Weekly Roundup: 4D Chess Edition
Israel-Gaza/US and AI
For those who don’t know, “4D Chess” is a description for people or situations that are playing at level higher than what would meet the naked eye, and with which makes determinations about how future events will play out. I think we are currently situated in several large-scale 4D scenarios.
One issue with 4D chess is that sometimes it is a self-feeding cycle, in that one move in 4D world necessitates 40 more 4D moves. Like a reverse Inception, the point where the game ends and the return to reality resumes gets blurrier and blurrier the more you play. Let’s take a look at a couple of scenarios.
Israel-Gaza/US
Headlines today are saying that the US is threatening to approve a resolution in the Security Council that would call for a cease-fire along with the release of the hostages. The US is applying a lot of public pressure on Israel to scale back its efforts because many of Biden’s vocal supporters love Palestinians and do not understand the threat Jihadism poses to the world in general and America specifically.
At the same time, the US is still sharing a ton of intelligence with Israel and discussing plans for invading Rafah (which for some reason must be approved by the US). So something isn’t making sense here.
It makes even less sense given how supportive Biden was immediately following October 7. I’m not here to say that politicians never lie or don’t change their minds. However, I think Biden is smarter than his average voter (especially the vocal ones - see above).
As such, I think Biden is making a big show to keep his supporters happy, while quietly pushing things forward otherwise (back to the average voter intelligence thing). Everyone knows that a Security Council resolution means nothing and has no force, yet, it makes great headlines and shows that Biden is “doing something”. Israel is the front and possibly only line right now in the battle against Islamic radicalism and that alone is too valuable to Biden to let slip away because the alternative means American troops, which no one wants right now.
What it basically does mean is that as soon as the hostages are found and returned, the fight will have to end, no matter Hamas’s status. All assuming that this occurs before November 5 and that Biden remains in office (and Bibi too for that matter).
Update: Russia and China have vetoed the resolution. Initial reports are saying it is because it included a clause calling for the release of the hostages. In reality, I think there are a few other things going on here. One, relations between the US and China/Russia are not great right now. This was a great opportunity for both of these countries to show up the US on the world stage (even if their intention was to support Hamas over Israel). So the odds that anything will get passed in this committee is low in the near future. Futhermore, for a long time, China has been trying to get its foot in the door regarding the peace process. Already, an increasing amount of our trade has been with China and China is also overseeing more and more larger projects in Israel. The same can’t really be said for Russia at this time, though in the early days Russia did seek to have its influence in how our country was run, and much of our social system, I would like to think is a result of Russian influence in it early days.
AI
I know, I know, I haven’t done an AI roundup all week. Sorry about that. I’ve been busy at work and took a one-day break in the middle so time has been tight. I’ve also been preparing for Purim. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been researching!
In the past week or so, there have been two big interviews in the AI space. One was with President Obama on Decoder and the second was with Lex Fridman and Sam Altman (my first time hearing of either of these people/podcasts).
As an aside, I can’t see any images from The Verge on my computer at all. I think their image hoster blocks non-US IPs, but that just doesn’t make any sense. Whatever.
I found the Obama interview to be very interesting, and I actually surprisingly agree with a lot of what he said. He basically thinks that we can’t have good AI regulation (I’m not sure any is needed right now anyway) without understanding what it is, and that the government is notoriously bad at acting fast enough to make meaningful regulations. So he is really advocating now for there to be more AI knowledge within the halls of power so that when the time does come to regulate (copyright stuff, followed by freedom of speech are probably the two most burning legal-based issues in AI at the moment) the regulations are made intelligently and logically. I think what will really get the gears turning is when a viable application for these AI applications really comes to the fore (no, doing 14% of a developer’s job isn’t going to cut it).
The Sam Altman interview (which I haven’t finished reading) is where 4D chess comes into play. The second portion of the interview covers Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and reading how Sam Altman views it, it kind of looks like Elon was/is feeling threatened by Altman’s successes and visions.
As such, the lawsuit perhaps wasn’t so much intended to bring attention to OpenAI and its iffy corporate classifications, rather it was very much an attempt to keep Musk relevant in the AI space and in the news in general, a la how Biden is playing the Israel-Gaza war. After all, at the end of the day, any publicity is good publicity, especially if you’re the one pushing and paying for it.
But how long can you lawsuit your way to the top? How long can you smokescreen supporting the only warriors against the greatest threat the world has known since Hitler? What is Musk’s exit strategy here? How long until the average voter wisens up (this can go either way)?
4D chess, a game with no rules, only next moves.