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If so, yes indeed, fair point by him/her. It's up to ordinary folks like us to push against unfair tech transfer because yes, federal labs and research institutions would otherwise provide the incumbents an extreme advantage.

Having been in this world though, I didn't see a reluctance in federal labs to work with capable entrepreneurs with companies at any level of scale. From startup to OpenAI to defense primes, they're open to all. So part of the challenge here is simply engaging capable entrepreneurs to go license tech from federal labs, and go create competitors for the greedy VC-funded or defense prime incumbents.

I fail to understand the sentiment here.

This is the intention of tech transfer. To have private-sector entities commercialize the R&D.

What is the alternative? National labs and universities can't commercialize in the same way, including due to legal restrictions at the state and sometimes federal level.

As long as the process and tech transfer agreements are fair and transparent -- and not concentrated in say OpenAI or with underhanded kickbacks to government -- commercialization will benefit productive applications of AI. All the software we're using right now to communicate sits on top of previous, successful, federally-funded tech transfer efforts which were then commercialized. This is how the system works, how we got to this level.

DARPA is high risk.

ARPA-E is high risk.

ARPA-H is high risk.

Much of NSF is high risk, like NSF Engines, NSF Future Manufacturing, NSF Convergence Accelerators.

DoD SBIR/STTR is high risk. (Confirm it for yourself and look at this month's topics in https://www.dodsbirsttr.mil/topics-app/.)

AFWERX is high risk.

SpaceWERX is high risk.

DIU is high risk.

NASA SBIR is high risk.

NASA NIAC is ultra-high risk.

DoD Office of Strategic Capital is high risk, the kind of risk no investors would fund.

Investors scrutinize pitch decks and then do hard company due diligence which frequently falls through. And conversations die-off with no obligation to provide feedback, unlike in government. And investors will not fund true R&D. They fund scale.

So no, your statement does not hold.

Yes indeed, what a travesty. :) Or they may study misinformation, another affront to civilization itself, because of course we know exactly how it works in this ultra-fast AI era with several competing superpowers.

You are typing this with software built on top of an incredibly vast technology stack which simply would not exist without federal R&D funding. May be worth remembering this fact. In the next few hours, you will almost certainly use non-digital technology essential to life which simply did not originate from commercial R&D (such as it is).

The beginning is nearly always federal R&D funding. Much of it won't work, sure, and that's fine. It's not wasted, because when it works, it creates such a massive everlasting surplus and opportunity machine that it overcomes all past failures by orders of magnitude. Such as, computers, and all they enabled over the last 100-ish years.

The myth of the lone inventor in the garage should have been updated even in the pre-WW2 era.

After "attention", definitely. :) In broad strokes, the US excels in looking to the future, but compared to e.g. Europe, it's harder for folks to get interested in history.

"In the new structure, even if a revised proposal gets the green light from a division director, a new body whose membership has not been determined will take a fresh look to ensure it conforms to the agency’s new standard for making awards."

I wonder if doge is using ML systems to do this kind of review in a far more centralized way across all of government. With the kind of data they have -- obtained by extra-legal means, a.k.a. theft -- they could exert a lot of control over crucial funding decisions.

The system is a Wild West almost by design. It evolved to prevent misuse. Not perfect, but hard to control quickly by a single authority. To me it seems doge is doing a centralization play so it can implement any directive from the great technoking.

Not sure why you're being downvoted because your points are accurate. Ultra nationalist propaganda wouldn't sell well internationally compared to e.g. Star Wars.

And the current administration does at least purport to follow free market principles. It's just all principles can go out the window for them because <insert word salad>, for whatever advances their own power.

Love it. Bob Dorf, successful entrepreneur and investor, once told me:

"Avoid investors! Avoid investors. Avoid investors for as long as humanly possible."

It's complex, for sure. I look back to the JFK era and how those folks handled far larger nuclear arsenals -- and then created the space program as we know it today. Peaceful exploration of space during the Cold War, with much of the same technology as ICBMs.

We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.

The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.

Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.

Sadly, we need it.

And yet we should build and struggle toward the conditions which would allow a massive reduction of the nucelar arsenal.

This would require a level of strategy and clear-mindedness as well as strengthening the US Alliance system so we can push against the autocracy superpowers in a united front, by nonviolent means.

Instead we get high school age kids with flash drives stealing the most sensitive federal government data and potentially injecting unknown code.

So the best bet is this $946B will flow down to other innovations and market translation through the small business set-aside laws. One can always hope.

Of course all the SpaceX and Tesla contracts are 100% efficient. Nothing to see there, move on to science, health, education.

Consider all the small business defense contractors who are held to the letter of the most minute security compliance requirements. They have to somehow meet everything, with very limited resources.

And then at the top of government, the most sensitive information is frequently handled without any care at all. Not to mention 19-year olds with flash drives barging into the most sensitive IT systems of the federal government.

Slight imbalance there, I would say.

The world in your last sentence may be possible. Consider: we have entire libraries full of psychological research about all sorts of behaviors and disorders. And quite often, how to deal with them.

Now: do we use any of this expensively acquired knowledge in our political processes, in any consequential way? Nope. :) Do we use it in the corporate world? Nope. Anywhere else, outside of the ivory tower? Also nope. For the most part, it just sits there unused.

But suppose we did use our psychological knowledge at great scale and fidelity. Then we should be able to treat many systemic issues. Because ultimately, it is merely human psychology that holds us back, rather than any physical resource limitations.

It seems like so much has been said about climate change, with such comparatively miniscule action by the powerful.

Imagine being one of the optimates, the financial ultra-elite. You are at the pinnacle of power in our civilization. You have children, perhaps even grandchildren. You can subvert the rule of law to a huge extent and get away with it. The sheer power of your wealth can take on its own dynamic, allowing you to spend vast amounts on the most ludicrous ideas and still come out OK by sheer artificial demand. Thus, you can will a lot of things into existence.

What do you choose to do about climate change? Invest in many potential breakthroughs? Bring the smartest and most capable people in R&D together and partner with government to bring the best solutions to fruition at scale? Make your mark by moderating the impact of climate change and allow your children to live at least in a similar world to what we have today?

Nope. Instead, you choose to invest in pollution. The future be damned.

The above is actually happening, right now, at enormous scale. I'd urge people to remember this when our culture communicates that the worth of a person correlates with their net worth; it does not.

In the rotten competition for more and more, Seneca's words come to mind:

"The better man may win. But the winner is bound to be the worse man."

It's not cognitive dissonance. The head of Tesla is not a legitimate business person. That is the difference. He is now deep in the most sensitive parts of government. And this is only the beginning.

If Koji Sato of Toyota had access to everyone's SSN, EIN, all financial audits, a large part of or essentially all details on all federal government contracts, there would be outrage too.

I'll share unpopular advice here: it would be wise to adopt a more Stoic approach to the present crisis.

The events unfolding now are an expected progression of choices made years ago.

The choices made now will likewise determine the future. Not all of the current situation is under your control, however. Take whatever wise action you can, but beyond this, judge the outcome neither good nor bad. As hard as it may be -- because we love this country and the ideals for which it should stand, but this is precisely the mechanism which the forces of chaos are using against the system.

They're trying to fatigue you. Don't let them.

It makes sense to examine several likewise unpopular but nevertheless patently correct facts:

1) Every nation ceases to be. Every nation that ever was has fallen, merged, disappeared. This one cannot be different -- and that is OK, because this is what nations do. This does not at all mean you should do nothing. Quite the contrary. It does however mean refraining from placing superlative negative value judgements upon the events happening now. Work towards indifference in your mind, and act according to your wisdom and conscience.

2) You and all other individuals alive today will perish eventually. We all return to nature when our time comes. You were once purely of nature and not of human society -- you came into the world not knowing language, not knowing what nations are, what democracy is, why any of this matters. You were taught what it means to be a modern human. And we all return to the earth, to this mysterious and unfathomably ancient layer of living matter upon this world. So your efforts while you are alive are by nature limited, by necessity bounded. You can cause great change, and you should, according to what you are uniquely suited and drawn to do. Beyond this however, the rest of humanity -- which as a group, unlike individuals, may survive indefinitely -- will have responsibility over the rest.

Hope this perespetive benefits someone. It is the precise opposite of modern media, which wants you to feel outraged with every headline.

When Socrates was informed that his son had died, his response was:

"I knew that my son was mortal."

His mind was rational enough to accept such seemingly mundane but nevertheless consequential knowledge, at every level of his mind. And the effect? When disaster came, he did still suffer, but far less than most other people.

Because it was not a disaster. Merely an outcome of that which when examined closely, was to be expected based on knowledge of mortality.

Nice to see all this discussion. That was kinda my point in the OP, taking only LLNL as an example. Whether or not the result is significant isn't the main thing; main point is: an advanced society would have so much interest in fusion power, it would be front-page news, beyond or on par with sports or celebrity news. How to make it happen, challenges, how to help, and so on.

Spherical bearded philosophers. You forgot the bearded part.

If our society were sane, rational, advanced, the headlines would be all about scientific and technological progress. The fusion power breakthrough of 2022 by Lawrence Livermore National Lab would still dominate the news. Large corporations would compete to create the first Star Trek replicator (at least for organic matter, food, etc) by advancements in nanofabrication. Politicians would debate R&D topics and strategy, figuring out which path leads to greater broad-sector economic progress.

One can dream. :) Instead, we have a society almost entirely dependent on many kinds of technology, and yet very few understand any of it, nor care to. Wonder how long this trend can persist until some sort of phase transition appears on the horizon.

In my view we should also stop taking the Great Technoking at his word and move away from lionizing this old well-moneyed elite in general.

Real technological progress in the 21st century is more capital-intensive than before. It also usually requires more diverse talent.

Yet the breakthroughs we can make in this half-century can be far greater than any before: commercial-grade fusion power (where Lawrence Livermore National Lab currently leads, thanks to AI[1]), quantum computing, spintronics, twistronics, low-cost room-temperature superconductors, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, nanotechnology.

Thus, it's much more about the many, not the one. Multi-stakeholder. Multi-person. Often led by one technology leader, sure, but this one person must uplift and be accountable to the many. Otherwise we get the OpenAI story, and end-justifies-the-means type of groupthink wrt. those who worship the technoking.

[1]: https://www.llnl.gov/article/49911/high-performance-computin...

During that time, your brain would do far more than just that text generation though, beyond what we even know scientifically.

But yes, food energy could be useful for AI. A little dystopian potentially too, if you think about it. Like DARPA's EATR robot, able to run on plant biomass (although potentially animal biomass too, including human remains):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tacti...

I still find it remarkable how we need such an extreme amount of electrical energy to power large modern AI models.

Compare with one human brain. Far more sophisticated, even beyond our knowledge. What does it take to power it for a day? Some vegetables and rice. Still fine for a while if you supply pure junk food -- it'll still perform.

Clearly we have a long, long way to go in terms of the energy efficiency of AI approaches. Our so-called neural nets clearly don't resemble the energy efficiency of actual biological neurons.

A classical philosopher once told me that many ultra-wealthy people have ancient papyrus scrolls hidden away in their collections -- full of ancient Greek and Roman knowledge currently unknown to the outside world.

Keep the value up by keeping it secret. Or at least keep your bragging rights with fellow ultra-rich apex parasites.

Reminds me of a conversation with a late friend. We wondered: what would the most academic book possible look like?

It could have: one brief, vague, and hedged statement, supported by a crapton of superscript references -- which constitute the rest of the book.

So like:

"Chapter 1:

Some things about the universe are at least partly knowable.<references 1-100,000>

The End."

100%. If they could learn anything, then shouldn't modern ML systems be able to solve the big mysteries in science -- since we have large datasets there describing the phenomena in various ways? E.g. dark energy, dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, or even outstanding problems in pure mathematics.

The intention of this sama post is as you said, it's to build narrative so he can raise his trillion from the Arab world or other problematic sources.

In pseudocode, this is Sam Altman:

while(alive) { RaiseCapital() }

I don't understand the 'lie' part here. How is what I stated false? The rest of what you said doesn't invalidate my points.

Except not in NATO, Five Eyes, or even a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In real terms, they're definitely among the more problematic allies. Compared with Germany, UK, France, Australia, Canada, etc.

FWIW: I think your point is highly insightful. Very deep, and I'll be thinking about it for quite some time! It all comes from the same psychological place -- reminds me of autocracy vs democracy. In one, presumed superiority of the autocrat, leading to apparently justified mistreatment of all others. In the other, presumed equality of all, leading to agreed-upon consequences if others are mistreated.

Every time I encounter resistance to your points here, I feel like an alien among humans.

I think it cuts so deep into people's psychology, and frequently religion. The very notion that we are not the apex of anything. And that we no longer need to eat other animals to live and be healthy. Too much to bear for many, so it frequently results in low-quality conversation, laden with emotions.

The fact remains, however. Non-human animals are not that different from us. Pretty much all mental behavior is represented in the animal kingdom. They, in so many ways, are us. And we are them.

Why should it be otherwise, after all? It would be strange to have a quantum jump in mental behavior with humans, and only primitive behavior in all other animals.

It'll probably take some centuries for humans to see other animals as inherently worthy of respect.