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griomnib | 1 year ago

This is so clearly a complete lie - in what universe is some top government official in the United States telling corporations to a) fall behind competing nations in advanced technology, b) set back our technological edge in the military, c) degrade the USA ability to spy on and control information access/controls in other countries, or d) do anything other than fish for an insider trading opportunity.

discuss

order

chrisfosterelli|1 year ago

AI promises a lot of creative destruction. There are a plethora of historical examples where elites have restricted technological development because they thought it was a threat to the status quo and therefore their ability to extract wealth from that status quo.

For example: Queen Elizabeth refusing to grant a patent for the first knitting machine, the Qing dynasty forbidding large-scale ship building, or the Ottoman Empire outlawing the printing press.

I'm not sure that this is what is happening here, but it's occurrence is not impossible.

kjkjadksj|1 year ago

You don’t even need to dip into the historical record. The government set back atomic energy research for decades out of fears of that technology being shared among the people of the world. And what do you know, the fossil fuel industry just happened to reap heavy benefit from that decision.

griomnib|1 year ago

The CEOs and investor class are the elites. Politicians answer to them, not the other way around.