Sir Capone retweeted
Impressive. This set of talks, along with the new America dot gov website, has the unmistakable feel of an Apple launch event. They're rebooting the federal government as a tech startup. Several observations.
(1) First, with this new AI interface to the entire federal government, if it works as promised, there won't be a single American who can't say their life wasn't helped at least in part by AI, or that the benefits accrued solely to zillionaires. This in itself cannily mitigates anti-datacenter sentiment.
(2) Second, Joe Gebbia and Marco Rubio's talks on simplifying name changes and passport filings introduce a completely new era where the US government is actually launching tangible features that benefit users.
(3) Third, this launch event in and of itself may visibly drive reform. It could become much more important than the State of the Union. Unlike laws, code is user-visible, and can be instantly audited by the public, as Obama found out with the failed obamacare website launch. So: the annual America dot gov event may be substance, whereas SOTU is traditionally optics. I wouldn't be surprised to see the President present at the next one.
(4) Fourth, this kind of event is a perfect example of where tech and red cooperate best. They both hate bureaucracy. Automating paperwork with code reduces the power of statists over both capitalists and nationalists. It's also hard to undo by other admins: once you digitize a process, hard to turn it back to paper.
(5) Fifth, it's an obvious point perhaps, but think about how much influence YCombinator has had in 20 years. From Gebbia's Airbnb joining their 2009 batch to a complete overhaul of the user interface of the US bureaucracy, and thus the US government.
(6) Sixth, this is another take on the network state. The functional part of the US (the network, meaning tech) is merging with and partially reforming the dysfunctional part (the state, meaning bureaucracy) by automating 20th century paper forms.
As a tech startup, there will no doubt be bugs and user issues and so on, but unlike with paper laws those issues will be visible and the code fixes will be verifiable. A new era of AI America. Rooting for them.
Sir Capone retweeted
Sam Altman Right now
Sam Altman: "in the next 6 months, we're close to a world where a descendant of ChatGPT can watch your screen, record every meeting and call, and have perfect context of your whole life."
he says we're only one model generation away from this being incredibly useful.
think about what that actually means. an assistant that never needs you to re-explain anything. it already knows the project, the client, the last conversation, the thing you said three weeks ago. you just ask, and it picks up mid-thought.
this is the shift from a chatbot you prompt to an assistant that already has the context.
if you want to watch the full interview, it's below.
Sir Capone retweeted
Iran’s fundamental mistake is that it believes this war is not existential for the US.
This war is existential for the so called American pact aka Pax Americana. The pact in which the US provided investments, military protection, and a very sophisticated financial infrastructure. In return, the other participants focused on what they could do best. The division of labor, and comparative advantage: China: high quality labor, GCC Arabs: cheap and reliable energy, etc.
As part of the pact, any excess capital from these participants would get invested in US financial markets, primarily in the form US treasuries, but also venture capital (eg Saudi money in Softbank), and other instruments.
This did two things:
1-Lower the cost of capital in the US. This meant lower interest rates, higher stock market, more money available for startups, lower housing costs, and many other things.
2-The invested capital served as a hostage, a guarantee of good behavior by those in the system, which supplied some level of stability to the pact. The US could theoretically seize or freeze the assets of any misbehaving participants.
Parts of this pact have already been going away. China is not a US satellite state or even a partner. It is a competitor, building its own pact in the form of Belt and Road Initiative. It is also reducing its exposure to US treasuries and increasing its gold reserves.
If the US loses its dominance over the Persian gulf, another part of this pact will break. The GCC Arab states have lost their protection, while still having a hostage in the US. That’s an incentive to reduce their exposure and diversify their assets out of the US.
It will also send a signal to everyone else in US orbit that the military protection is not available anymore.
As these orbit states reduce their exposure to US assets, the cost of capital in the US will rise: higher interest rates, lower stock market, higher home financing costs, fewer startups, etc.
Furthermore, the US has $31T public debt, with average maturity of 5.9 years. As the interest rates rise, the cost of rolling over this debt is going to rise.
Last but not least, there’s about $1.6T in additional debt that gets added every year, which will be paying higher interest.
As the debt/GDP ratio rises, the feedback loop kicks in: the US has to pay a higher interest rate to keep the same investor.
This is why the loss of the Persian Gulf is so significant for the US.
I might write a later post about the effect of rates on debt financing.
Sir Capone retweeted
看了新晋亚洲首富孙正义 这个最新访谈睡不着了，
6 月 1 号他在巴黎接受CNBC 专访时透漏了很多未来的财富密码，
明确表示下一个万亿美元机会,是 Physical AI 和机器人。
以及这一波 AI 革命的规模,
大概率是互联网泡沫时代的 50 倍,
是人类经历过最大的一次技术与实现革命。
我看了一圈中文圈的反应,
绝大多数人都把这条当普通新闻刷过去了,
过去三年我们忙着教 AI 写代码、画图、聊天,
但下一个十年,AI很可能会从屏幕里走出来,站起来,迈出腿,动手做事。
也就是说,
我们现在练的所有 prompt 技巧、Agent 编排、内容生成等等本质上都还在无身体的 AI这一层。
未来真正决定下一代生产力地形的是有身体的那一层，
下面这几条,是我把这件事彻底想透之后,
给普通人能用上的一份认知和财富进阶地图 👇
Sir Capone retweeted
🚨This is so much worse than you think.
> Amazon laid off 30,000 engineers. Then told the ones who survived that their bonuses depend on how much they use AI to write code. So engineers started using AI to push changes faster, because their paycheck literally depends on it.
> And then the site went down. Multiple times. Amazon's own shopping app broke because AI-generated code got pushed to production.
> So what did management do? Did they take responsibility for forcing engineers to use AI they weren't ready for? Did they admit they created the problem?
No. They called a mandatory meeting and blamed the engineers.
> AI is powerful enough to replace engineers, we've been saying that all day. But it's not powerful enough to replace quality control AND common sense all at once.
Amazon proved that executives who don't understand AI are more dangerous than the AI itself.
And every company rushing to do the same thing is watching this and learning absolutely nothing.
Sir Capone retweeted
Realizing you genuinely have a few more years left to accumulate as many assets as possible before currency debasement and AI leaves you in the underclass
Sir Capone retweeted
If you're wondering what in the hell happened to our country and why everything is so completely screwed up...
Why it's so hard to make a living...
Impossible to save money...
And why every year everything seems to get a little bit worse every year...
Just think about this: There are 132 million households in the United States. And total government (federal, state, local) spending is now $12.7 trillion.
That's $96k per household.
The reason we're all going broke is because we've given the government all of our money.
Time to take it back.
I'm launching a national taxpayers strike.
Stop paying taxes.
They can't put all of us in jail.
We have three demands:
#1. No more deficits, ever.
#2. No more taxes on property or income. Once I own something, the government can't take it from me, ever.
#3. Everyone pays the same rate -- no exceptions.
With the right approval process and SEC support, the US can be a leader in blockchain technology
I look forward to working with you @SECJackson to open the doors to innovation, but we're not a merit regulator issuing seals of approval, so let's encourage investors to do their own work to decide whether an investment is right for them: rollcall.com/news/congress/t…
Sir Capone retweeted
Many Chinese cities have banned fireworks during #ChineseNewYear Cities that doesn’t have fireworks ban looks like this 👇🏼 #YearOfThePig teapawt.org/oliverSI7/status/10927…
Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Check out this insanely synchronized kung fu performance during the New Year's Eve show reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/commen…
Sir Capone retweeted
The "great frontend divide" exists, but not because of which skills people pick or what's listed in job descriptions.
