I was wondering where you’ve been. This is a lot to absorb, and I hope it is successful because when everything collapses, will your system still run? If so, this might be our only link to communication with others everywhere. Was that your primary motivation for doing this? And that fact that you did it in only a month is nothing short of miraculous. Nevertheless, I miss your political takes on everything, so the questions above seem pertinent.
It was so many things... The move by Trump to get his friends to get control of TikTok and media companies. The ICEBlock thing. Peter Thiel and Palantir. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon groveling at the White House. The amount of money that Doordash, Uber, Fiverr, Upwork, etc. take from workers... The more I look around the more I see the very fabric of how we communicate/live today, most of which depends on the internet, getting more and more consolidated in the hands of a very few people whose interest is in direct conflict with humanity's well-being whether their goal is to manipulate or to extract.
Meanwhike, we are at the whim of these individuals almost like they're Greek deities. That needs to change.
There's still a long way to go for ATS to do everything it needs to do, but I'm confident that it's possible if enough people get behind it. There are several bugs I still need to fix for the basics to work 100% reliably and then from there it's a matter of adding capabilities (text/audio/video calling, work marketplace, etc.)
On how long it took me, to be fair, it was only possible because I used AI to iterate through my system design. And this is a part of the project that I think I want people to really consider in relation to the big picture: AI is not going anywhere. The oligarchs will use it to become even more powerful. We can either sit back and complain about it as they become absolute rulers over us, or we can use AI to take back our freedom from them. Some of the code I have in ATS does "stuff" that is at the level of complexity similar to how Netflix uses code to determine how their videos get routed throughout the world. Some of it is a combination of technologies in ways that I don't think have ever been combined before. Some of it, I architected what I needed the code to do and how it needed to work with other components and the AI was able not only to point me to the existing technology but to implement it the way I needed it to. In short, this would have been impossible for a single individual to achieve given the sheer number of fields (from cryptography to logistics and networking - it would've taken me 10+ years studying different fields before I could put this together). So, at a meta level, this project is not only about building a new internet owned by people instead of corporations, but to convince people that if we are going to defeat the oligarchs, that whether or not we choose to use Ai is likely play a deciding role.
Right? The ARPAnet belonged to the government & was under something usually described as "benign neglect." As soon as Al Gore opened the 'net up to commercial interests--plus we got graphical interfaces--monetizing it was on. Well, the monetizers are doing a great job...for themselves. While The Rest Of Us Die.
I keep saying this, & nobody has called me a Nazi or deluded yet, but I think social media s/b regulated. If you recall UseNet, there were moderators for each UserGroup, but you still had to have asbestos underwear. I don't know why anybody would think it would be any different under this wild west corporate rule. We need some sanity here, & chasing profits is not going to provide it.
I've given this a lot of thought and the only thing I can can come up with is something akin to how we elect representatives to enact laws, but instead moderators agreed upon by the public who are entrusted with flagging problematic content for potential review/removal if enough of them flag it.
The key issue however is insulating them from corporate/ideological control.
I was wondering where you’ve been. This is a lot to absorb, and I hope it is successful because when everything collapses, will your system still run? If so, this might be our only link to communication with others everywhere. Was that your primary motivation for doing this? And that fact that you did it in only a month is nothing short of miraculous. Nevertheless, I miss your political takes on everything, so the questions above seem pertinent.
Oh and now that I got the basics up and running I definitely want to try and find a balance between writing and coding.
It was so many things... The move by Trump to get his friends to get control of TikTok and media companies. The ICEBlock thing. Peter Thiel and Palantir. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon groveling at the White House. The amount of money that Doordash, Uber, Fiverr, Upwork, etc. take from workers... The more I look around the more I see the very fabric of how we communicate/live today, most of which depends on the internet, getting more and more consolidated in the hands of a very few people whose interest is in direct conflict with humanity's well-being whether their goal is to manipulate or to extract.
Meanwhike, we are at the whim of these individuals almost like they're Greek deities. That needs to change.
There's still a long way to go for ATS to do everything it needs to do, but I'm confident that it's possible if enough people get behind it. There are several bugs I still need to fix for the basics to work 100% reliably and then from there it's a matter of adding capabilities (text/audio/video calling, work marketplace, etc.)
On how long it took me, to be fair, it was only possible because I used AI to iterate through my system design. And this is a part of the project that I think I want people to really consider in relation to the big picture: AI is not going anywhere. The oligarchs will use it to become even more powerful. We can either sit back and complain about it as they become absolute rulers over us, or we can use AI to take back our freedom from them. Some of the code I have in ATS does "stuff" that is at the level of complexity similar to how Netflix uses code to determine how their videos get routed throughout the world. Some of it is a combination of technologies in ways that I don't think have ever been combined before. Some of it, I architected what I needed the code to do and how it needed to work with other components and the AI was able not only to point me to the existing technology but to implement it the way I needed it to. In short, this would have been impossible for a single individual to achieve given the sheer number of fields (from cryptography to logistics and networking - it would've taken me 10+ years studying different fields before I could put this together). So, at a meta level, this project is not only about building a new internet owned by people instead of corporations, but to convince people that if we are going to defeat the oligarchs, that whether or not we choose to use Ai is likely play a deciding role.
Right? The ARPAnet belonged to the government & was under something usually described as "benign neglect." As soon as Al Gore opened the 'net up to commercial interests--plus we got graphical interfaces--monetizing it was on. Well, the monetizers are doing a great job...for themselves. While The Rest Of Us Die.
I keep saying this, & nobody has called me a Nazi or deluded yet, but I think social media s/b regulated. If you recall UseNet, there were moderators for each UserGroup, but you still had to have asbestos underwear. I don't know why anybody would think it would be any different under this wild west corporate rule. We need some sanity here, & chasing profits is not going to provide it.
100%
I've given this a lot of thought and the only thing I can can come up with is something akin to how we elect representatives to enact laws, but instead moderators agreed upon by the public who are entrusted with flagging problematic content for potential review/removal if enough of them flag it.
The key issue however is insulating them from corporate/ideological control.
Inneresting idea. I think the selection process back then was basically whoever would consent to taking on such a crappy job. LOL