this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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When the Biden administration created a safety institute at the standards agency and then used it to run “x-risk evals, I think we kind of lost our way there,” he said. (“X-risk” is a shortened term for “existential risk” that’s associated with the idea that AI poses major threats to humanity.)

“To me, I think we need to go back to basics at NIST, and back to basics around what NIST exists for, and that is to promulgate best-in-class standards and do critical metrology or measurement science around AI models,” Kratsios said.

Kratsios’s comments about the body once known as the AI Safety Institute came a day after the White House released its anticipated AI Action Plan — which made dozens of recommendations to do things like deregulate and rid AI of “ideological bias” — as well as three executive orders that set parts of that plan into motion. The Thursday panel, moderated by CTA’s CEO and vice chair Gary Shapiro, was focused on those actions.

The discussion also followed the Trump administration’s move last month to rename the NIST-located safety institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, cutting “safety” from the name. That component was initially announced by the Biden administration in November 2023 at the UK AI Safety Summit and, over the next year, focused on working with industry, establishing testing agreements with companies, and conducting evaluations.

I get that he's most likely just "following orders" from Thiel, and probably not coming up with any of this policy, but I still hate this guy so much. I have to give Thiel credit. Once again proving he sure knows how to craft a good public scapegoat for when things inevitably go horribly wrong.

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[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The theory of liberaterianism sounds good on paper, but it does not reflect reality.

It's not a theory of how economics work, libertarians rely upon different schools for that. It's a theory of moral substantiation of any social order. That is, how to minimize the amount of "I'm threatening you with a stick, so you admit that I make law, and then we pretend this moment didn't happen and that law existed always and nobody's rights were violated". As is clear, violence and servitude are not accepted by libertarians, while rights are accepted. So it's basically still development of the French revolutionary ideas.

By theory you seem to mean a set of ready instructions. It's not a set of ready instructions like with Stalinist model (and like Khmer Rouge example shows, those too could go far worse than the bloody and inefficient, but supposedly predictable expected result).

The reality is that it is an oligarch ideology aimed at providing polemical cover to corruption and criminality.

No it's not and it isn't. Very easy to call it that now, when the oligarchs themselves "confirm" it, but 10 years ago oligarchs themselves just loved liberal democracies with left traits, because those made laws convenient for them. Your memory seems a bit short.

Perfect freedom of association does not exist in reality. There are informational asymmetries, externalities, natural monopolies (makes no sense two build two set of water pipes to a house) and whole host of other issues.

Yes, it doesn't, but the closer the better usually. Nobody claims it does. Nobody relies upon that.

From my perspective, it’s the same with libertarianism. Lots of pompous musing about freedom, but when it comes down it, it’s just a type of brand of polemics favoured by the American oligarch regime.

I agree with the comparison between Soviet official communism and what some Americans call libertarianism.

The Cato institute solved the problems of externalities? Wow, this is news to me! How did they do it?

I think you might be having hallucinations. I said that they are not trying to do things they are not intended to do. Just work with the model they have and the problems they see.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Violence and historical conceptions of servitude aren't the only way to violate rights. Rejection of externalities does not require violence or servitude; yet it is arguably a fundamental aspect of libertarianism.

I don't mean specific instructions, I am talking about philosophical perspectives too. Perfect freedom of association does not exist in a universe (reality) with externalities.

No it’s not and it isn’t. Very easy to call it that now, when the oligarchs themselves “confirm” it, but 10 years ago oligarchs themselves just loved liberal democracies with left traits, because those made laws convenient for them. Your memory seems a bit short.

I would disagree, be it in the American context or in other countries. In other countries, oligarchs don't bother since libertarian polemics aren't the best tool for the job. I lived in the US under Bush and Obama, I can't say that US oligarchs from the time "just loved liberal democracies with left traits".

"It's a war," Schwarzman, [chairman and cofounder of the Blackstone Group], said of the struggle with the administration over increasing taxes on private-equity firms. "It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."

Some other examples come to mind (no web searches, just going from memory).

Yes, it doesn’t, but the closer the better usually. Nobody claims it does. Nobody relies upon that.

While on a general level, I agree that "the closer the better", individuals who associate with libertarianism almost universally reject personal responsibility by leveraging polemics about "free" association.

Even casually opening the Cato website (did it as an experiment), reveals a clear disregard for reality and tons of open corporate propaganda. Demagoguery; undeniably pre-meditated dishonesty.