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ThursdAI - Nov 5 - Is it completely over for AI?

ThursdAI - Nov 5 - Is it completely over for AI?

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 Hey, Alex here,What a week this has been, not a huge one in terms of new AI releases, but a very significant one in how the world sees and reacts to AI. During the weekend, my timelines were full of hope, and folks reading the “Commanding Heights“ by Will Manidis, outlining a future were AI = the economy.Then, the US midterm elections happened, and if you’ve not been following, a lot of the new folks who got elected, are not in favor of AI. Some call for an outright pause on advanced AI training. As far as datacenter concerns go, around 40 ballot measures called for restrictions on data center buildouts, with Ohio leading with 21 of those.The US capital markets reacted violently, erasing over ~3$ trillion in market value, mostly lead by the tech and chips sectors. So I opened the show today with the question: Is it completely over for AI?I don’t think so, let’s try and make sense of it.AI and Society: The US Midterms results - Is it over for AI?Look we try and stay away from politics on ThursdAI, but when it comes to weeks like this, we pretty much don’t have a choice. The Midterm elections, at least in some sense, put AI, Datacenters and candidates that talk about it, in the spotlight.I’ve mentioned on the show, that messaging in politics is about Hope and Fear. Unfortunately, the folks who got elected, many have made statements, leaning into the fears regular people have about AI. Job replacement, environmental impacts from datacenters, etc.This tweet by Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, had been uplifted by the X algo to 12 million views, and as we all know, the algorithm LOVES controversy and FUD.But, is it really all that bad? Will the democrats get to work and as she suggested “Ban artificial superintelligence”? What does a ban like this even mean when we have Open Source, when Chinese models are catching up to the frontier?Honestly, this was the open question I opened with at the show, and it seems, that at least for now, it’s more posturing than anything else. Yes, there were over 40 ballot measures asking for Datacenter buildout restrictions, but over 21 of them were in Ohio only. It doesn’t seem at all like “the country rejects AI buildout”Additionally, the new Texas Governor, Gina Hinojosa’s position on datacenter is actually very reasonable. She explicitly said that currently permitted datacenter builds in Texas will be allowed to continue, and that the moratoriums on new buildouts will apply only until a few fairly reasonable and sensible conditions will be in place. Note: She’s not saying “NO new buildouts” anywhere.However, moderate takes and reasonable positions are rarely taking center page in the current media landscape, so the bombastic and populist takes are the ones bubbling to the top.So is it over?Highly unlikely, the frontier labs will continue to innovate and push the boundaries of AI forward. Some regulation may come, and as LDJ said, it could be that this mid-term result will actually accelerate innovation, as the labs will potentially try and get more done before the next election cycle.Wolfram’s take is also an interesting one, pausing AI in the US (which is unlikely to happen, as even the folks who got elected will not cede the most powerful tech in the world to China) will not stop AI from being developed elsewhere. Even at current level of capabilities, we can use AI for so much more things, new medical breakthroughs, new algorithms etc that that’s very unlikely to go away.An interesting thing is happening also, that the fears about AI are very populist, and are landing with folks who don’t have any benefit from AI themselves. Most of the world still uses AI as a better / smarter alternative to Google. This is very likely to change in the next year or two, so by the time next election cycle comes around, we’ll be in a completely different scenario.Last second edit: new METR report makes safety folks update their ASI timelinesThis goes into the bucket of “it’s so over, we’re so so back” - Many respected folks in the AI Safety space are now updating their timelines, given what’s “really” going on inside Anthropic. A new report from METR (The independent AI safety institute Anthropic let in) shows that the speed of RSI (Recursive Self Improvement) is much faster than folks previous thought (And anthropic has blocked much of the full report from being published)This is to me a much higher signal about what’s really going on with AI vs the market and the politics hype.The Commanding Heights - who profits from AI (Essay, X)This book from a financier Will Manidis, is a very interesting background to whatever is happening in the markets with AI right now.If you remember Leopolds “Situational Awareness” from 2024 (which to be frank is getting a lot of beating right now in the market), this is the spiritual successor of sorts for the end of 2026.This book looks into the future where AI is the economy, not just part of it, ...
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