Various and Sundry

May 29, 2025

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My apologies to the regulars, I’ve been extremely busy and haven’t had enough uninterrupted time to finish any new writing this week. (I started something, but we’ll see if I can get it finished up by tomorrow).

So for now, let me share a few videos with you that I found very interesting.

On AI:

Ross Douthat interviewed Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the nonprofit A.I. Futures Project, which attempts to forecast the future of AI. They they discuss “AI 2027,” a project that predicts “the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.”

I found the discussion worthwhile, even though I thought certain aspects were unduly alarmist. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic (the AI company that makes Claude) saying that AI could take out half of all entry-level white collar jobs and drive unemployment as high as 20% in the next five years, I think a little alarmism is probably warranted.

I should note that I’m also seeing AI hype accounts (often referred to as the e/accelerationist crowd) making loud noises about how the government and the AI industry need to get together to come up with a solution quickly, or the disruption is going to cause very big problems across society. Lot of people talking about taxing AI wealth to create some kind of Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all the folks who will be put permanently out of work by the AI takeover. One example:

Another:

There’s a scenario where we all wind up living like Indians who get a cut of the reservation casino, and we don’t actually have to work, but what comes then? We’re not ready for this jelly.

Also, in case you’re wondering how far AI video has come, an update on that. Here’s a fake pharma commercial made by a guy who says he used to shoot commercials like this for half a million dollars, and this cost him only $500 in usage credits:

Here’s a trailer for an imaginary movie:

A year or two ago, AI video looked like garbage. Now, it’s so close to crossing the uncanny valley that you can see how quickly it will become indistinguishable from the real thing. And it’s generating the dialogue and other sound as well. It’s a complete package.

On Where We Are in History:

Eric Weinstein gave a talk back in March about the culture war, the dark history of emasculation, the dead-ending of physics, and our awakening from “the great nap.” It’s one of the shortest things I’ve seen from Eric, but a good encapsulation of his thought. I find him to be a very compelling thinker:

On UAPs and Disclosure:

If you pay attention to this topic at all, you may have noticed that we’re in a bit of an extended lull. After a frenzy of activity in 2024, things have been quieter than usual this year.

I did find this three-part interview with Matthew Brown, the whistleblower behind the Immaculate Constellation document that was entered into the Congressional record last November, extremely interesting. Clearly an intelligent and principled young man who is terrified for his life about coming out with this information — but also seething with quiet outrage for the injustice being done by covering this up.

His most potent takeaways:

“We live in a dream. A carefully constructed reality. We make use of a science that is tightly controlled, suppressed & distorted… People have been left behind… We are taught false science intentionally to prevent us from learning more. We live in the matrix.”

And: