I, for one, do not welcome our new AI overlords.

As a techie, I have loosely followed the capabilities of self-driving cars. Decades ago, I did some work in computer vision; but, at that time, the computers simply did not have the horsepower to do realtime scene analysis. Boy have times changed:

[video:https://youtu.be/_1MHGUC_BzQ]

****Link seems to have died about six hours after I posted it.****

This realtime video was created by a neural net chip designed by Tesla. (Who knew that Tesla was into cutting edge chip design?) Apparently, the chip is needed because the car has eight cameras:

Tesla has now deployed a new unified camera network that handles all 8 cameras.

Processed resolution of 3 front cameras and back camera: 1280×960 (full camera resolution)
Processed resolution of pillar and repeater cameras: 640×480 (1/2×1/2 of camera’s true resolution)
all cameras: 3 color channels, 2 frames (2 frames also has very interesting implications) (was 640×416, 2 color channels, 1 frame, only main and narrow in V8)

Tesla deploys massive new Autopilot neural net in v9, impressive new capabilities, report says

Yet, all that processing power is delivering a really impoverished view of the world. Watch the incredibly dull video of what the computer actually "understands" about the scene:

[video:https://youtu.be/Ml0ulFXATbk]

So, from the technical POV, I am simultaneously impressed by the ability to steer in traffic; but I am relieved that the machine has a view of the world that barely rises above the level of "stick figure". It is not some Cylon robot out to kill us all - yet.

And that is where the title of this OP comes in. The number of Teslas that will be bought at $50,000 a pop or higher is a drop in the auto bucket. But, the uses of these vision systems for other purposes is a concern. We are already aware of the Digital Panopticon of surveillance cameras, with face recognition AI at a level comparable to the car autopilot. (Not to mention license plate readers and automatic highway toll cameras.) That is, recognition good enough to automatically preprocess a lot of info and deliver the results to a human for final judgement. In the case of surveillance, that judgment can ruin a person's life. To think that such "stick figure" reasoning is being rolled out across the board is alarming.

----

For a while now, I have been convinced that the end game of TPTB is to arrange for 90% of the population to kill each other (without starting a nuclear war) while they hide out in NZ, etc. The handwriting about overpopulation and ecological damage has been on the wall for decades, yet the Quiverfull movement and other childbirth extremists continue to be funded and publicized by rich assholes. The rich are quite aware that they have sent the old First World manufacturing jobs to China or even poorer, more draconian Fourth World shitholes. Now they are busy automating checkouts and designing shelving robots and Amazon warehouse robots.

None of this automation is so that 10 billion consumers will have their cheap Chinese crap delivered in a timely fashion - because those consumers will have no jobs and no money. No. This automation is putting in place an infrastructure that will allow the top 10% to survive without the bottom 90%. Its sorta like the Scottish enclosures, except they don't even need the displaced proletariat for brutal factory work. The checkout people and the truck drivers (see the autopilot above) will be truly superfluous people. And what does one do with superfluous people? The only solution that comes to mind is "the final solution".

We have already declared Moslems to be the new Untermenschen. Neo-nazi and crypto-nazi governments are in power in Eastern and Central Europe; and they would have no qualms about mass incarceration of "the other". The US is full of potential concentration camp guards who would love to abuse and murder "the other". We already have a huge, privatized prison guard population trained up.

The US has already murdered tens of millions in wars in the Third World. Bombed them, starved them (or both as in Yemen), poisoned them with chemical and radiological agents. That policy can continue in places the US military can control - like Africa and, soon, South America. The real heavy lift for TPTB will be to "normalize" the mass incarceration and murder of large populations in the first world.

The first step to mass murder is the demonization of the target population. The introduction of AI that destroys jobs and makes people "lazy moochers" is going to go a long way towards creating an atmosphere of desperation, scapegoating, and fighting over scraps. That atmosphere will be manipulated by TPTB toward the final solution. TPTB can play the two party game: the "left" party will demonize "deplorable" whites. The "right" party will demonize people of color, feminists, and intellectuals (just like the Nazis did). As long as the mass murder can be cloaked in domestic politics, no one is going to start slinging nukes at each other.

And, like the proverbial nail that loses a battle, the Tesla autopilot is the beginning of a chain of causality that will end up decimating the population of the planet.

----

I realize that the end of this OP is quite a long distance from car autopilots. But, anyone who still has critical thinking skills should understand where all this automation is leading. It is not going to help anyone but the professional class (who create the automation) and above. As a former member of that class, I just want to register my dissent from a society ruled by biased, black-box algorithms, a society owned by the likes of sociopaths like Jeff Bezos, amoral businessmen like the current management of Google, and Aspberger-y CIA pawns like Mark Zuckerberg.

I, for one, do not welcome our new AI overlords.

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I fear real organic stupidity much more than I fear artificial intelligence. I mean, even in the dystopian Star Wars universe, the AI robots fight on the right side.

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arendt's picture

@SancheLlewellyn

for their greedy sociopathic ends. AI is just a force multiplier. Problem is, the 1% will have that multiplier and the 99% won't.

Its not really about armed robots, although those are coming because the ruling class wants them and doesn't care how many proles will be accidentally offed by them.

Its about Stasi-on-steroids surveillance and monitoring, not just of you purchases and emails, but of everything. The Chinese are rolling out "social credit", whereby you will be punished for not being enthusiastic enough about the government. Where your close associates will be at risk of guilt by association if they do not turn you in for thought crimes.

And, even all that is simply the prelude for putting 90% of humanity into open air concentration camps that will make Gaza look like a holiday tour. The purpose of the AI is to deprive people of options and to control them. Once they are effectively in jail, mass extermination, by neglect, disease, pollution, and starvation will decimate them the same way European diseases decimated Native Americans.

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ggersh's picture

@arendt @arendt [video:https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/937376362469494784]

I tried to embed twitter, couldnt
here is Thomas Friedman at Saban Inst.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/links-10-16-18.html

He'd be happy to get rid of Arabs/Muslims

And as you say there is no reason for all this AI
crap unless you don't want hands on help or trouble
problem with this though could be once AI breaks
down who gonna fix it?

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

arendt's picture

@ggersh

The rulers themselves do not claim to be just or wise, but only to execute historical or natural laws; they do not apply laws, but execute a movement in accordance with its inherent law. Terror is lawfulness, if law is the law of the movement of some supra-human force, Nature or History.

- H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, P. 465.

That idea, the idea of the unrestrained movement of supra-human forces, should sound familiar. That’s how Arendt described Imperialism, the early form of unrestrained capitalism. It also describes today’s world as seen by the architects of neoliberalism. They warn that everyone loses if The Market is subjected to even the slightest restraint, whether to movement of jobs and capital overseas or to prohibit dumping toxins into earth, air and water. They insist that foreign limitations on patents and copyrights are impossible restraints. They preach that the only legitimate goal of government is to enforce property rights to the utter maximum. For them, the restless movement of money in the hands of the rich and powerful operates in accordance with its own internal logic, logic which cannot be questioned by quasi-humans not gifted with the power to control vast sums of wealth. They tell us that The Market knows all and fixes everything as long as we mere humans do not interfere with its workings. Neoliberal capitalism is a form of supra-human force that Arendt warned us about....

the white working-class people are superfluous, and so are their communities and their way of life. Millions of them should just hire U-Hauls and move to the blessed land of plentiful jobs. They must all lose themselves and their way of life to the inexorable laws of movement, only this time, it’s the inexorable laws of neoliberalism, of rampant unrestrained capitalism. By those rules, individuals cannot act collectively, through unions or through active government. They are permitted to act collectively in their Churches, which emphasize their helplessness in this world except through the will of the Almighty, and therefore pose no real threat to the interests of the rich and powerful.

These white working-class people and their communities aren’t economically viable, and nothing can or should be done to make things different. They should surrender to the external and ungovernable force of hyper-capitalism. They are superfluous, and if they die in misery, leaving their families in poverty, it’s just the natural law of economic freedom working itself out in the passive voice, with the invisible hand of the rich and powerful hidden in a fog of words.

- Ed Walker, The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 7: Superfluous People

I really like the writer highlighting the equivalence of the "impersonal force" of the market to the impersonal natural forces of race (Nazism) or class (Stalinism). Its a three word elevator pitch: racism, classism, neoliberalism.

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ggersh's picture

@arendt Basically corporate welfare

They warn that everyone loses if The Market is subjected to even the slightest restraint, whether to movement of jobs and capital overseas or to prohibit dumping toxins into earth, air and water. They insist that foreign limitations on patents and copyrights are impossible restraints. They preach that the only legitimate goal of government is to enforce property rights to the utter maximum. For them, the restless movement of money in the hands of the rich and powerful operates in accordance with its own internal logic, logic which cannot be questioned by quasi-humans not gifted with the power to control vast sums of wealth

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Raggedy Ann's picture

I have been concerned about this for some time. I believe there are many on this site, equally concerned. We see the writing on the wall. This is why we must move toward sustainability.

We live in a rural area with lots of acreage. It can become a family compound for me and my family. We can go underground if need be. This could buy us some time - who knows.

Indeed, this is coming. Make your plans now.

Perhaps we will move toward that more compassionate existence by the 2030's. I'll be an old woman by then, but it's okay, I believe it will come. In the meantime, I'll be sustainable.

Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

arendt's picture

@Raggedy Ann

We live in a rural area with lots of acreage. It can become a family compound for me and my family. We can go underground if need be. This could buy us some time - who knows.

IMHO, the elites have left the cull too late. The existing population has stripped the planet bare, like a swarm of locusts. We have fished out the oceans, decimated the insect populations with pesticides (which is decimating birds that feed on them). Climate change is destroying mid-latitudes forests. When the last glacier in the Himalayas melts away, it will cause starvation in the Indian sub-continent. The ocean acidification is already disssolving shellfish shells in places like Oregon.

Since the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians on not with this program, it will take many more years to get the global panopticon up and running. But the climate change, resource depletion, forest and fishery devastation are already happening. The elites, hopefully, will go down with the rest of us from natural disasters.

But, that is all speculation. Therefore, it really is a matter of timing. If you can be self-sufficient on a rural compound, you might have a better chance than an urban dweller. But, your compound is still vulnerable to roving bands of armed nutcases (I'm thinking Idaho), to climate-induced crop failures, to infrastructure failure that prevents you from getting critical spare parts or replacements for things like pumps, generators, etc. (This, to me, is the big issue with sustainability - unless you want to go full Amish.)

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divineorder's picture

@arendt

Yemen, whose millions are facing famine from war traditionally imports a shocking 90& of it's food. Gah.

Someone we know said Santa Fe, NM is at the end of the food supply chain, and that if cut off the shelves in the supermarkets would be empty in 2 days.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

arendt's picture

@divineorder

The whole Middle East is a disaster in progress. Temperatures rising to the point of uninhabitability. Farming becoming impossible - it was a severe, years-long drought that started the unrest in Syria. The Saudis tried using irrigation in the desert and sucked the water table dry in under ten years.

Of course, climate change is responsible for droughts. But the population of the ME has exploded over the last fifty years, as public health curtailed death rates and transport, enabled by cheap oil, allowed populations to skyrocket. In 1960 Egypt's population was 27 million. Today it is 96 million. Population growth of 350% in my lifetime. Unsustainable.

Yemen, even worse. Population in 1950: 4 million. Population today: 28 million. 700% increase.

Its classic aristo-think. Ignore the problem until its unsolvable. Then say there is no alternative except letting the victims die.

TPTB may not have deliberately caused these massive populations, although they were initially welcomed as customers. Today, TPTB have abandoned places like Egypt and Yemen to their fates. They would like to depopulate MENA, leaving only the mineral mines, oil fields, and the railroads to transport that wealth to the coast.

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divineorder's picture

@arendt true.

TPTB may not have deliberately caused these massive populations, although they were initially welcomed as customers. Today, TPTB have abandoned places like Egypt and Yemen to their fates. They would like to depopulate MENA, leaving only the mineral mines, oil fields, and the railroads to transport that wealth to the coast.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

lotlizard's picture

@divineorder  
Now almost everything comes from North America by air or by ship.

How can this be good?

Of course, the U.S. military is always going to guarantee — and prioritize — supply to its bases and personnel in Hawaii.

In a crisis, civilians without access to a farm, a garden, some chickens, or a fishing boat, will pretty much have to either depend completely on the military, or starve.

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arendt's picture

@lotlizard

Case in point, Easter Island. More people => more trees cut for housing, fuel, making those ridiculous statues => environment destruction.

Modern sanitation just drives the process lots faster. In fact, one might consider the entire earth to be one big "island", whose finite resources we are consuming at an unsustainable rate.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

@arendt

But, your compound is still vulnerable to roving bands of armed nutcases

If the nutcases come around, so be it. No amount of guns, dogs, etc., will deter anyone who is on a mission. I can only do my best to survive, but I will not live in fear.

I'm actually an optimist. I believe that we are in charge of nothing and the universe is in charge of everything. I believe we will go through 12-15 years of difficulty - strife - and will come out on the other end a different society. I believe we will become the society we wish, but not without lots of turmoil. We will enter the 5th dimension, in the 2030's, ready for the peace we so desire.

I could be wrong, but imagine if I'm not! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

arendt's picture

@Raggedy Ann

Good for you. Its people like you who will survive and have descendants who survive.

Me, I just look at how far the whole endeavor of "civilization" has fallen in the last fifty years and recoil in disgust. I am angry with myself for not recognizing that my middle class life was lived in a shrinking bubble of innovation and peacefulness in a society that was rotting from the top down and dying from the bottom up.

Personally, I think the Russians have a better chance of surviving as a civilization over the next fifty years. While they have their oligarchs, their oligarchs have been put on a leash - unlike ours who are devouring everything.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

@arendt
The folks who raised me were born in the early 1900's and married in 1930. They were still using a wagon and horses to get around. My mom would tell stories of going to church on Sunday in the big family wagon. That wagon lived at our house for a while. My parents saw big changes in their lives.

Born in 1952, I often wondered if I would see such dramatic changes, and here we are. I didn't think the changes would be the deterioration of our society, but then again, I didn't know the impact power had on people.

I once wielded power, however, I often felt I had no power. I knew I had it, but I didn't feel wielding it was better than trying to get everyone on the same page - working together. It's why I have trouble getting promoted. Oh, well, nice problem to have.

I think I'm rambling, but in any event, what a world we are living in. When my parents (in the 60's) would wonder what the world was coming to, I would chuckle, because it was my 16 year old world! There was so much possibility. The hippie movement was how we were going to get the society we desired. There's a lot to be said for naivete.

So, here we are. I worry for my grandchildren because I placed a lot of hope in their futures. Now they are worried about their own futures - something I didn't concern myself with at their ages (20 & 22). It might not matter if we are all expunged anyway.

Have you heard of the earth shift? Well, that's another story. I just finished reading Hecate and this comment feels like a Hecate writing. Where am I anyway?

Have a beautiful day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

@Raggedy Ann
a "family compound" but the population density of China is 148 people/sq. kilometer (western China - Tibet, et all - lowers the figure dramatically, there are parts of China where the figures are as high as Hong Kong's 6751) and thanks to the 1 child policy was only growing by about 1 per year. They have abandoned the 1 child policy because too many people were refusing to comply, so expect that rate to double. The population density of India is 413. And you think that's bad? The US is only 34.5, that's your point of reference:
https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-density/india/2018/
In fairness there is not a direct relationship between population density and social ills - the Netherlands is 411, but the violence-free (dystopia) Singapore is 8164. (NYC is 10,431, SF is "only" 6,226, but neither should be considered acceptable , albeit for different reasons)

Arendt's argument is right - in fact it is happening - but we cannot allow that argument to be used to "disprove" the need to reduce the human population, as many in my experience are doing.

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On to Biden since 1973

Raggedy Ann's picture

@doh1304 @doh1304
of which I no longer remember the name. The gist of the movie was a race for land. I believe the entire world was in the race. It might have been Soylent Green or something like it. The end of the movie shows a couple finally securing their piece of land. What I do remember is the impact that movie had on me. So, I buy land. It's what I do.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

arendt's picture

@doh1304

My point, which I think was similar to yours, is that there simply isn't enough land to give everyone enough to be self-sufficient at the family farm level of production.

That doesn't mean it can't work for the lucky few who have such land and can keep "tresspassers" off it.

But it does mean there would be the kind of massive dieoff that I am talking about. The denser the current population, the bigger the dieoff.

In such a Mad Max world, I would rather just sit on a hill and starve to death rather than fight for survival in a greatly diminished world in my old age.

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hi res spy satellites and link them with stationary ground based cameras and massage it through a couple of server farms and now you're cookin' with gas.

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arendt's picture

@Snode

Films like "Enemy of the State" and "The Bourne Identity" had the omnipotent CIA bad guys using real time satellite imagery to track the hero.

If the movies had it 20 yes ago, you can bet the CIA has it today. Besides, who needs satellites when your smartphone tells where you are.

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hecate's picture

the AI bells and whistles in a client's Tesla did not prevent him from drinking mass quantities and then slobbering the car into a CHP officer and various assorted other humans.

Fun story in Bezos about oddfellow Alexander Reben, who scraped thousands of affirmations off the intertubes and then fed them to an AI, asking it to use the words to produce fortune cookies. The results were like something that would come from Marvin, the immortal Eeyore android in the true-life saga Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. These AI wisdoms include "The expanse of your thoughts, they may never happen," "Politicians broke my little house," "Today, your mouth shut," "Your pain is the essence of everything and the value of nothing," "Remember, no matter how hard you try, there is an ocean you cannot change," and "Your dreams are worth your best pants when you wish you'd given love a chance." And the glumness imaged below. Pure Marvin.

listening-XL.jpg

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arendt's picture

@hecate
Seen on s t-shirt:

I love you like Kanye loves Kanye.

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hecate's picture

@arendt
speaks like an AI on jimson weed.

There's a lot of things affecting our mental health that makes us do crazy things, that puts us back into that trap door called the 13th Amendment. I did say "abolish," with the hat on. Because why would you keep something around that's a trap door? If you're building a floor, the Constitution is the base of our industry, right? Of our country, of our company. Would you build a trap door that if you mess up and you accidentally, something happens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber? You end up – you've got to remove all that trap door out of the relationship. The four gentleman that wrote the 13th Amendment? And I think the way the universe works, it's perfect. We don't have 13 floors, do we? You know, so the four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment didn't look like the people they were amending. Also, at that point it was illegal for blacks to read, or African-Americans to read, and so that meant if you actually read the amendment, you'd get locked up! And turned into a slave. Again, so what I think is we don't need sentences, we need partners. We need to talk to people. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was connected with a neuropsychologist that works with the athletes in the NBA and the NFL. And he looked at my brain, it's equal on three parts. I'm going to go ahead, drop some bombs to you: 98th percentile IQ test. I had a 75 percentile of all human beings but it was counting eight numbers backwards off, there was repeating. So I'm going to work on that one. The other ones, 98 per cent. Tesla. Freud. You know, so he said that I actually wasn't bipolar. I had sleep deprivation which could cause dementia 10 to 20 years from now, where I wouldn't even remember my son's name. So all this power that I get, and I'm taking my son to the Sox game and all that? I wouldn't be able to remember his name, from a misdiagnosis. And what we need is, we can empower the pharmaceuticals and make more money. That's one thing. I've never stepped into a situation where I didn't make people more money. So we can empower pharmaceuticals. We can empower our industries. We can empower our factories. We can bring not only Adidas onshore, we can bring Foxconn and set up a factory in, I think, Minnesota.

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arendt's picture

@hecate

I have never bothered to listen to him. Just binned him, along with the whole Kardashian freak show. So that is a verbatim clip? Dog save America. People made this psycho a millionaire?

He makes Trump sound like a genius.

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hecate's picture

@arendt
he is. In all his batshit glory.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Bisbonian's picture

...or at least, I used to. Now I manage an autopilot. A stick-figure mindless automaton, stupid, clumsy, fumbling, and ultimately incapable autopilot. But it will eventually not need me, any more, to manipulate it into some semblance of competence. At least in someone’s judgement...someone who has never flown a 737.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

arendt's picture

@Bisbonian

Here is the new jetliner. It has a crew of two: a man and a dog.

The man's job is to feed the dog.
The dog's job is to keep the man from touching the controls.

This whole automating humans out of the loop thing is going to come to a bad end. Probably a nuclear war.

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lotlizard's picture

https://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: “derivatives trading.” JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as “assets.”

Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.

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k9disc's picture

In brilliant fashion he brought up that the internet is like the global limbic system for the AI - we're all pumping all our hopes and fears into it, growing the AI.

Then he says some typical super smart guy dumb shit like we need transhumanism because we only have 2 thumbs (can't text fast enough) and that nobody cares about your porn habits.

It was a fascinating and somewhat scary discussion though... much more going on than the smoking of the joint.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

arendt's picture

@k9disc

Given the sensationalism around the event, I just ignored it.

I will look for a transcript, though.

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