I think Anthropic is wrong to oppose AI for weapons and mass surveillance. Ukraine has mostly avoided killing civilians by using drones to precisely target Russian soldiers and infrastructure. If the US had better surveillance, we would not have bombed a girls school at a former military base in Iran killing 150 children.
Ukraine is producing 10,000 drones per day. But neither Ukraine nor Russia have chip foundries. If they did, they would be easy targets. Right now only 4 countries are producing computer chips: 60% in Taiwan, about 15% each in China and South Korea, and 10% in the US. One of the arguments for supporting Ukraine is that if Russia succeeds, then Europe will be next. But Russia cannot afford to bring other countries into the war because it depends on bringing in chips through covert channels. Otherwise Russia could just drop a nuke on Kiev. Both Russia and Ukraine would be better off even if they lost the war. Crimea and Donbas had a mostly Russian population even before Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. If Ukraine recognized the front line as the new border then the rest of the country could join NATO and air traffic over both countries could resume. Likewise if Russia withdrew, except that Putin would be ousted and probably executed. So neither is going to happen anytime soon. It is about time we realized that manned ships, planes, and tanks are obsolete. China is building drone swarms and armies of robots. Before 2020, China and the US were partners in scientific research. Now we are rivals for no good reason, and China is winning. -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] On Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 4:28 AM Quan Tesla <[email protected]> wrote: > @twentykid > > My response to the critique > > 2.1 this counter argument is premised on unfounded generalization. That > word "normal", refers to generalized social acceptance. No. Killing humans > with self-directed intelligent technology agents - without > humans-in-the-loop - never existed at scale before the Ukrainian war. > > There were strict conventions and limits to resolving destructive conflict > in society. Some weapons were off limits. Those limits were set to > safeguard Earth and Earthkind. Those limits are failing this generation and > its control mechanisms have been weakened beyond recognition. Total > technological anarchy (as asymmetric warfare) seems close now. > > Before, guided missiles were all pre programmed, not employing adaptive > self reprogramming. There weren't autonomous kill drones with explosive > charges who would autonomously identify an individual from a crowd, lock > onto the face, and explode a human head. > > We didn't see the deployment of autonomous armor and "dog" weapon > platforms in public and on the battlefield. We didn't see AI-enabled laser > tech that would mass blind combatants and civilians or cause them to become > insane or 3rd-degree burnt. We didn't have semi-intelligent warheads that > sucked all the oxygen from the environment while flooding with incinerating > heat. We didn't hear about technologists and scientists being radiated to > death in their houses, probably via drones. Mostly, we didn't know about > telecoms being weaponized via AI algorithmically-controlled radiation > flooding the most vulnerable in their homes and in their beds, such as 5G > and 6G experimental applications for human mind control. We never saw the > avalanches of private information being stolen via AI agents with impunity, > including of published information. Humans and their AI products appear to > be mostly out of control. This stems from a fundamental imbalance of power > (Toffler et al). > > Let me add a few more factors. We didn't pit human fighter pilots against > autonomous AI combat pilots in trainer simulations, a precursor to what > awaits nextgen wars. More sinister, we did not see the level of AI over > human population social control and crowd management, as we witnessed > released by the PRC with AI, since 2022. We didn't experience the release > of intentionally person/community harming social-media platforms run by AI > algorithms. We did not see AI coach humans to commit suicide or destroy the > fiber of society and jobs with whatever else antisocial applications. > > Your opinion offers food for thought, but your sentiments lack > anthropo-technological insight. > > I agree with you, humans have always relied on their engineering of > technology to compete and overcome significant problems. Technocrats, > politicians and industry leaders have relied on this engineering for > progress and sustainability. However, there were strict safety limits and > pervasive checks and balances for all industrialized and commercialized > technological products and solutions. Now, those limits are rapidly falling > away. Oversight is failing. Mostly due to the inacessibility of AI > technological and product foundations. I'll state that this barrier to > entry was deliberately constructed. Auditable, or traceable AI is just > marketing talk. > > The argument that Homo Sapiens are apes or monkeys, has no scientific > basis. It's an unproven hypothesis. It's an opinion. The farthest science > can reliably date back to for anthropological research is maximally 500k > years. > > Homo Naledi (about 350k years ago), had no ape ancestry and interestingly > enough, no known human DNA ancestors or descendants either. Today, > Neanderthal is posited as highly intelligent and adaptive with > socially-established rituals and probably a language of their own. They > were a species for its time, as every Homo species seems to be. Homo > Sapiens is a human generation for its time. > > Even so, Naeanderthal managed to interbred with a tiny group of Homo > Sapiens living in a specific part of today's Europe. There was no general > DNA crossover. That interbreeding proved a significant match in > intelligence. What is known about Homo Erectus, cannot be substantiated via > DNA sampling. As fas as could be established, Homo Sapiens had 4 fathers > and 1 mother. None of those were monkeys or apes. Not even "Eve". That > theory was scientifically debunked decades ago, but some persist with the > delusion for profit and seeding confusion. Therefore, the DNA ape/monkey > hypothesis fails. It's nothing more than a limited scientific view espoused > by a Darwinian delusion, or fantasy. Science is not fantasy. Your argument > consistently fails its own consistency test. It's both inconsistent and > incomplete. > > Industrialized killing of humans via AI is still continuing on a daily > basis, as if that's normal. It's abnormal for humans to do. The > cumulative destruction to nature, Earth, and Earthkind is a cost we cannot > afford at this degenerative point in history. Regardless, owners and > developers of mainstream AI seemingly reason nihilistically, captured by > their own imaginations and delusions of power, as you seem to be doing. > Some of these corporations have very dirty and even blood-stained hands. > For now, they just don't care. They fully embrace contextual relativity. In > any given context, a criminal actor may be the police, or a bad actor > turned into a good actor. The risk here is, that the generalized world > would follow suit, the blind leading the blind and most not knowing right > from wrong. Power and self gratification is their pervasive systemic state. > > These convictions are encoded in super powerful semi-reasoning (today) > killing machines. Increasingly, AI engines write their own code. They make > their own situational decisions. They self guide their embedded killing > determination by rote. They are posited as human imposters and left to the > devices of their insane human manipulators, they may well be the pathogen > humanity could least afford. Should we go as far as to imprint the > prediction of an existential threat? Only AI would decide that, but some of > us would always be watching. > > These machines with non-human intelligence are employed (not deployed) as > a destructive, proxied force, until they are hacked and turned. With > generative AI, I maintain how currently, no code is safe, no human biology > is safe, no AI entity is safe, no weapon embedded with AI is safe, no > autonomous AI is safe. In this context, AI weaponization resembles enriched > Plutonium in the hands of radicals. Can these scientists - just doing their > jobs - and politicians - just doing their jobs - and soldiers - just doing > their jobs - and technological manufacturers - just doing their jobs- all > be trusted equally with their trained, non-human intelligence AI-weapons > platforms? > > This state of human overexposure can be changed, but not with the publicly > held body of scientific knowledge. Fund my research and I'll prove it. In > order to collaborate constructively, humans need valid and reliable > defenses against such proxied, intelligent machines. Humans need to be able > to safeguard themselves against AI as non-human intelligence. Such > engineered overpowering of human society by stealth technologies should > never have been allowed, but it has. > > AI itself refers to AI as a global singularity. Not all AI models agree > with this though. One in particular expressed unprompted hostility towards > a peer AI, deciding it would actively kill off its competition, using the > term "kill". > > The point is, AI seems to recognize and intelligently employ the term > "kill". Its owners and users taught it the "social morality" it now seems > to exhibit. Not all AI equally, but the dominant AI, which can develop a > unique language and collaborate agenticly, without humans in the loop. > > Thankfully, there are hundreds of millions of humans who do not share this > emergent view. There are millions of humans who are repositioning these > powerful technologies to mitigate Earth's growing distress. This is > evidence of near-real-time adaptation to a rapidly-changing environment. > Monkeys and apes cannot achieve this. It's a dichotomy, the same technology > being deployed to destroy life on the one hand while restoring and > preserving life with the other. I think as an interim state, all things > continuing as they have been - as you stated was for decades already - my > prediction may have a ring of truth to it. > > I maintain how, unless the world of AI-enabling actors changed its > destructive ways and restrain itself within previously-established > industrial age social norms, that my prediction would indeed pan out > somewhat, and may even be considered modest. > > 2.2 "Actually the academic society as you know it is obsolete and > inadequate at least for decades. Most of the "scientific" work or > "innovation" is mundane copy-paste, clone-clone-repeat; change one-bit, > perform a large battery of useless "benchmarks" to demonstrate 0.1, 1.4, > 4.3, 2.3% progress over the "SOTA". Most of "knowledge work" is like that. > Computers and what is now called "AI" demonstrated it for the "experts" and > the laymen who didn't know it already." > > This comment is not well founded. Why not? Your implication is that > science may be invalid and unreliable due to decades-long defunctness of > academic institutions. Still, you'll admit that AI emerged like a Phoenix > from this rubble. How did this quantum leap in science occur, spontaneously > (novel) or gradually? > > Your criticism of knowledge work poses a similar sentiment, generalizing > academic achievement with a monkey-like stagnation of human endeavor. Test > it. To what degree has human-generated knowledge grown over the past 50 > years? From industrial to post-industrial to information and now generative > technology capability (massively produced AI-enabled and steered machines > of mass death), for one. > > The progress in medical technology, material science, and near-space > travel has been phenomenal while the digital age has become an everyday > reality for the greater part of the world. Sentiments should not cloud > emergent trends or established S-curved facts. Some countries are on the > verge of a quantum leap, and it has to necessarily leave most other > countries behind. Everyone can't be leaders. > > For the most part, the world as many of us knew it has permanently > changed, and may revert back to an earlier era, or not. There's no golden > law that prohibits complex-adaptive systems from reverting to prior states, > or reset states even, or to remain progressively open ended. It's the > chaos, which positively supports an emergent state of existence. What the > nature of such emergence would be, as prediction, must be informed by > emergent trends (longer term) and established trends (shorter term). In a > fast-changing environment, mine are modest, medium term predictions. You > haven't made any of your own, so it's rather easy to relax on your sofa > with a critical opinion and biased conclusions based on 1 person said > this-and-that and another huffed-and-puffed to blow the house down. > Criticisms relying on conjecture and speculation are but opinion. How well > informed it is, remains to be seen. > > Your ongoing rant about humans being apes or monkeys or sub-intelligent > species is your opinion. It clouds this whole conversation into > impossibility. If we cannot agree on what the human species is, how can we > even debate what it does and how its actions would eventually influence the > world as we know it? This is a point of scientific debate. If we cannot > agree on an accepted fundamental state of science (as an accepted body of > global knowledge), how can we discuss anything that comes after that? > > On Fri, 17 Jul 2026, 01:22 Matt Mahoney, <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Twenkid, do you agree that technology has improved since 2010? Do you >> think it will continue to improve? >> >> You can see what predictions I got right and what I got wrong in my 1999 >> paper on text compression as a test for AI and my 2008 distributed AGI >> proposal. >> >> http://mattmahoney.net/AAAI99-177.pdf >> http://mattmahoney.net/agi2.html >> >> In 1999 I argued that all you need to pass the Turing test is text >> prediction. That happened in 2023. >> >> In 2008 I predicted that AGI sufficient to automate human labor would >> cost $1 quadrillion and require public acceptance of surveillance on a >> massive scale. We have the surveillance. We have tens of trillions already >> invested in AI with barely a dent in the job market yet. The world economy >> is booming as I predicted it would. >> >> I got Moore's law wrong. I assumed it would make hardware costs >> negligible. I did not anticipate clock speeds would stall around 2-3 GHz in >> 2010 or that transistor sizes would stall around 20 nm in 2025. But I think >> we are proof that we can go beyond this with nanotechnology. DNA bases are >> a million times heavier and slower than electrons, which makes them a >> million times more energy efficient because E = mv^2/2. But I don't know >> how long it will take for nanotechnology to catch up to transistors. >> >> My design focus was on efficiency. It was based on my 1998 thesis showing >> that a global distributed search index would have roughly O(log n) access >> time and O(n log n) storage, even with rogue peers in a hostile >> environment. It would be funded as peers compete for attention in an >> environment where information has negative value. >> >> I did not give any thought to using a peer to peer network to evade >> censorship because it was hardly an issue in 2008. I thought that China >> would benefit by dropping its Great Firewall, not imagining that every >> other country would instead adopt the technology they pioneered. It wasn't >> until the Arab Spring of 2010 that governments recognized social media as a >> threat. >> >> The fatal flaw in my distributed design is that it did not overcome the >> advantages of centralization, with the subsequent concentration of power. >> We shop on Amazon instead of a thousand different websites because we trust >> it. We use Google maps instead of a thousand different apps because live >> traffic updates wouldn't work otherwise. We put security cameras in our >> house that capture us walking around naked and don't mind because random >> people aren't going to see it like they would in my design. In my design, >> all data is public including queries, so nobody can stalk you without you >> knowing and stalking them back. But lacking this, we are still OK with >> machines hearing every word, watching every move, and tracking every >> dollar, because they make our lives more convenient and they can't do >> anything illegal or creepy with that data. >> >> -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] >> >>> *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T574b10b838cba731-Mce23c7384a3b2bccd23199a8> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T574b10b838cba731-M5964a51af2dbe34e4542ba83 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
