I think the biggest issue is that Ai is turning into a spiritual debate. Either you are for it or against it. There is no in-between. We know from politics this is nothing new.
I can see it myself. There are tremendous use cases for AI and it helps me a lot with my work (and life). But I can feel how I grow more and more resentful of AI.
If we don't enable the current system to adopt AI in a healthy way, I think it will do more harm than good. The same thing is happening with social media. Substack is a step in the right direction but the system doesn't enable it. As we can already see it's turning into just another social media platform.
I'm an optimist by nature. I think it's a great opportunity for humanity to overcome our challenges.
I love it Azeem! Did you just invent the technorat? Appropriately enough I couldn’t find it on Google AI! The perfect noun of the year. In one go - especially in the context of your content!
Azeem, you’re on fire! “[This] White House wants a light touch national framework” - what an aspiration from the most insensitive thick headed and heavy handed government in living and dead memory. You do them immense credit - entirely undeserved. Am I missing some irony?
Governments need to get on top of this and work out tax companies’ AI output. The economy is about to look very different and without substantial redistribution, it won’t be good.
As a techno-enthusiast, retired but now hobbyist programmer, I find AI incredibly productive. Following Azeem's January prediction that 2026 will be the year when knowledgeable practitioners will be using AI "all day, every day", I decided I could test that, and with Gemini in 8 weeks developed 5,000 lines of code on the little $5 microcontrollers I use--very smooth originally, but with increasing laggyness--a result, I believe, of usage starting to swamp available compute.
So I'm definitely a believer on the utility side. But for the finances, maybe not.
"Anthropic will turn a profit this quarter, two years ahead of schedule." Azeem--are you familiar with the profane and violently AI-skeptical Ed Zitron? His piece here asserts that the finances are impossible across the entire industry.
I would love a more thorough treatment of the electricity generation and transmission issues. AI-haters have a variety of arguments, but the environment-argument seems partly based in justified concern that we're adding massive demand at the same time that our electric systems are unequipped to handle the challenge, so we should expect and are potentially seeing outsized negative environmental impacts. For people that take the environment as a serious issue (broadly), or even see it as one of the most important issues, massive-power-generation-for-AI seems like several steps in the wrong direction. Azeem, you rightly point to the future time when we'll look back and say that this was a helpful catalyst, but we still need to get there! In the US, I worry that that energy transition might get slowed, and the AI roll-out perhaps made worse or compromised, because people are making bad arguments. Exponential View, can you dig into the intersection of Environment + AI? Can you help us understand what's real and what's ....a jar of muddy water from Georgia? I think we can do good work as a community if we can lay out the strategy of energy transition (for AI), the actual reality of environmental impacts, and how tactically societies are responding to making this all work. Thanks for considering!
Isn't the anthropic 'profit' actually the result of a one off discount given by Elon Musk on the quarterly cost of Colossus, conveniently the exact amount to push them into the black for the first time? Not quite so extraordinary in that context
Even the AI executive-order link to the Independent is a gem. You can almost see the Trump’s strings being pulled by the Trolligarchs. And the gorgeously pregnant-looking pot belly of his colleague.
I think the biggest issue is that Ai is turning into a spiritual debate. Either you are for it or against it. There is no in-between. We know from politics this is nothing new.
I can see it myself. There are tremendous use cases for AI and it helps me a lot with my work (and life). But I can feel how I grow more and more resentful of AI.
If we don't enable the current system to adopt AI in a healthy way, I think it will do more harm than good. The same thing is happening with social media. Substack is a step in the right direction but the system doesn't enable it. As we can already see it's turning into just another social media platform.
I'm an optimist by nature. I think it's a great opportunity for humanity to overcome our challenges.
I love it Azeem! Did you just invent the technorat? Appropriately enough I couldn’t find it on Google AI! The perfect noun of the year. In one go - especially in the context of your content!
a typo but perhaps an accurate one.
Azeem, you’re on fire! “[This] White House wants a light touch national framework” - what an aspiration from the most insensitive thick headed and heavy handed government in living and dead memory. You do them immense credit - entirely undeserved. Am I missing some irony?
Governments need to get on top of this and work out tax companies’ AI output. The economy is about to look very different and without substantial redistribution, it won’t be good.
the shape of value creation is different in the AI world, that is for sure.
and the distribution of income too!
As a techno-enthusiast, retired but now hobbyist programmer, I find AI incredibly productive. Following Azeem's January prediction that 2026 will be the year when knowledgeable practitioners will be using AI "all day, every day", I decided I could test that, and with Gemini in 8 weeks developed 5,000 lines of code on the little $5 microcontrollers I use--very smooth originally, but with increasing laggyness--a result, I believe, of usage starting to swamp available compute.
So I'm definitely a believer on the utility side. But for the finances, maybe not.
"Anthropic will turn a profit this quarter, two years ahead of schedule." Azeem--are you familiar with the profane and violently AI-skeptical Ed Zitron? His piece here asserts that the finances are impossible across the entire industry.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-too-expensive
How do you assess his claims--in particular that Anthropic will in any meaningful sense "turn a profit"?
I would love a more thorough treatment of the electricity generation and transmission issues. AI-haters have a variety of arguments, but the environment-argument seems partly based in justified concern that we're adding massive demand at the same time that our electric systems are unequipped to handle the challenge, so we should expect and are potentially seeing outsized negative environmental impacts. For people that take the environment as a serious issue (broadly), or even see it as one of the most important issues, massive-power-generation-for-AI seems like several steps in the wrong direction. Azeem, you rightly point to the future time when we'll look back and say that this was a helpful catalyst, but we still need to get there! In the US, I worry that that energy transition might get slowed, and the AI roll-out perhaps made worse or compromised, because people are making bad arguments. Exponential View, can you dig into the intersection of Environment + AI? Can you help us understand what's real and what's ....a jar of muddy water from Georgia? I think we can do good work as a community if we can lay out the strategy of energy transition (for AI), the actual reality of environmental impacts, and how tactically societies are responding to making this all work. Thanks for considering!
Isn't the anthropic 'profit' actually the result of a one off discount given by Elon Musk on the quarterly cost of Colossus, conveniently the exact amount to push them into the black for the first time? Not quite so extraordinary in that context
No. It's not really. GM is pretty decent consdiering youth of the company.
Even the AI executive-order link to the Independent is a gem. You can almost see the Trump’s strings being pulled by the Trolligarchs. And the gorgeously pregnant-looking pot belly of his colleague.