I don't suppose you have experience with how badly small non-profits are fucked by every tech consultancy they ever work with? They are paying for a service at the very top of their budget, and receiving services perceived from the bottom, as almost "pro bono" by the consultancy, via intern labour.
They all have PTSD from the status quo.
Getting nonprofits into AI that feels even marginally more self-serve, that is a step forward. Again, even if it just feels more agentic, that's a step forward -- maybe even if they end up screwing things up more in the process -- because the lack agency with their tech is so demoralizing in the sector
thanks for finding these words! i find myself getting less "nice feelings" of any depth on the internet lately (perhaps I am complicit), but your words are a breath of fresh air :)
The comments here. They make me feel that we are so doomed.
We all want to nuclear codes so badly. We are addicted to intelligence and labour so badly that we simply can't concieve that a pro-social actor might want us all not to have it, and for good reason.
I mean... Obviously, insiders like Oppenheimer (who dedicated their lives to considering the implications of the technology under discussion), they just feared nuclear proliferation because they wanted all the profits for themselves, right :(
Look - it's WAY more fun to just call Dario a goober than engage with the actual substance of the essay. Duh!
Sure, this may be the most important invention ever with near certainty to reshape society over the next few years, but meh. We should probably just immediately dismiss the concerns of anyone working on it without addressing their arguments at all. It's easy, we can justify ignoring their warnings by saying they're self-interested or too self-important or whatever.
Life is more fun when you live it with your eyes closed! You should try it out too.
> But if you think that the courage that Dario has regularly shown would be possible with a conventional "best practices" structure, I think you're kidding yourself.
With respect to OP (who has a unique vantage from inside), I do agree with this on principle. When there are uncommon outcomes, there must be uncommon structure imho. A "good structure" is like oxygen, water, or peace: When it's well-maintained and well-distributed, one might not even notice it's there, nor spend much time being grateful for it. It's banal, but "what do you mean? isn't this just how things would always have been?" is both beautiful and tragic.
Imho if we could figure out how to have a "loud peace" (in all the ways that this might mean), we'd have figured out an important way of sustaining the world and ourselves.
The structure requires maintenance and that is done by an individual or individuals. The real reasons a good company stays good is because the leadership stays good. When the leadership begins to disengage or leaves or changes in some way then the structure will begin to break down. You can't fix it with a "better" structure. It will decay over time unless someone is actively maintaining it.
What you say is true, but there is more to it. Decay is not the only thing that can happen to a structure. It also can be actively destroyed from the outside. Rather than ask whether a structure is right or wrong, good or bad, we instead need to learn to ask whether it is strong or weak.
I get the sense you were feeling at odds with my framing? I wonder if it's that you're picking up that I believe "structure" is above any one person or set of people. In my conception, leadership is just part of structure, a key maintainer. Leadership are pieces of the structure, but subordinate in scale. They sometimes seek outside help in shaping structure (e.g., ppl like eries), and the structure becomes like another passive actor, not simply "leadership's doing". Leadership are key players taking care of the structure, but they are just one set of players, and in some structures, non-leadership employees play an outsized role (often because leadership knew enough to step back). Sometimes the role of leadership if "fucking right off" in certain domains. Regardless, the structure then guides behaviour of all within it, and hopefully the structure also maintains us, at least as much as we maintain it.
I'm stating the above as if it's universally true, but it's just my take. I'd be curious to know if any parts give you strong YES or NO feelings, if you are open to share your gut reaction. Blunt responses welcome
In all seriousness, yes, individual leadership at the top has to be willing to steelman controversial issues and potential changes of direction, as well engage in unapologetic gatekeeping. At this point we've seen this over and over in tech when observing corporate successes and failures.
yeah the original map was not for this purpose. Though I would say there are heavy assumption made for 2026 too, namely the flights are available immediately upon demand.
I've come to understand religion as simply a way to share a stabilized consensus reality in the high dimensional space of all possible beliefs.
As in, it was easy for us to evolve to see the same physical reality (sight, sound, smell, etc) but we had to evolve spiritual predispositions in order to create arbitrary attractors in value space, which could pull us toward something shared. This, in turn, allowed civilizations to grow larger even as language complexified our imagined world into much higher dimensions (compared to more primitive animal minds)
So spirituality (and it's inevitable scaled system of religions) is both an oppressor and an enabler of getting here. Like a primitive form of governance that we evolved before we were thoughtful enough to invent governance ourselves :)
Another example of the adult entertainment industry driving critical technology infrastructure forward...?
Makes me wonder: Does the adult entertainment industry have its own variant of the military's DARPA, or is it truly decentralized in its innovation and standards work? Haha
They all have PTSD from the status quo.
Getting nonprofits into AI that feels even marginally more self-serve, that is a step forward. Again, even if it just feels more agentic, that's a step forward -- maybe even if they end up screwing things up more in the process -- because the lack agency with their tech is so demoralizing in the sector
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