18,119 karma · joined January 24, 2012
A dismal prospect.
When knowledge is acquired at a human scale, and under the influence of a human culture, then extraordinary things can happen. Agriculture, the transistor, Gödel's theorems.
When knowledge is "churned out" at "factory scale" then human flourishing isn't even a by-product.
> It goes entirely against the culture of research mathematics to hoard secrets. If you've done something interesting, you want to share it, and it's in your best interest to share it.
You're describing an enviable human culture with a reward system suited to people. People publish papers etc. to enrich the human domain and to get recognition. AIs don't care about things - and neither, I'm asserting, will their owners. That culture will become a vestige.
Mathematics as the underpinning of science and technology that can be exploited for inter-state competition, including cryptography but not limited to that (image analysis, targeting algorithms, conflict modelling, whatever) won't see the light of day. The AIs that discover the mathematics will be paid for by the warfighting budgets of states, and by the corporations that feed on them.
1. I fear that AI is about to change from being a human art to becoming something like a bulk-extruded, industrial product.
2. I also suspect that mathematics is about to become substantially less open. As the number of entities on the planet that are capable of top-level maths explodes, and because most of those entiries will have no interest in the validation that publishing papers brings, we will see balkanisation and hoarding of "secret maths".
3. Areas of science that are downstream of maths -- basically everything -- will, in time, be degrated by lack of openness, before suffering the same fate.
Just over a year later I received an email from another in-house recruiter at Roku, thanking me for my application but regretting that they wouldn't be going forward with it (or some such corporate-speak). Which was kind of surprising.
I did a few searches and discovered that the date they went quiet roughly coincided with a sizeable round of redundancies. I also looked up the new recruiter and found that they were new to the company and quite junior. So, presumably, their first task had been to clear-up the backlog. That year was by far the longest I've ever waited for a response to a job application.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/24/ukraine-wareho...
Also, what other people have said about it being turned into a (mutually beneficial?) marketing opportunity.
As to whether people like it: I was thinking of a work context, where expectations of privacy are lower. I guess it could be an opt-in for group chats.
In my experience:
1. Well meaning people try to build wikis/confluences/whatever that turn into backwaters of slowly rotting stuff
2. Beyond a certain extent that they can hold in their heads, most other people give up.
3. Some people hoard knowledge and use it for personal advantage.
I dont know what the solution is. Maybe an ai that reads every chat and email and commit - and builds some kind of browsable, queryable, executable knowledge trove.
Rant on brother/sister. I'm a year into building a large WPF (because reasons) app for my employer and some days its very difficult.
I wrote [1] to post-process my (slightly obsessively) neatly tagged mp3 collection for use in my car.
[1] https://github.com/andyjohnson0/ID3Minimiser
Obligatory note: destructively edits tags, so run it on a copy of any mp3 files.
2. Don't chase perceived prestige. In a few years nobody will care
3. I don't know, but I'm assuming you're young. If you already have a BSc or similar and have been accepted by Cambridge then there are many places you could go. The people you meet and get to know could unlock future flexibility.
4. Don't work for Amazon. Maybe they made you a good offer but, even more so than other corporations, they don't care about you. They'll run you hot and then stick a fork in you without a moment's hesitation.
This is a wise choice. For me, nothing personal goes onto my work phone or laptop. And nothing work-related goes onto personal devices. Life is just easier that way.
What worked for me was to phone them and insist on cancelling. The person I spoke to insisted right back that it wasn't possible. When I persisted they offered me an extended term for the same price. Then a discount, and then a better discount. After that they agreed to cancel.
My impression was that they had a customer retention flowchart to work through, and it was just a matter of getting to the right terminal node.
For this European: that Independence is increasingly illusory and maladaptive on our crowded, overheating planet - and that we all need to be thinking more about our mutual Interdependence and shared humanity.
> Finally, what the most romantic ideal you have of America that you think would be worth sharing?
The nation that went to the moon, and showed us all what we're capable of.
The BBC has just cut its budget by £500 million, in an apparent attempt to limit the damage from the latest charter renewal process - which determines its funding. The new director general (ie ceo) is an ex-Google person, and they seem to be pivoting to become a social media content provider. So I'm pretty sure that spending licence fee money on making vacuum tubes to broadcast a signal that nobody under forty listens to wouldnt get past a value for money test.
(I like the BBC and its radio output, and I'm one of those weirdos who still pays the licence fee despite never watching tv or any of the stuff that the licence fee is required for. But it is becoming increasingly lost to me: focussed on triviality and politically cowed. Sadly, I no longer expect it to last.)