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baron816 18 hours ago [-]
Summary of why sovereign wealth funds are generally a bad idea: the governments don’t like to do things that could potentially harm their investments. If a government has large stakes in cigarette companies, they’re going to be resistant to regulate them.
There’s also plenty of opportunity for corruption. But even with safeguards, there’s going to be opportunities to steer investment towards favored companies and industries and away from those that oppose the administration or otherwise do things the administration doesn’t like (think of efforts to divest from Israel or fossil fuel companies).
“Just invest in the S&P”. Something like this would give substantial power to the index makers. But it also gives preference to already huge companies. Small, unlisted companies would be indirectly penalized by having to compete against companies with government funding.
aeternum 17 hours ago [-]
In the grand scheme of things, the gov claiming a perpetual 21%+ of all income of AI (all) companies is not all that different from owning a small percent of said AI companies. The financials and even incentives are basically the same.
It's somewhat entertaining to watch both sides argue about this as if it's some major difference when both are actually aligned on wanting bigger gov and more gov ownership/control of corps (one party via taxes the other wants it direct).
JumpCrisscross 14 hours ago [-]
> the gov claiming a perpetual 21%+ of all income of AI (all) companies is not all that different from owning a small percent of said AI companies
We don’t count reduced taxes as a loss in the same way as losses on equities owned. That changes the electoral incentives.
jfyi 17 hours ago [-]
> gov ownership/control of corps
Corporations are literally government sponsored entities. Where do you think they get their limited liability and separate legal personhood from?
We should own a piece of every single one for that service we provide.
aeternum 15 hours ago [-]
That's my point, the gov already owns a ~21% royalty on the income of every company that operates in the US via the corporate tax. And it's more than that if you consider other taxes.
scottyah 17 hours ago [-]
Who is we and what is ownership? Taxes are nice because it's just straight cash, no meddling (other than the myriad of laws they must follow). "Ownership" meaning you want whatever political party/group in power in the moment to able to directly command businesses on top of adding laws and taking money seems a bit like overreach to me, in addition to being costly resource-wise.
jfyi 17 hours ago [-]
We the people who the government represents as a whole, and it can take many forms, yeah, but I am pretty partial to direct ownership of a percentage. The value we provide to these entities deserves it.
skinfaxi 16 hours ago [-]
> but I am pretty partial to direct ownership of a percentage.
What does that look like in practice?
jfyi 16 hours ago [-]
I was thinking we just move fast and break things. A little disruption never hurt anybody. I'm sure we can have all the kinks worked out in 2 years.
16 hours ago [-]
franktankbank 16 hours ago [-]
That becomes a tail wagging the dog ehh? Fed the one giving them money and the corps tell you what to do. Where does democracy fit in?
baron816 16 hours ago [-]
As they say, if you owe a million dollars to the bank, the bank owns you. But if you owe a billion dollars to the bank, you own the bank.
When an institution becomes financially dependent on something for its revenues, that something gains a lot of power over the institution.
jfyi 16 hours ago [-]
> that something gains a lot of power over the institution.
Yeah, that hypothetical is terrifying! It's not like our entire government is in the pocket of the largest of these corporations anyway! That would be an entirely new scenario that we should avoid at all costs!
baron816 15 hours ago [-]
There are countries where the entire government is the pocket of the largest corporations. The US is not one of those countries. It can get much worse if you allow it.
jfyi 15 hours ago [-]
We clearly disagree, but that's ok.
idiotsecant 14 hours ago [-]
Just because you have a bee in your car doesn't mean you should ignore the hive growing in the trunk. It's silly to reject all threats because a less severe version of that threat already exists.
idiotsecant 14 hours ago [-]
I would make the case that government ownership of the machinery of commerce makes both worse. The money and power inherent to this arrangement is corrosive to both sides. Keep them separate and let each fight the other to the proper tension point. If we want revenue there is already a way to do that - we call it taxes
geysersam 16 hours ago [-]
This is theory. If we look at the real world, do sovereign wealth funds typically invest in cigarettes? I don't think so. I think they typically have more stringent ethical guidelines than most regular funds.
I'm typically not in favor of sovereign wealth funds anyway. Because I don't buy the idea that the free market is always more efficient than the public sector, and if that's the case then investing the funds in the public sector, schools and improving health and social outcomes, is better than buying SpaceX even if they're going to the moon.
Of course there are exceptions.. if a country has more money than they know what to do with, it makes sense to pile it.
voxic11 16 hours ago [-]
Its not a sovereign wealth fund, but China 100% owns China Tobacco and has generally avoided policy changes which could encourage people to stop smoking because it could hurt this extremely profitable company (China Tabacco has about 2x the before tax profit of Apple). https://www.theexamination.org/articles/deadliest-company-in...
jfyi 17 hours ago [-]
> the governments don’t like to do things that could potentially harm their investments. If a government has large stakes in cigarette companies, they’re going to be resistant to regulate them.
The ideal in a democracy would be that we behave as adults and make the decision where to draw the lines.
...and yeah, corruption is a problem, but it's going to find a way regardless of what we throw at it. We would be better off handling the existing corruption than worrying about some hypothetical future corruption as a reason we can't try new things.
baron816 17 hours ago [-]
I think what we’ve found with the current administration is that people will use every last surface for corruption and power that they can. The more you opportunities you give the government to be corrupt, the more corrupt they’re going to be.
scottyah 17 hours ago [-]
Also of note: this is not the first administration to take controversial action. Pretty much every government ever has shown that more power = more corruption.
klaff 16 hours ago [-]
Also of note: this administration has taken corruption to levels not seen before.
redwood 17 hours ago [-]
Doesn't need to be the S&P. Can simply be the entire market float market share weighted
baron816 17 hours ago [-]
That’s still providing an implicit subsidy to listed corporations
17 hours ago [-]
FrustratedMonky 17 hours ago [-]
There's a reason every country with a sovereign wealth fund is a dictatorship, its a really handy way to launder money, steal. Which is why Trump wants it.
carefree-bob 17 hours ago [-]
Norway is a dictatorship?
Avicebron 16 hours ago [-]
To play devils advocate, the fact Norway has a coherent society/population makes it dictatorship of the demos. Which of course is evil since people who refuse to integrate into society aren't allowed to dicate terms.
FrustratedMonky 16 hours ago [-]
One working model versus a dozen others? Kind of like, I didn't wear a seat belt and lived, so guess we don't need them.
js73js8 19 hours ago [-]
> A isn't X – it's Y
rtkwe 19 hours ago [-]
It's common in AI writing because it's common in human writing. Juxtaposition is a useful rhetorical flourish.
the_sleaze_ 18 hours ago [-]
Only sort of true.
Consider the OpenAI case of "goblins". The models overfit to a specific type of output. Goblins was a specific case of this type and needed to be corrected.
> We unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures. From there, the goblins spread.
rtkwe 17 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying all of LLMs writing quirks are naturally derived just this one. It's a bit like it's overuse of em-dashes, they're not common in general writing which is why it stood out, but they do show up a fair bit in other types like scientific writing. My wife, who's a chemistry PhD, has bemoaned the association to me that she liked using them in her writing for papers and now it looks like she's using an LLM.
quxbar 17 hours ago [-]
The joke's on us, today's highly rewarding LLM language tics are tomorrow's vernacular (ALLMVE?)
axus 19 hours ago [-]
Fashions change; ideas that look AI-generated are out of fashion right now.
I've never really cared about fashion.
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
If something becomes a strong negative symbol, it's intelligent to recognize that because failing to do so can harm your goal, e.g. communication.
As an extreme example of this, no one calls it a "Charlie Chaplain moustache" and if you wear one people will avoid you, no matter how much you insist it's just because you like Charlie.
pixl97 18 hours ago [-]
For HN users yea, for everyone else, more information required.
add-sub-mul-div 19 hours ago [-]
If it was used as sparingly, appropriately, and skillfully in AI writing as in human writing then AI writing wouldn't stand out as so mediocre and cringe.
rtkwe 18 hours ago [-]
AI definitely over uses it but it's important to not just see one indicator and assume.
add-sub-mul-div 18 hours ago [-]
That's true. Distrust of human writing is one of the unavoidable downsides of LLMs that we were warned about.
rtkwe 17 hours ago [-]
You can see it too a lot in "debunking" of videos and images. 4 years ago anything unbelievable was CGI now it's all just getting called AI instead.
keiferski 17 hours ago [-]
Isn't it usually "it's not just x, it's y"? As in, it's X but even more than X.
The title has the opposite meaning: it's not X, but it's Y.
tom_ 17 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the subject is AI, so you try to get a crashingly obvious AI trope in there somewhere. Those are the rules.
(Disclaimer: didn't read the article. It's paywalled.)
dist-epoch 18 hours ago [-]
In general news paper article writers don't pick the title of their own article, it's someone else picking it for engagement (maybe using AI).
Also, FT is too big to not be aware of AI writing, and to not have internal checks (Pangram, ...)
AI speak infects human language now, people start to talk like LLMs.
jfyi 18 hours ago [-]
People already talked like LLMs, how else would they have learned to talk like that?
"It isn't x, its y" was a common device before, AI has just highlighted it's use. Em dashes on the other hand are the devil's work.
Borealid 17 hours ago [-]
The specific problem isn't "it's not X, it's Y", it's using that pattern where X and Y are not correctly related categorical items.
Yes, I know how I structured that sentence.
"It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI. "It's not an octopus, it's some type of crustacean" does not. The thing that makes it an AI tell is specifically FALSE analogy.
jfyi 15 hours ago [-]
> "It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI.
This is either hyperbole or it hasn't been re-checked since around 2022.
ShinyLeftPad 17 hours ago [-]
> A doesn't belong to category X, it belongs to category Y.
FTFY. If you confuse ∈ for =, that's on you.
pickleglitch 16 hours ago [-]
I didn't read because of the paywall, so I don't know how good their argument is, but I'm very skeptical about trusting The Financial Times to determine what is and isn't progressive or techno-imperialism.
velcrovan 19 hours ago [-]
I can’t read the article. Do they explain how it’s more imperialist than what we have now?
Using capital ownership to distribute the proceeds of an industry whose raw material was the creative output of everyone everywhere … seems like the neatest and most obvious possible solution to AI displacement and provenance. But I can see how it might make a few dozen people less likely to be billionaires.
StableAlkyne 19 hours ago [-]
AI;DR* they want to build data centers in other countries that are less able to resist their construction. This consumes water and electricity of the host county. The central thesis is that if the less-than-willing exploitation of foreign resources for the enrichment of the more powerful country is imperialism, then this is a form of imperialism.
* The clunky turns of phrase and jarring introduction of analogies reads strongly of Claude to me, at least
19 hours ago [-]
MadrasThorn 18 hours ago [-]
anything that gives US an advantage in any market/competitive arena is basically imperialist.
But basically, the argument is that a government shouldn't accrue and own appreciating assets mixed with AI skepticism.
velcrovan 19 hours ago [-]
Thanks. I'm astonished how poorly written and poorly argued the piece is. No discussion or even mention of existing SWFs. Trying to frame SWFs as something leftists should oppose because of… some vague hand-waving about an Edwardian policy?
> The smartest analysis on democracy and authoritarianism around the world—straight to your inbox every week.
Sounds like a rational and clear-headed individual.
Fricken 18 hours ago [-]
The purpose of any technology is to expand one's powers, and whatever those powers expand to is conquested. Bronze was imperialist but iron was more imperialist, and gunpowder was more imperialist than that. Oil was even more imperialist and now chips and AI are having a go at it. Even the harnessing of fire and the cultivation of spoken language was imperialist, and a necessary step towards today's AI boom. It's the the latest ring to rule them all.
PAPPPmAc 17 hours ago [-]
Interestingly to your example, there seems to be a rough consensus that the bronze age collapse (~12th century BC) was related to the fact that iron production was less centralized than bronze, which required multiple long-distance supply chains that could be monopolized by regional powers. Different folks point the causality in different directions.
Some technologies are inherently more centralizing, some are less so.
I agree that most technologies can be applied for imperialistic interests, and the tech space is full of things that seemed decentralizing and have since been captured, but it's not quite law.
IC manufacturing is basically a modern global palace economy full of shipping and single-player choke points and large capital investments, so it leans hard to the centralizing side.
It's less clear that AI will work that way, if it turns out that it is relatively practical to do useful work on locally hosted models it might end up being somewhat decentralizing.
Or, we'll get technological and/or regulatory capture, end up paying rents to technofeudalist douchebags with data centers and proprietary models who bribe governments and peek at user behavior and try to use their already vast resources to preemptively capture any value before anyone else can, until the next major perturbation.
alephnerd 19 hours ago [-]
Well yeah, hard power is a major impetus behind sovereign wealth funds - be they ADIA, Temasek, Master Trust, QIA, PIF, CIC, etc.
But this is the world we live in.
If you put your head in the sand, you become the EU - squeezed by trade wars against China and the US with two large scale conventional wars within your near abroad.
inshard 18 hours ago [-]
That paywall is techno imperialism
trilogic 19 hours ago [-]
Can´t read the article, why is this article still here? Is HN doing ads now, pfff?
There’s also plenty of opportunity for corruption. But even with safeguards, there’s going to be opportunities to steer investment towards favored companies and industries and away from those that oppose the administration or otherwise do things the administration doesn’t like (think of efforts to divest from Israel or fossil fuel companies).
“Just invest in the S&P”. Something like this would give substantial power to the index makers. But it also gives preference to already huge companies. Small, unlisted companies would be indirectly penalized by having to compete against companies with government funding.
It's somewhat entertaining to watch both sides argue about this as if it's some major difference when both are actually aligned on wanting bigger gov and more gov ownership/control of corps (one party via taxes the other wants it direct).
We don’t count reduced taxes as a loss in the same way as losses on equities owned. That changes the electoral incentives.
Corporations are literally government sponsored entities. Where do you think they get their limited liability and separate legal personhood from?
We should own a piece of every single one for that service we provide.
What does that look like in practice?
When an institution becomes financially dependent on something for its revenues, that something gains a lot of power over the institution.
Yeah, that hypothetical is terrifying! It's not like our entire government is in the pocket of the largest of these corporations anyway! That would be an entirely new scenario that we should avoid at all costs!
I'm typically not in favor of sovereign wealth funds anyway. Because I don't buy the idea that the free market is always more efficient than the public sector, and if that's the case then investing the funds in the public sector, schools and improving health and social outcomes, is better than buying SpaceX even if they're going to the moon.
Of course there are exceptions.. if a country has more money than they know what to do with, it makes sense to pile it.
The ideal in a democracy would be that we behave as adults and make the decision where to draw the lines.
...and yeah, corruption is a problem, but it's going to find a way regardless of what we throw at it. We would be better off handling the existing corruption than worrying about some hypothetical future corruption as a reason we can't try new things.
Consider the OpenAI case of "goblins". The models overfit to a specific type of output. Goblins was a specific case of this type and needed to be corrected.
https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/
> We unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures. From there, the goblins spread.
I've never really cared about fashion.
As an extreme example of this, no one calls it a "Charlie Chaplain moustache" and if you wear one people will avoid you, no matter how much you insist it's just because you like Charlie.
The title has the opposite meaning: it's not X, but it's Y.
(Disclaimer: didn't read the article. It's paywalled.)
Also, FT is too big to not be aware of AI writing, and to not have internal checks (Pangram, ...)
AI speak infects human language now, people start to talk like LLMs.
"It isn't x, its y" was a common device before, AI has just highlighted it's use. Em dashes on the other hand are the devil's work.
Yes, I know how I structured that sentence.
"It's not a frying pan, it's a revolution" sounds like AI. "It's not an octopus, it's some type of crustacean" does not. The thing that makes it an AI tell is specifically FALSE analogy.
This is either hyperbole or it hasn't been re-checked since around 2022.
FTFY. If you confuse ∈ for =, that's on you.
Using capital ownership to distribute the proceeds of an industry whose raw material was the creative output of everyone everywhere … seems like the neatest and most obvious possible solution to AI displacement and provenance. But I can see how it might make a few dozen people less likely to be billionaires.
* The clunky turns of phrase and jarring introduction of analogies reads strongly of Claude to me, at least
But basically, the argument is that a government shouldn't accrue and own appreciating assets mixed with AI skepticism.
SWFs are a great tool for reducing inequality and influencing corporate governance. see, e.g. https://peoplespolicyproject.org/project/creating-an-alaska-...
> SWFs are a great tool for reducing inequality
Closer to Europe, Norway and Ireland have also successfully used SWFs and SDFs.
Edit: can't reply
> "Journal of Democracy"
It is a journal just like Nature. This is a paper he published within the journal. Policymakers don't read blogs.
[0] - https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/liberation-techn...
> The smartest analysis on democracy and authoritarianism around the world—straight to your inbox every week.
Sounds like a rational and clear-headed individual.
Some technologies are inherently more centralizing, some are less so.
I agree that most technologies can be applied for imperialistic interests, and the tech space is full of things that seemed decentralizing and have since been captured, but it's not quite law.
IC manufacturing is basically a modern global palace economy full of shipping and single-player choke points and large capital investments, so it leans hard to the centralizing side. It's less clear that AI will work that way, if it turns out that it is relatively practical to do useful work on locally hosted models it might end up being somewhat decentralizing.
Or, we'll get technological and/or regulatory capture, end up paying rents to technofeudalist douchebags with data centers and proprietary models who bribe governments and peek at user behavior and try to use their already vast resources to preemptively capture any value before anyone else can, until the next major perturbation.
But this is the world we live in.
If you put your head in the sand, you become the EU - squeezed by trade wars against China and the US with two large scale conventional wars within your near abroad.