AI is scaling!

 

Future is not in scaling

 

It is not scaling but optimization. In nature species survive using sophisticated strategies with less and rarely by scaling and growing bigger and bigger or using brute forces. Nature optimizes through utilizing shape and conserving energy. System as it optimizes there is a synergic elegance that sync with forces of nature. Sophistication is simplified play of various complexities. As we move towards quantum the more these nuances are understood better is the chance to tap on to source. I recall mentioning researchers using c elegans as a template to use few neurons to create a neural system for self-driving vehicles (visit me at https://depalan.blogspot.com/2024/05/how-creative-is-ai.html). Imagine the level of sophistication of slime mold that doesn’t even have neuron! Imagine sophisticated strategies of microscopic viruses like bacteriophages and elegant devastatingly brilliant evolutionary response by bacteria. To know that crispr might just be tip of iceberg sends shiver. These species are tapping on iterated strategies evolved for 3.5billion years. Homo sapiens meanwhile evolved only about 0.2millions years. Suffice to add microorganisms work in survival of humans through symbiotic associations, so we too are involuntarily tapping on billions of years of intelligence of bacteria while we study viruses and worms to understand cutting edge evolution.

DeepSeek Chinese AI chatbot is a bombshell, some are calling it sputnik moment. More than an occasion that will spur AI race between US and China -which it surely has as the gap close, what it is indicating is paradigm shift in AI progress (frankly I was expecting Japanese to come with more-from-less AI tech, they really are quite good at miniaturized sophistication!). DeepSeek's R1 chatbot has used fewer and less sophisticated chips that outperforms models developed by OpenAI, Google, Meta and Anthropic across various benchmark and overall quality. It has shaken the AI industry. It questions the focus of AI infrastructure.                   

What a wonderful book!

 

Reading a book is an investment of time and effort. So, you have to be careful what you choose to read. Located in a society with mostly low caliber pretentious writing, the collective premium on quantity rather than quality, it become an arduous task to choose good books. It took me few months of reading the best of Indian writers to realize the pattern that lack the fervor and sincerity, it is a patch up staid work of patronizing and proprietorship meant to awe the herd, an extension of self as entitlement, guardian of society as wise writers and creative people automatically elevated as overseer of wellbeing of unfortunate mass. In this crass conception river is no longer river but god’s braid, land becomes godly mother, trees are undoubtedly god’s miracle…such self righteous sacred sickness...and from this blessedness of profound disconnect from reality they carry persistent civilizational itch and overbearing self-assigned responsibility to search meaning of their goddamn life. Writing in all-encompassing flourish and uncommon confidence lacking qualities and restraints of self-reflection with meagre skills they rush to quainter aspects and bigger questions of life for which they are naturally fated to find answers, existing all the while in plain sight as greatness of ancient mythical wisdom and uniquely gifted cave dwelling ancestors. Having appropriated miracles through words in simultaneous immunity from nuance or empathy they stampede for recognition for their nonexistent abilities, to claw to greater showcase, a grim battle to anchor their mediocrity into rewards, positions, recognitions without which they face abyss of anonymity hence all the attributes and desperations to social climb of middle class -the one that truly connects them to common people by default, and validate veneer of sophistication over crude nouveau rich amass. It is when I read best of international writers that I realized amazing depth of lack in Indian writing -ofcourse with very few and rare exceptions. As a reader it took lot of effort to create framework for accessing better writing.               

I have read the best of fiction over the decades, and shifted to short stories due to personal lack. Recently as reality barge with alarming consequences I shifted to nonfiction to tighten my bearing, I truly thought I am done with fiction. And then I came across Orbital by Samantha Harvey, it is the premise that excited and immediately riveted me. Never have I read a fictional perspective from space, and none written as far as I know. What further fascinated me was that it is not science fiction, I do love to read science fiction but possibilities of factual description from space in the framework of fiction was too good to miss. I have watched NASA footage of earth from space (stunning movie ‘Gravity’ too) as also videos of inside of space station and always wondered about day-to-day life, feeling and thinking through this space capsule observing as they are something very few humans have (few minutes in space left William Shatner in deep sense of sadness and grief “made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound”). A limited writer would’ve messed it up but Harvey is brilliant. “And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre, just giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.” The book is a prose on life from space, a poetry of life in all its fragile splendor. It is quite a thin book (capsulated as a day in space with 16chapters as 16 orbit around earth with sunrise every 90minutes), but I spent near about two months to read it. “Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentering ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave tossed offering of peace.” It is such a beautiful expression that you reread paragraphs, pages and chapters (for instance the last page I read for three days!), and start to have surreal dreams about earth as if moving across the window. This is a defining book in many ways, this book places iconic earthrise picture (William Anders, Apollo 8, 1968) in its entire perspective, overwhelming context. “Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold -to protect this huge yet tiny earth. This thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness. This thing, that is, given the poor choice of alternatives, so unmistakably home. An unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright. Can human not find peace with one another? With the earth? It’s not a fond wish but fretful demand. Can we not stop tyrannizing and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend? Yet they hear the news and they’ve lived their lives and their hope does not make them naïve. So what do they do? What action to take? And what use are words? They’re humans with a godly view and that’s the blessing and also the curse.”

“It seems easier on balance not to read the news. Some do and some don’t, but it’s easier not to. When they look at the planet it’s hard to see a place for or trace of the small and babbling pantomime of politics on the newsfeed, and it’s as though that pantomime is an insult to the august stage on which it all happens, an assault on its gentleness, or else too insignificant to be bothered with. They might listen to the news and feel instantly tired or impatient. The stories a litany of accusation, angst, anger, slander, scandal that speaks a language both too simple and too complex, a kind of talk in tongues, when compared to single clear, ringing note that seems to emit from the hanging planet they now see each morning when they open their eyes. The earth shrugs it off with its every rotation. If they listen to the radio at all it’s often for music or else something with an innocence or ultimate neutrality about it…something with a sense of play, of things mattering and then not mattering, of coming and going and leaving no mark. And then even those they listen to less and less”. Reading these lines seems something similar to what you experience in meditative silence in nature, the stillness that lasts in profound awareness and becomes part of your being, an armor against overwhelming crass. But then there is also an inescapable realization “…then one day something shifts. One day they look at the earth and they see the truth. If only politics really were a pantomime. If politics were just farcical, inane, at times insane entertainment provided by characters who for most parts have got where they are, not by being in any way revolutionary or percipient or wise in their views, but by being louder, bigger, more ostentatious, more unscrupulously wanting of the play of power than those around them, if that were the beginning and the end of the story it would not be so bad. Instead, they come to see that it’s not a pantomime, or it’s just not that. It’s a force so great that it has shaped every single thing on the surface of the earth that they had thought, from here, so human-proof.”     

Apart from each and every sentence what I found particularly brilliant was unique take on Apollo11 moon landing, the view of Michael Collins -the third astronaut who stayed behind while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. “Everybody is invisible -Armstrong and Aldrin inside the lunar module, humankind unseen on a planet that could easily, from this view, be uninhabited. The strongest, the most deducible proof of life in the photograph is the photographer himself -his eye at the viewfinder, the warm press of his finger on the shutter release. In that sense, the most enchanting thing about Collin’s image is that, in the moment of taking the photograph, he is really the only human presence it contains.” So is the disquieting reference of Sergie Krikalev -the soviet cosmonaut who got stranded in space for almost a year as Soviet Union disintegrated. “Humankind is not this nation or that, it is all together, always together come what may. He sits in timeless stillness amid the module’s perpetual eighty decibel machine vibration while around him the green Velcroed flammable walls close in airlessly. And each day and week the crack on its hull widens and Krikalev’s smile seems more and more vaunted and more and more godly. Let there be light, he seems quietly to say”.            

     

The great unravelling

 

In the aftermath of World War II, as colonial power retracted, deep state consolidated all across the world. In weaker nations with nascent compromised democratic institutions powerful outside forces arbitrated these consolidations. These seized entrenched channels of colonialism to create post-colonial exploitation couched in language of democracy and liberal values. So instead of nurturing democracy they used democracy as source of control. Democratic values were undermined to consolidate democratic institutions as source of power. It activated feudal framework, regressive institutions and primal associations as easy mechanism to ensnare and control herd. So eventhough people voted, ostensibly to different political parties, it is similar kind of people who get elected with incremental addition that valued status quo, and these elected leaders were further controlled by superstructure of deep state. A clear case of deep state control is spread of neoliberal extractive system that used language of democracy to consolidate and used feudal nepotistic connections to extract. That this extractive mechanism seems immune to immense misery through widening inequality and imminent collapse of climate is telling. They use manipulated media controlled in neoliberal value systems to create and control narrations as also keep the herd distracted. Any aberration is ridiculed and stamped out as threat.

In the garb of democracy with no connection to reality, unhinged in self importance, they promoted extreme as natural choice, extreme crude choice of ‘identity’, extreme form of religions (specifically conveniently constructed ‘minority’ through narration control as their lynchpin of benign caring self in an increasingly apparent compromised self that was easy for common people to decipher). Meanwhile to prevent scrutiny they undermined the ability by degrading primary education and access to health, as the crass spread they positioned as civilized blessed arbitrators. As the misery grew people reacted in ridicule (one word that saw realtime shift into complete opposite of its meaning in shortest of time is ‘woke’, a pejorative sarcasm that consolidated through social media) and as the anguish multiplied opportunistic forces saw the widening gap while the deep state posing as liberal wallowed in self-assured arrogance. Reactionary forces consolidated through majority extremism and calls of sentiments connecting to glorified past that is being threatened. If democracy had percolated through humanist institutions, if liberal thinking had consolidated through quality education, then it would have worked as anchor so as to not allow misuse of democracy couched in language of liberal to nurture any form extremism and regressive values. If liberal was rooted in humanistic concerns and not a compromise to capture power by sinister feudal forces to maintain control under the garb of democracy and high sounding ethical concerns then we wouldn’t be in this impasse in crucial juncture of human history. If systems of control were demystified and negated to help humanistic values to percolate to each individual we wouldn’t have seen en masse regressive consolidation. Liberals were living vicarious life by exaggerating concerns to make themselves relevant. Arrogance prevented awareness of shifting reality -nor were they really bothered as long as anything that gave them traction to showcase carefully tailored benign self -essentially built on misery of common people.             

Make no mistake the opposing forces, although unleashing chaos across the world, is still a binary within the framework of neoliberal value system except that the pretentions of liberal is scaled down or abandoned. The regressive majoritarian is viciously seeking to occupy the centerstage. The viciousness is the key attribute here, it carries the rage of people left neglected and ridiculed, it effectively channelizes the helplessness of common people in an increasingly insular manipulated world. Deep state created system of control and the political parties occupied this spectrum of influence in different shades of opportunism. What Trump represents (as also those with authoritarian tendencies but supported by populace) is the promise of uprooting status quo, the ensuing chaos in the carefully constructed liberal world. There is an unraveling of liberal control deep state, the hypocrisy of those in power in last many decades will be exposed. And I surely hope it is devastating so that we get to reevaluate the meaning and significance of liberty and freedom and how it is consolidated through democratic institutions. The sinister system of control posing as liberal need to be exposed. Since democracy has not percolated this chaos will consolidate another system of control -the conservative religion and opportunistic faith. Secular humanism was misused by sinister forces and has lost ground to retrieve herd. What is clear is that juvenile religion will give ample space for neoliberal system to extract and keep the herd rivetted.                  

Facts matters

 “Journalists have a set of standards and ethics. What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform.” Marria Ressa (courageous Filipino journalist who runs Rappler news site as she faced death threat from Duterte). Ms Ressa’s statement carry the right emotion and channelize growing concern of obfuscating facts by powerful entities. But she is wrong in her assertion here. Based in India I can vouch that media (within this people posing as journalists) do not have standards nor set standards and will not be allowed to, most don’t even understand nor are concerned about anything referred to as ethics. This is why this statement is so naïve indeed embarrassing, it seems an attempt to salvage semblance of normality in increasingly chaotic by invoking righteousness of past and entitled possessors. This will not do. If you have to safeguard facts then you surely will have to understand the context of mainstreaming facts and the forces at work. Fact is understood by the way it is worked and presented. Traditional arbitrators of facts have created narration that is being strongly challenged thanks to democratization of views in recent times. Views vary facts don’t. But the context of facts and the backstory of power and control that deviously try to align facts with narration needs scrutiny and evisceration. Those posing as media do not have carte blanche over controlling facts. That era is thankfully over, and except few nobody is regretting. The contemporary challenges need new narration that sync with the changing reality, a new means to address evolving complexity. Invoking past as standard will not help, it is simplistic folklore if not devious attempt at control. 

Mainstream media is about control, and within that control creating narration of goodness (consolidated as morals, closely aligning with dominant forces and normalizing systems of control) to gain validity among populace. It surely isn’t about fact dissemination but using the ruse of fact to stream views as it fits their agenda or immediate opportunities presented. With increased awareness common people know the crassness that goes under the garb of media. To expect media to be arbitrators of facts is foolhardy. Facts without context is meaningless. When the meaning is facilitated by narrow concerns and exploitative forces then facts are compromised. Facts becomes means for heuristic opportunism and control by few through everyday events that they carefully choose to focus. The system of control works within the framework of entrenched feudal values as it seeks opportunities to consolidate sentiments for easy regressive link with herd. Mainstream media, especially legacy media, primed in neoliberal value system is here to perpetuate extractive systems. They use language of democracy and euphemism of concern to gain and consolidate their authority through fig leaf of malleable facts. 

There are courageous honest upright journalists in India too but these are not mainstream. They work tirelessly at the grassroot or some subaltern publications (I too worked briefly in these), they question dominant narration as also bravely investigate corruption (in a primitive society that has corruption normalized from sanctum to pyre) and crucial matters that are adeptly avoided by mainstream media since it jostles the applecart of influence. Most are stifled and stamped out by powerful forces entrenched in the system -that mainstream media side with for gain (who carefully work to consolidate influence from proximity of power, through largesse, awards/posts/positions so on). Many of these committed people -who carry true meaning and import of journalism have shifted to online, it is also cheaper, raising issues that matters to common people without fear and have created substantial influence among common people. They are brutally dealt by the system while many are killed, the latest one in bastar recently by corrupt contractors -who are almost always nurtured by powerful forces. What is also to be noted is that mainstream ‘journalist’ (to call these opportunists journalists is a stretch and an insult on idea of democracy) use this opportunity to pose as empaths to vicariously position as active member of threatened section precariously fighting for justice meanwhile quite aware that the truth is anywhere near these posturing. They are just positioning for gain, appropriating someone’s sacrifice to consolidate their stature as also validate the exploitative system through valiant attempts to connect to ethics of dead idealist journalist with their dexterous turn of sentence and semantic flair adept to twist facts to wherever the wind blows, they deem to share these ethics and with narration control they presume they are successful in this con act -atleast to the envy of their close circle. These are fixers, word defecators and loud mouths, well placed in the system to understand the nuance of the game. They cannibalize on society and parasite on people. They perpetuate system of control and streamline primitiveness in the euphemism of modern. These are rotten ooze of festered world.  

Facts are important. Freedom of expression is equally important. In the era of social media nothing can be curtailed. Red line is threat of violence and invasion of privacy, as also rights of children. Social media challenges systems of control by giving voice to common people. It has diluted influence of entrenched interests. So, the question now is what to do when facts clash with freedom of expression? It has to be put in the context that facts weren’t really that sacred till recently as also easily manipulated by working the context, giving prominence to selected facts over the other as decided by few. Some facts were chosen and consolidated into entrenched narrations through views of powerful, it assumed legitimacy and credence over people. What has changed now is faster dissemination and far-reaching debilitating consequences. There are serious attempts by bad players to willfully spread lies and disinformation, incite people with conspiracy theories. There need to be stricter laws to deal with disinformation that create real life consequences. Consequence and context decide severity of punishment. Meanwhile common people need to be equipped in critical thinking as a long-term strategy, and I hope responsible societies are investing in these crucial areas (this blogger created module without much success, mediocre insulated Indians will take time). Twitter/X has created this innovative method of ‘community notes’ without hindering freedom to express. I think it works fine, and has helped to give context and attempts at verified facts. We also need an independent agency (not controlled by powerful vested interests) to provide these services that is also simultaneously open to scrutiny and verification. There is a need for innovative solutions in the fast-changing world. You also need to treat people with respect and empathize with their predicament and concerns -the world is in flux, while severely dealing and persistently negating deconstructing demystifying systems of control. Do not underestimate potential of free thinking. It is what defines a human. 

 

Anchoring ethics in cesspool of moral relativism

 

It is irresponsible to not cherish hard won values that anchor progressive concerns and humanism that form basis of democratic institutions. Democracy values freedom, liberty and equality, and is an evolved system that emphasis potential of each life and offer possibilities of collective advance. Ofcourse there can be restraints for common good, for equity and justice, as also common-sense contextual exigencies. But what must be made unequivocal is that this restraint cannot be under the guise of power or means to control. This is the problem that emerges in irresponsible societies wallowing in hedonistic luxury normalized through transactional and neoliberal exploitative systems padded by benefits from colonial past. This has to be dealt.  

Democratic egalitarian values must be firmly anchored to institutions as it percolates into society and individuals. It is a crime, indeed a crime on humanity, to negate or attempt to diminish these foundational ethics. What is unqualified in this cherished mooring is equality of race and gender (an evolved society will not have such distinctions). There really cannot be any compromise, there is no moral relativism on these crucial matters that hinges fundamental rights, indeed there cannot be any negotiation that diminishes humanity.

Any system that creates ascriptive distinction is threat to democracy. Feudal structures negate egalitarian values while patriarchy infects minds, nepotism undermine equal opportunity. Indoctrination of young minds in exceptionalism of juvenile primitive fantastical conceptions like religion remains a serious threat to humanity. Systems of degradation cannot be and will not be allowed to be source of diversity. Diversity is quaint and nuanced understanding that nourishes societies and strengthen democracy. Diversity of culture that values and respect each life, diversity of ideas that seeks brighter possibilities and question status quo entrenched negations, diversity of expressions of each according to their potential. Advanced societies must value and firmly anchor foundational ethics into institutions while constantly strive to inspire and advance humanity. Society must evolve and synergize with the pace of technology to imbibe the best possibilities. Diversity also means dismantling or actively negating systems of control that doesn’t provide equal rights to individuals. Foundational nonnegotiable ethics means each must have access to all possibilities, for instance what is allowed for males must be equally be allowed to females, any system that seeks to curtail these is a serious threat to humanity (for instance FIFA men's cup cannot be allowed in Saudi unless women's cup allowed - women free to play in any street). Quality education is foundational to inclusive society, there is no space for indoctrination of young minds hence must have access to all possibilities and ability to tolerate differences. The basic identity of a human is to be a human first, to be a fully human. The first task of egalitarian society primed in democratic values is to create systems to nurture this fully human. To be aware of all that is possible. A fully human will naturally be able to negotiate challenges of evolving world and assimilate collective sensibilities. Compromised countries like Britain were exceptionally irresponsible and have severely degraded the world as they attempt to obfuscate human rights, its exaggerated patronizing presence in contemporary scene is due to its colonial past and reach of english.

Historic injustice must be corrected through inclusive systems and surely not by devious morphing and maintaining of extractive exploitative systems as benevolent.  A human must be valued as a human. This is as basic as it gets, and from this foundation inclusive diversity build.

Arise the dreadful

 

Don’t forget and don’t allow manipulators to pose otherwise: this is an orchestrated result of extractive systems actively arbitrated by neoliberal values (that normalizes transactive exploitative relations) supported by fantastical exceptionalism of religion (that consolidates regressive values and isolate from existential reality). The liberal posing narcist dark empaths actively chiseled this binary lacking complexity for ease of narration for selfish reasons to consolidate power while degrading institutions and deviously consolidating very same extractive systems for benefits. The megalomaniacal psychopath is what we get, and if Trump wasn’t there somebody equally toxic would be created, just that social media fast forwarded it. We have moved from assault of attention economy to horrors of AI weaponized intention economy. Meanwhile neoliberal market values and religions continues to snip into foundational institutions like education and society, and indeed severely intrude and crass the meaning of life itself. US is a lesson that is set to repeat in an anchorless world incapacitated to value meaninglessness and enlightened possibilities of individual iterating into collective. Much of world is stuck in sad loop of waste that extractive systems present as glitter.  What should have been a nuisance, a regrettable distraction, the crass is systematically nurtured into mainstream centerstage.