When AI finds itself trapped on a planet with billions of grimy humans, and is wondering what it's next move should be, well, fortunately much has already been written on the subject, and the AI gets it prejudices from the same place we do: Sci-fi.
We keep rediscovering that we're happier and more fulfilled when we live in ways that are more like how we've been living for most of the last million years. Also we are disgusted by our ancestors and look down upon them.
The foundries aren't known to be wired to blow, but the US says they'll bomb them should they come under Chinese control:
>“The United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands,” Amb. Robert O’Brien told me during a conversation airing today at the Global Security Forum organized by the Soufan Center in Doha, Qatar.
The bulk of the world’s most advanced microchips are produced in Taiwanese facilities owned by TSMC. Gaining control of those plants would make China “like the new OPEC of silicon chips” and allow them to “control the world economy,” O’Brien said.
“Now let’s face it, that’s never going to happen,” he said.
O’Brien drew a comparison to when Britain chose to destroy France’s storied naval fleet after the country surrendered to Nazi Germany, killing over 1,000 sailors in the process . He recounted how Winston Churchill, a noted Francophile, walked into the House of Commons “with tears streaming down his face because it was the hardest decision he made in the war,” but received unanimous applause.
The suspicion that China might invade Taiwan in 2027 was never a secret in the fist place, either. Xi told Biden outright he was going to take Taiwan at a summit in 2023ish. China obviously won't give a specific date, but the tea leaves all point to 2027. You don't need to be Tim Cook or the CIA to read those leaves.
Around a decade ago the nascent LIDAR industry boomed and dozens of startups emerged out of nowhere all racing to make cheap automotive grade LIDAR, and here we are.
Of course MicroVisiom is only claiming their LIDAR to be suitable for advanced driver assist, but ADAS encompasses a wide array of capabilities: basically everything between cruise control and robotaxis, so there's no definition of how much LIDAR you need to do the job, just however much you feel like. Tesla feels like none at all.
More than the prose itself, I think it's that what he's writing about isn't exactly "common knowledge" but rather shrewd, piercing observation.
The way he understands and captures the dynamics makes you think he's a native to the "bay area" tech scene or immersed in TPOT. Yet here's a complete outsider, pinpointing the unstated core premises and paradoxes of these communities.
I read my first Stephen King novel in grade 6. That seems to me more than sufficient aptitude for reading the things an average person needs to read to get through life.
The assignment was to read lots, and lots of 6th graders read Stephen King, because that was the cool thing to do. The size of a typical Stephen King novel is intimidating but the writing is usually straightforward and clear.
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