear of technological progress could lead us to a one-world totalitarian government (which he relates to the antichrist, and to me seems like a straw man of multilateralism), while at the same time (arguably) building the technological infrastructure such a totalitarian government would need.

I don't know, I think I'm siding with the Pope on all future antichrist related issues.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antic...

• mike_hearn

  today at 1:52 PM

  > The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology.

  According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not.

  You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will always be some jurisdictions that say they don't want to regulate and gain a competitive advantage by doing so. Because AI is symbolic and accessed over networks, in a truly multilateral world there is no such thing as AI regulation, really. Model development and serving will slowly migrate to jurisdictions that don't pin it down too much.

  The only way to stop this is for every jurisdiction in the world to agree on the same set of rules. Which is the One World Government solution, normally in the 21st century approximated with economic pressure e.g. threatening to sanction or blacklist your country if you don't comply with some new rules. The anti-money laundering system is an example of that. And if you become familiar with the stories of its abuse, then AML can sound pretty darn Antichristy. So Thiel isn't far off.

  • tptacek

    today at 3:26 PM

    I think you're not reading it in the spirit it's intended. There's a section towards the end (Chapter 5, I think) that is full of policy prescriptions. But most of the encyclical isn't "about" AI, it's "about" Catholicism, and is using AI as a lens to talk about principles the church has been building up over a century. In that sense the document is less concerned with frontier models and disinformation than it is with establishing Catholic social doctrine --- subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, etc.

    As far as the church is concerned, AI as an issue will come and go, but the ordering and prioritization of human relationships is timeless, and is the important issue. The subtext of the whole thing is that if you get the principles right, the tech policy will fall into place.

    You can argue with those principles, but at that point you really are just arguing with Catholicism itself, which is fine, but is besides the point.

    (I'm not engaging with or disputing your takes on policy, only with your comment as a critique of the encyclical itself.)

  • ordinaryradical

    today at 3:21 PM

    Describing the pope’s proposals as progressive and anti-money laundering laws as the antichrist… this is like a parody of the most blinders-on kind of libertarianism.

    For those of you playing at home, you can definitely have multi-lateral agreements without creating a one world government. We’ve had a chemical weapons ban for decades over which many of the multi-lateral parties were in hot and cold wars with each other. The nations are not going to magically combine over the presence of a treaty. Not how power works.

  • idiotsecant

    today at 3:15 PM

    There are plenty of rules that we apply across the board. No nuclear weapons for anyone who's not already got them is an example. This doesn't take some spooky one world government to do. This post is wild. Essentially, you're saying that any attempt to regulate AI as the existential threat that it almost certainly is the antichrist. It's bonkers.

    • mike_hearn

      today at 5:00 PM

      That specific rule is enforced by America assassinating the leaders and scientists of governments that don't agree to it. See: Iran. I don't think that's what anyone means when they say multilateralism.

  • wizzwizz4

    today at 2:08 PM

    In an infinitely-large "truly multilateral world", what you are saying is true under the assumption that unregulated AI provides a competitive advantage for the jurisdiction, assuming preferences are each sampled from a totally-supported probability distribution. But we only have finitely-many jurisdictions, and it's not clear that AI accelerationism is actually good for anyone (except those extracting wealth from the corresponding financial bubble), so this conclusion doesn't follow.

  • watwut

    today at 2:26 PM

    I mean yes, if we twist meanings of words enough, Pope is progressive. Except he is not, he is conservative catholic pushing for old school conservative catholic doctrine. He is not far right, he is not prosperity gosphel guy, but catholic doctrine was never that.

    Of course you can have multilateralism and regulations. And no, AML is not an antichrist.

    And Thiel with his plan yo create totalitatian fascist word is one of the greater danger to most of us. Way greater then AML regulations.

    • mike_hearn

      today at 5:27 PM

      "Antichrist" is not really a serious word you can pin down, but the AML system is regularly used in ways that are very un-Christ-like. For instance, Christ said to love thy neighbour, to be the good Samaritan, that people should not be punished for the sins of their family members and he preached tolerance.

      Now consider the unlucky German-Turkish journalist Hüseyin Dogru, who was recently placed under trade sanctions by the EU Commission due to his reporting. But they did it while he was living in Europe. The sanctions force everyone - including his neighbours and supermarkets - to refuse to sell him anything.

      Then they realized, what if his wife buys him food? So they sanctioned his wife too.

      Then they realized, what if his parents buy him food? So they sanctioned his parents as well. Now the entire family cannot buy anything.

      Literally the entire family has been put to economic death. The state will imprison anyone who helps them and confiscate the entire net worth of anyone who conceivably might help them. All appeals have been denied.

      https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru#EU-San...

      He is now completely screwed and is reduced to living on a subsidence budget of ~500 EUR/month, calculated to be just enough that his family don't literally die of starvation.

      https://x.com/hussedogru/status/2037859218326180064

      https://diariosocialista.net/2026/05/28/alemania-recrudece-l...

      This is possible because of the systems-level implementation of the AML/sanctions system and its existence outside any kind of justice system. It's the kind of thing that Thiel meant by a totalitarian antichrist. If Jesus were alive today he would presumably have harsh criticisms of this kind of thing.

    • idiotsecant

      today at 3:17 PM

      That's how far the global overton window has shifted. The pope is now the voice of reason.

      The world is barreling toward conditions that haven't existed for a century. God help us.

      • krapp

        today at 3:50 PM

        Plenty of people besides the Pope have made essentially the same criticisms about AI and the dangers of the cultlike influence it seems to have on our society. Every one of those people were dismissed as paranoid and ignorant Luddites who simply feared and hated progress if not humanity itself until the Pope came along and voiced an opinion on the matter. Then and only then was criticism of AI taken to be valid, or at least taken seriously, because of the invocation of religious authority. (but now all the tradcaths are sedevacantists because the Pope is "woke" and obviously a Luddite who hates progress and humanity.)

        I'll take it, but I really wish we didn't need it.

• heroicmailman

  today at 2:49 PM

  > Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop.

  Sincerely,

  Guy Who Talks About Armageddon Nonstop

  • jauntywundrkind

    today at 3:31 PM

    Thiel, paraphrased: Oh no it's not my corporation that is spying on everyone and which is infecting the militaries of all the world, not the AI (that routinely chooses nuclear warfare in simulated tests) that's a danger, that everyone will hate & demand be stopped! The Edward Tellers of the future that everyone wants to stop are obviously the Greta Thunbergs! Isn't it so clear?!

• watwut

  today at 2:15 PM

  Thiel is literally and openly trying to create totalitarian goverment. It is in his manifesto.

• idiotsecant

  today at 3:13 PM

  'Antichrist' is what thiel calls anything he doesn't like. He uses it so much it's meaningless.

• krapp

  today at 1:21 PM

  Peter Thiel is just putting an ill-defined pseudo-Christian facade around his AI accelerationist beliefs because he knows that in the current American right-wing climate evangelical Christianity is what drives political power particularly in tech. His "antichrist" is merely anyone or anything standing between him and as much money and power as possible.

  • mistrial9

    today at 1:46 PM

    this argument is weakened by welding large bulky statements together.. IMO each part there is a tip of a dynamic-systems-iceburg. "He just does THIS" and "that is THIS" ... the short form medium kills inquiry.

    A studied person once admonished me "avoid the word IS when comparing systems in the abstract"

    • moritzwarhier

      today at 3:31 PM

      Nobody requires me or anyone else to agree with the comment you respond to, but what you write sounds plainly confused to me and other than vague stylistic concerns weaved together with the general sentiment that you disagree, I can't make out what argument you're trying to make.

    • krapp

      today at 2:51 PM

      Did this studied person teach you how to make a salient point because it seems like you're just criticizing grammar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206

John Henry said, “I feed four little brothers

And baby sisters’ walkin’ on her knees

Now did the Lord say that machines ought to take place of livin’?

And what’s a substitute for bread and beans? I ain’t seen it!

Do engines get rewarded for their steam?”

- “John Henry” sung by Johnny Cash

Never would have thought that I would defer to matters of Tech, let alone 'AI' policies, to the pope, but here we are: I have to say the 'Magnifica Humanitas' are a pristine work of meditation on AI's power, impact and most importantly the people that control it, while showing how we can make it decoupled from the predatory capitalism that it spawn from, to make it beneficial for humanity in general.

(downloaded the full PDF and looking forward to read it on my eReader)

• dotcoma

  today at 2:24 PM

  “Downloaded” is a good start ;)

  (No, I have not read it, nor do I intend to read 42,000 words, thank you)

It always has to do with leverage. When the seas were much bigger than empires, too big for a country to conquer, but the tech caught up to venture them, Elizabeth I commissioned pirates to go and pillage on behalf of the crown. Labor was needed and pirates had leverage to get an equal share of the pillage. Once the gold and spoils dried out, Pirates became criminals again so they took their spoils and settled in the new world. Democracy is handy when you need people to conquer territory. But once you people saturating the land, the teeth come out and those with any leverage start carving whatever is valuable among themselves (land, real estate, rail lines, energy supply, compute). Even with AI, as the tech came out everyone is allowed to play in the sandbox to surface all the valuable use cases. When cornucopia era starts leveling off, you will see the AI firms with leverage grab the lucrative corners of the industry and shove everyone else off. Thus a government that wants to not be taken over by oligarchs needs to enforce antitrust to keep competition from being artificially reduced. Compute is already trying to play the Energy playbook and look like a utility to get government subsidies and become a monopoly that can then dictate everything.

Frank Herbert was prophetic.

• tedd4u

  today at 2:07 PM

  Another "prophet," Carl Sagan in 1995

  "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."

  - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (with Ann Druyan)

  • idiotsecant

    today at 3:30 PM

    Sagan was prophetic in a much more realistic way, I think. Herbert is fundamentally constrained by the rule of cool. Actual failure modes of the human firmware are rarely cool. We're generally just not very clever at a species level.

    My personal view is that biological intelligence is fundamentally an unstable state. We should enjoy every moment of it, like you enjoy the brief flowering of a desert cactus. It's basically the same thing.

• tptacek

  today at 4:18 PM

  If the subtext here is that this is the start of a Butlerian Jihad, I think you've terribly misread the encyclical.

• siddhartpai

  today at 1:33 PM

  can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

  • webnrrd2k

    today at 1:46 PM

    I think it's a reference to the Butlerian Jihad

    https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

The interview with Thiel where Douthat asks him “You would prefer the human race to endure right?” And his response is 30 seconds of hemming&hawwing “well…” says it all about the VC bro class.

Enjoy Argentina bros.

When it comes to the overarching ideology of the techbros, "In Pursuit of the Metaverse" by Dr. Douglas Mark Haugen is a much better read than this encyclical. On the other hand, if he doesn't condemn Gaudium et Spes to the trashbin of history where it belongs, then I don't really care what he has to say.

• lebuffon

  today at 1:37 PM

  Aside from the Jesus centered stuff what are the things in Gaudium et Spes that you find to be trash? (I only read a summary before asking)

• jauntywundrkind

  today at 3:36 PM

  Why? Can you pitch this piece some, give us some reason to go do the work of finding & reading it?

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...as well as Catholic teaching...

• conorbergin

  today at 2:30 PM

  I found your previous comment chain on the matter, in which you conflated Catholicism and Conservatism, the second of which I'm sure you have your own personal definition, as there is no Conservative church that decides on doctrine.

  Catholic social teaching, which this encyclical is grounded on, has it's roots in Rerum novarum (1891) by Leo XIII (the Pope's namesake) and it dealt with the changing conditions of people due to the industrial revolution. We are potentially in the midst of another revolution (I suspect it will be less significant the the IR), so it is prudent of the church to develop a house view.

  • tptacek

    today at 4:22 PM

    I mean, the commenter you're responding to has assumed the position of sedevacantism, so I don't think you're going to be able to justify Vatican 2 to them from first principles. :)

    • conorbergin

      today at 5:03 PM

      A lot of this thinking still predates the Vatican 2 significantly, I think this person has made their mind up and is working backwards.

• portmanteur

  today at 2:12 PM

  In which ways, specifically? Or, which ways would you like to promote a discussion about?

  • erelong

    today at 3:12 PM

    The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time.

    The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting and decided every goal was worth 3 points instead of 1 point. Some people might accept that this is "true soccer" and some "legitimate change to the game". Others would denounce the organization and set up their own leagues to preserve "traditional soccer", and declare the FIFA leadership has no "true authority", and that the meeting deciding on 3 goals has no "binding authority" on "true soccer fans". Something like that has happened.

    Section 20 of the new "encyclical" reads:

    > The Second Vatican Council expressed this principle with particular precision in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose sixtieth anniversary we remembered and celebrated with gratitude on 7 December 2025: “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs is meant that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values… then the demand for autonomy is perfectly in order.” [10]

    I don't believe this is the former Catholic teaching on "autonomy"; man is not "autonomous" but subject to God's laws. Autonomy would be a "license to sin": you could set your own "law" that it is ok to do this or that thing contrary to Catholic teaching. This is therefore the wrong understanding of "autonomy", and they are ambiguous about what they mean by "true autonomy" (which would be a "freedom within limits"; much like in Genesis, Adam and Eve had total liberty to eat from whatever tree, except for that of the tree which yielded "forbidden fruit").

    I believe the document contains more errors like this, continuing this heretical movement of modernism.

    • thewebguyd

      today at 4:41 PM

      GS 36 is just reaffirming Aquinas and his doctrine of primary and secondary causality. Primary cause being God is the source of all being and sustains everything, secondary cause being that God created a universe where created things have real, intrinsic causal powers. A fire burns because it has the natural property to, not because God is directly performing an action to burn the wood.

      "enjoy their own laws and values" is affirming that the natural world has an objective structure that can be studied on its own terms. Denying that autonomy is occasionalism, which is a heretical view that created things have no real power or nature of their own.

      Genisis supports the statement about autonomy. Adam is given the task to subdue the earth, name the animals. To name them means to understand their specific natures. God did not dictate the names, he left that to Adam's human intellect. That's exactly what Gaudium et Spec refers to. Humans utilize their reason to discover the laws of creation and organize human society. We have genuine liberty within the overreaching metaphysical boundries.

    • tptacek

      today at 4:38 PM

      I think the thing here is that if you're simply declaring yourself to be in a different religion than Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, there's not much to be gained arguing with them. Like, a Zaidi Shia Muslim would also disagree with Vatican II. There's nothing wrong with that. They're just, you know, in a different religion.

Yes that’s because the pope is pushing actual messianism. Are people forgetting what he stands for and which organization he represents? It’s silly that people are suddenly putting him on a pedestal. The Catholic Church is an evil force that has destroyed many other countries’ cultures and religions, not to mention enabled the mass systematic abuse of children.

The pope is against tech companies getting power but is happy for the Catholic Church to gather power and abuse it when it’s for his causes. No thanks. Tech companies are far less evil than Catholicism.

AI is eating the world and it's only a matter of time until Catholicism joins the wave: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/05/29/this-...

• b473a

  today at 2:35 PM

  I am a Catholic who is heavily involved in adult faith education, and and I can very safely say everyone in the Church thinks this is a terrible idea except for the tech people that make these models. These things are all independent projects.

  Because of the nuance involved in explaining theological concepts there's a long, long history of reviewing and approving books that explain doctrine. LLM outputs can be reviewed by a competent authority and approved for publication but releasing an AI to explain the theology to the general public in any sort of official way is impossible.

• 3683826312819

  today at 3:14 PM

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