Category Archives: History

Energy, History, Security

Rivian penalized for price hike as market awards Tesla “prize” for price hike

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File this one under why markets clearly are not even close to rational.

Here’s one headline from March:

Tesla raises prices across entire range

The March 15th price hikes are purely speculative to “protect” the company from consumers demanding value from cars sometime in the future.

The price increases are designed to cover higher costs for the next six to 12 months, which protects Tesla on orders for cars that it may not deliver for a year.

That’s a form of speculative/misleading surge pricing linked to stress, which Uber and Lyft have been criticized for years and still haven’t figured out as immoral.

…in the wake of the shooting, fare prices quoted by rideshare companies had skyrocketed due to understandably increased demand. […] Surge pricing spiked after a bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan injured dozens in 2016; in Sydney, Australia during a 16-hour hostage crisis in 2014; in London after a vehicle was deliberately driven into a crowd of pedestrians in 2017; and in 2020 after eight people were shot in downtown Seattle, leaving one dead.

The basic calculus here is when companies try to benefit themselves as others are experiencing higher risk, it’s a form of gouging (the kind condemned throughout the COVID19 pandemic, or that Texas wealth depends upon).

In theory someone can’t ethically spike prices for bread after an earthquake just because speculation that people in panic/desperation can be coerced to pay more.

It’s a different story when higher supply prices in the past force a change to production costs, given actual explainable inputs instead of gambling on opaquely speculative futures.

Now here’s another headline, this time in April

Tesla snatches coveted relic from GM and Ford

Coveted relic? Just call it a prize. The news here is that Ford saw its value drop precipitously when it announced a price increase in just one car model.

Ford’s stake in Rivian was valued at $5.1 billion on March 31, down from $10.6 billion at the end of 2021, the company said. The young electric vehicle manufacturer had a very difficult start to the year, marked by major difficulties in managing increases in production rates and a PR crisis after a controversial rise in the prices of its vehicles. Rivian shares thus lost 51.5% of their value between December 31 and March 31.

Tesla somehow boosted its value by doing the same thing that dramatically lowered Ford’s valuation. Right?

Moreover, Tesla announced their March price hike as some kind of toxic mockery tactic a week after they watched Rivian declare it cared about trust and would roll-back its price hike.

Rivian is rolling back price hikes on preordered vehicles following backlash from its customers. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe apologized to customers in a letter published Thursday. “I have made a lot of mistakes since starting Rivian more than 12 years ago, but this one has been the most painful. I am truly sorry,” Scaringe wrote.

The CEO of Rivian talks about pain, about caring for people and losing trust. These are concepts obviously completely alien to the CEO of Tesla, which has produced a car killing more people at a faster rate than any competitor.

It reminds me of how Ford himself in the early days became successful being a horrible fascist-loving racist who lied and stole from others, inspiring men like Hitler and Goebbels to be even crueler. He was a horrible human in so many ways there’s never enough time to document it all.

Like who really talks about Ford taking millions of dollars from the U.S. government to deliver “tractors” during WWI and… just walking away with the money delivering zero product (Ford favored Germany and took orders without delivering product in order to help sabotage Americans supporting Britain).

The Ford Motor Co., according to the War Department, received from Wilson’s administration $249,000 for tools which were never delivered. I suppose Henry has them yet. He also has the money, unless he spent it on this election. The Ford Motor Co., for tractors: Number delivered, none. Amount paid, $1,299,000. Where are those tractors? They might be converted into golden chariots, for all I know. The Ford Motor Co., for spare parts: Number delivered, none. Amount paid, $5,517,000.

The American car-maker supporting the wrong side during war was no real secret. In 1922 the New York Times profiled Adolf Hitler who said a picture of Henry Ford was hanging on the wall of his Munich office.

The wall beside his desk in Hitler’s private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry Ford. In the ante-chamber there is a large table covered with books, nearly all of which are a translation of a book written and published by Henry Ford. If you ask one of Hitler’s underlings for the reason of Ford’s popularity in these circles he will smile knowingly but say nothing.

Translation of “a book”? Come on, just say the title.

Source: Wikipedia

Goebbels literally cites Ford’s writing and publications for his own anti-semitism.

Ford’s own attitudes towards Jews were the major reason for the publication of “The International Jew.” His anti-Semitic beliefs formed along several strands from his upbringing, attitudes, and personal beliefs.

No wonder in 1925 Hitler mentioned only one American in his autobiography (Mein Kampf): Henry Ford.

Perhaps the real rationalization then of what makes Tesla so loved by completely unregulated investors is being more Ford than even Henry Ford: a company consistently awful to the planet, accusations of racism piling up, its staff and customers trying to rapidly dump poor quality products and only increasing pain?

Honestly that really does sound like Ford, but begs the question of how soon before Tesla will have its necessary Pinto/Bronco market reaction moment. How many Tesla must catch on fire, how many people dead?

We’ve all known for years that ALL the Tesla models are unsafe at any speed.

The CEO of Tesla does in fact seem to exhibit Ford-like “permanent improvisation” (abuse of trust) that signals fascism, and he repeatedly makes only positive Hitler references.

What kind of prize are we really talking about here?

History, Security

Subtle Tweak to AI Blows Up Missile Accuracy Test

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This article saying the USAF is concerned about narrow definitions of success is a great read.

In a recent test, an experimental target recognition program performed well when all of the conditions were perfect, but a subtle tweak sent its performance into a dramatic nosedive,

Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, said on Monday.

Initially, the AI was fed data from a sensor that looked for a single surface-to-surface missile at an oblique angle, Simpson said. Then it was fed data from another sensor that looked for multiple missiles at a near-vertical angle.

“What a surprise: the algorithm did not perform well. It actually was accurate maybe about 25 percent of the time,” he said.

It reminds me of 1960s IGLOO WHITE accuracy reports, let alone smart bombs of the Korean War, and how poorly general success criteria were defined (e.g. McNamara’s views on AI and the Fog of War).

History, Poetry, Security

New Chinese Poems Naturally Express Frustration and Dissent

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China, not to mention pretty much everywhere else in the world, has a long history of poetry representing encoded or even open frustration and dissent.

A Washington Post correspondent nonetheless wrote a post about surprise at poetry doing what it always does.

Student poetry contest in China becomes unexpected outlet for dissent

Students expressing dissent in poetry is unexpected? That’s like a headline announcing a student cafeteria became an unexpected place for eating.

Over the past week, the more socially conscious entries — a small minority of the overwhelmingly nonpolitical offerings — have caught the attention of Internet users. At a time when the space for debate in China has shrunk as authorities ramp up efforts to curtail criticism of government policies, the student writers have been hailed for their boldness.

“It’s indeed surprising,” said Chris Song, an assistant professor focusing on English and Chinese translation at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “I’m surprised they came out in such a tightening environment where many poems depicting the dark sides of society, or defying the authorities’ general ideology, have been censored.”

Socially conscious is being served as the opposite to nonpolitical. Can someone be socially conscious without being political? I would argue yes, as that’s been the long tradition of humanitarians who try to provide aid and comfort without affecting power — irregardless of politics.

It’s also so sadly typical of a journalist to reach out to a random professor for a power quote, as if the random academic in translation brings a sage view about political dissent and communication security models. Why not ask a professor of English for an explanation of strong encryption since it uses the alphabet?

The only surprise here is that anyone is surprised to find young poets publishing ideas of dissent.

I particularly liked this one:

“What about carrying a bag of chestnuts home/ Being showered by falling leaves/ Sitting sleepily in a school shuttle for two hours to hold hands with your partner?” the author wrote. “The pandemic has made everything into necessities. … Alas, the world of humans is full of unnecessary things.”

But I’d rather see the original Chinese. Translation itself can often be laced with politics, as I’ve explained in my presentations on AI.

Energy, History, Poetry, Security

Good 1964: “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”

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Irving John Good was giving talks in 1962 and 1963 on artificial intelligence, which he turned into a now famous paper called “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”. As he put it at the time:

Based on talks given in a Conference on the Conceptual Aspects of Biocommunications, Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, October 1962; and in the Artificial Intelligence Sessions of the Winter General Meetings of the IEEE, January 1963 [1, 46]. The first draft of this monograph was completed in April 1963, and the present slightly amended version in May 1964.

I am much indebted to Mrs. Euthie Anthony of IDA for the arduous task of typing.

That last note really caught my eye. How ironic to be giving thanks to a woman for typing this paper as it was about machines that would remove the need for women to type papers (let alone give them thanks).

It reminds me of the fact that the very poetic term “computer” was used for a while to describe predominantly female workers in the field of data entry (e.g. rocket science). Nobody other than historians today might think of computers as female, even though far too many people today tend to portray artificial intelligence as their idealized woman.

From there I have to highlight the opening line of Good’s paper:

The survival of man depends on the early construction of an ultra-intelligent machine.

What if we reframe this as early evidence of “mommy-tech”, which tends to be all too common in Silicon Valley?

In other words, men who leave their mothers and embark on a successful well-paid career as engineers in technology soon “innovate” by thinking of ways to make machines replicate their mothers.

Self-driving cars are about children being raised thinking their mother should drive them around (e.g. the Lift System of apartheid was literally white mothers driving their kids to school). Dishwashers are popular in cultures where mothers traditionally cleaned plates after a meal.

Is mommy-tech liberating for women? In theory a machine being introduced to take over a task could be thought as a way to liberate the person formerly tasked with that job. However that does not seem to be at all how things work out, because imposing a loss is not inherently translatable to successful pivot into new tasks and opportunities.

If nothing else, more of something obviously is not better when that thing is loss. More loss, more death, more destruction only sounds good in places of privilege where a rebuild or a repeat is even conceivable.

Good kind of points this out himself accidentally in part two of his paper where he calls intelligence entirely zero sum, such that machines getting more intelligent would mean “man would be left far behind“.

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind (see for example refs. [22], [34], [44]). Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. It is curious that this point is made so seldom outside of science fiction. It is sometimes worthwhile to take science fiction seriously.

Indeed, Wollstonecraft’s daughter invented science fiction (Frankenstein) for a very good reason, which I often explain in my presentations. However, Good’s analysis here is not good for reasons that rarely are discussed.

To my ears, trained in history of power contention, it’s like hearing men who have said women becoming intelligent (e.g. allowed to speak, read, educate) would represent a dangerous challenge: “docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control”.

And it doesn’t even have to be men and women in this “struggle” for domination.

Imagine a context of colonialism or American history of Manifest Destiny, which similarly centered on oppressors keeping “intelligence” of the oppressed under control.

If nothing else you can’t deny that America ruthlessly and systemically engaged in denying Blacks education, as Wollstonecraft very sagely had warned in the 1790s, which most Americans are completely ignorant about in order to keep them docile.

Perhaps containment of intelligence should be framed like filtration of water or direction of energy; rather than holding back we must seek ways to increase output on measured outcomes. It’s not that safety becomes dominant or pervasive, instead that loss is measured properly and accounted for instead of falsely implied as something inherent to gain.

Just like industrialization created an emaciation of male power, a domain shift that scared many into bunk response theory (false power projection) such as fascism, there are men today trying to gin up fear of gains (ultraintelligence) as some kind of loss.

It’s interesting to think about the answers to these power and control problems related to technology and specifically intelligence being sorted out way back in the 1700s, yet today people often frame them as recent or needing to be solved for the first time.