I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology.
The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.
So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?
fidotron 38 seconds ago [-]
It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.
sealeck 39 minutes ago [-]
> The technologists who create it believe they should control it
I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.
lacunary 40 minutes ago [-]
yes it's called "actually having democratic elections"
merelydev 18 minutes ago [-]
What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics?
rebolek 3 minutes ago [-]
Then vote for politicians who do.
Borg3 36 minutes ago [-]
Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too.
Dark times ahead...
amelius 30 minutes ago [-]
The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.
matusp 10 minutes ago [-]
This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.
nicechianti 34 seconds ago [-]
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ricardo81 39 minutes ago [-]
I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps.
Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism.
The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.
krapp 37 minutes ago [-]
What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.
mike_hearn 50 seconds ago [-]
Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download.
ricardo81 36 minutes ago [-]
The point being that's the solution. I didn't say it is decentralised.
krapp 18 minutes ago [-]
How is it possible to decentralize a technology that needs data centers the size of Manhattan? It doesn't seem like a reasonable solution.
A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense.
ricardo81 14 minutes ago [-]
Because it has extremely plausible uses beyond the example you gave.
More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything.
If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model.
It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP.
greedo 16 minutes ago [-]
Frank Herbert was prophetic.
siddhartpai 9 minutes ago [-]
can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?
Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1]
> Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I.
> But I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one-world totalitarian state. Because I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance.
> [...]
> The atheist philosophical framing is “One World or None.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late ’40s. It starts with the nuclear bomb blowing up the world, and obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it — one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is: Antichrist or Armageddon? You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we’re sleepwalking toward Armageddon. “One world or none,” “Antichrist or Armageddon,” on one level, are the same question.
> [...]
> Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.
> In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say “stop” to this. And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.
> [...]
> Douthat: [...] You’re an investor in A.I. You’re deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on. And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building. Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far. Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?
> Thiel: Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.
---
We live in crazy times. The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. On the other side, Thiel says fear of technological progress could lead us to a one-world totalitarian government (which he relates to the antichrist, and to me seems like a straw man of multilateralism), while at the same time (arguably) building the technological infrastructure such a totalitarian government would need.
I don't know, I think I'm siding with the Pope on all future antichrist related issues.
Peter Thiel is just putting an ill-defined pseudo-Christian facade around his AI accelerationist beliefs because he knows that in the current American right-wing climate evangelical Christianity is what drives political power particularly in tech. His "antichrist" is merely anyone or anything standing between him and as much money and power as possible.
When it comes to the overarching ideology of the techbros, "In Pursuit of the Metaverse" by Dr. Douglas Mark Haugen is a much better read than this encyclical. On the other hand, if he doesn't condemn Gaudium et Spes to the trashbin of history where it belongs, then I don't really care what he has to say.
lebuffon 4 minutes ago [-]
Aside from the Jesus centered stuff what are the things in Gaudium et Spes that you find to be trash? (I only read a summary before asking)
steveBK123 6 minutes ago [-]
The interview with Thiel where Douthat asks him “You would prefer the human race to endure right?” And his response is 30 seconds of hemming&hawwing “well…” says it all about the VC bro class.
Enjoy Argentina bros.
RickJWagner 2 hours ago [-]
John Henry said, “I feed four little brothers
And baby sisters’ walkin’ on her knees
Now did the Lord say that machines ought to take place of livin’?
And what’s a substitute for bread and beans? I ain’t seen it!
Do engines get rewarded for their steam?”
- “John Henry” sung by Johnny Cash
35 minutes ago [-]
clear-octopus 32 minutes ago [-]
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new_account_102 2 hours ago [-]
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new_account_102 2 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 13:41:55 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.
So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?
I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.
Dark times ahead...
Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism.
The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.
A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense.
More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything.
If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model.
It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP.
> Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I.
> But I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one-world totalitarian state. Because I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance.
> [...]
> The atheist philosophical framing is “One World or None.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late ’40s. It starts with the nuclear bomb blowing up the world, and obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it — one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is: Antichrist or Armageddon? You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we’re sleepwalking toward Armageddon. “One world or none,” “Antichrist or Armageddon,” on one level, are the same question.
> [...]
> Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.
> In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say “stop” to this. And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.
> [...]
> Douthat: [...] You’re an investor in A.I. You’re deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on. And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building. Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far. Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?
> Thiel: Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.
---
We live in crazy times. The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. On the other side, Thiel says fear of technological progress could lead us to a one-world totalitarian government (which he relates to the antichrist, and to me seems like a straw man of multilateralism), while at the same time (arguably) building the technological infrastructure such a totalitarian government would need.
I don't know, I think I'm siding with the Pope on all future antichrist related issues.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antic...
Enjoy Argentina bros.
And baby sisters’ walkin’ on her knees
Now did the Lord say that machines ought to take place of livin’?
And what’s a substitute for bread and beans? I ain’t seen it!
Do engines get rewarded for their steam?”
- “John Henry” sung by Johnny Cash