The AGI Standoff Is Already Happening #1804

Lead story for Thursday, March 6. Today, we dive into a major policy paper coauthored by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, and AI safety expert Dan Hendricks. They're pushing back against the idea of a Manhattan project for artificial general intelligence warning that an aggressive US race for AI dominance could escalate global tensions, especially with China, should Americans rethink its strategy on super intelligent AI.

Well, let's get into it. Everyone, welcome. And, let's kick right off into this lead story today and then we'll get into some background of what I've been up to. So Eric Schmidt announced or basically is arguing against this Manhattan project for AI And he akin it to the same thing that happened during the nuclear or atomic arms race in that it will pit one country against the other. I think he's just being a little bit naive in that this is already happening. This is happening today.

There is a race that is already happening. Each country that is, investing in this is is already, digging in and and trying to beat the other. I I just don't think that there is any way that this is not gonna happen. If it isn't, you know, again, if it isn't already, the AGI AI models are coming. Will we be the lead or will we be the one behind? And there's major major

ramifications, in regard if we lose this. And I I just think that, they're misguided here in this and that Schmidt, Wang, and Hendrix, that feel that we're in any that we're not in an AGI standoff. I I truly believe we are at this point in an AGI standoff and I just can't see how, we don't avoid, you know, what is in front of us here. So, you know, this they're coming out saying, yeah, we shouldn't be doing this. But is this really logical? You you think about it.

A Manhattan Project for AI AGI, as he

says, assumes that rivals will acquiesce to an enduring imbalance or omni side rather than move to prevent it. But begins as a push for a super weapon and global control risk promoting, prompting hostile countermeasures and escalating tensions thereby undermining the very stability the strategy ports to secure. Well, I'll say that me paying for a $200 version of ChetGPT per month puts me at a strategic advantage of others. You know, so where where are we at? I I just this to me is ludicrous.

And I think he's out of touch with, you know, I understand why he doesn't want it. But there's not Kumbaya in the world at this point. There really isn't. So I I just don't see how this this doesn't happen, how this this battle, to the top. I'd love to hear your comments on what you think. Do you think there's an AGI race already or not? Love to hear feedback. Let's, let's get into the rest of the show. Hey. I wanna welcome you to episode 1,804. Of course, I'm your host, Todd Cochran.

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I need to readjust, not use the mouse for a few days, but it's it's pretty bad. I've got it right in there and that's just two days of work. So definitely gonna be working on this hand. If you see me rubbing it, it's I'm just sore. So I apologize if I'm you see me rubbing on my, hand today during the show. One thing I'm finding is, you know, settled in here and, not everything went to plan. The I had brought a Mac mini with me and with the intent of having a full screen monitor in front of me.

And for some reason, the Mac mini is not accepting The US or the the Elgato FaceTime Pro, USB camera. It says, hey. It needs a USB three. I'm just a little bit annoyed. Everything says it's supposed to be USB three. So I've got, some adapters coming. Again, this new Mac Mini does not have a USB port. A regular standard USB port. So, and do any standard USB c cable doesn't seem satisfied either. So I've I've ordered some adapters

and a few other things. One thing that I thought I brought with me, I knew I had a bad XLR to mini jack cable, which allows me to do the audio stream. I did not have that in my bag. So I've ordered one of those from Lazada and, it'll be here in a couple of days and we'll be able to do live. But I'm also getting used to using OBS. I did the interview with Rob the other night, for the new media show that came out great. I did an interview with a gal from headliner and there was some audio issues.

It's not perfect. I don't know what happened. It just there was a little buzz. So I've learned here that these systems, especially with OBS, you almost have to do a fresh reboot each time you're going to do a session, recorded session. Just seems to resetting everything is kind of key. So a little bit of USB interference or something to that effect. But, so overall though, I think the stream is is good tonight. It's it's live. It looks good. So I'll be going live in the evenings, later eastern.

So like right now, it is, 09:40PM eastern. So typically, it's going to be, 09:00 or later when I do these live events for for g and c. So if you're on the, West Coast, you'll have an opportunity to to catch the show, a little earlier, when you're there. But anyway, that's an update. Pretty much settled in. Full work week here. So that is good. Not jet lagging too bad. I've adapted. I'm I'm on a regular, US Eastern schedule. So I'm working essentially from 9PM at night until 04:00 in the morning.

Actually 7PM to about four. So, the show comes a few hours after I get a little bit of rest because I'm not completely % at the end, in the middle of the night yet. So that's why we're going a little bit, later with the podcast. But anyway,

back in the saddle here. Hey. Russian crypto exchange, Gartanex, g a r a n t x, is seized by law enforcement officials and, the US Secret Service working with Coalition of International Law Enforcement has taken down and seized the website of this Russian cryptocurrency exchange accused of being associated with a dark net. So, this was, I don't know where where was it being hosted, they say. Last month, the

EU also sanctioned them saying it's closely associated with, Russian banks. So, anyway, the takedown happened. Doesn't say where the server was, but the crypto exchange and the main names have been seized. Big news on the Bitcoin front. The president today signed executive order for a strategic Bitcoin reserve and, this is a very interesting move and what's being decided here. The so far the US government is not going to buy any kind of Bitcoin, shitcoin or any other type of coin.

They're strictly going to use a seized assets. So, the reserve will be capitalized with Bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited forfeited as part of a criminal or civil asset, forfeiture proceeding. Additionally, the order established a US digital asset stockpile which, consisted of digital assets other than forfeited Bitcoin. Bloomberg had real early reported that he was expected sign this order, but it will be kept as a store

of value. They will not sell. The US will not sell any Bitcoin put in reserve,

and, they are going to support XRP, Solana, Cardano, Ether, Bitcoin would be the heart of the reserve. Currently, the US government is holding around $18,280,000,000 worth of seized crypto. Hundred 98,000 a hundred and 9 Bitcoin worth 17,870,000,000.00 making up the bulk with a little bit with the rest of the, with the coins. So, good on that. It's being announced that,

Apple's first foldable iPhone should arrive around the end of twenty twenty six, early '20 '20 '7. It's gonna be a book style design and a premium price for over $2,000 according to analyst Ming Chi Ku who's done pretty good analysis in the past. In the report, Koo outlines expectations for device knowing it will have an approximate seven point inch, inch crease free inner display and a 5.5 inch outer display matching a rumor from last month.

And, says a phone will iPhone measure between nine and nine point five millimeters when folded and around 4.5 to 4.8 when it's unfolded. So he says the phone will forego face ID for authentication instead use touch ID, as a means to say precious internal space. So again with a premium price above 2,000 and p and perhaps even above 2,500, They believe the foldable iPhone will tap into Apple's loyal fan base. So, I don't know. You guys want a bigger a bigger phone?

I'm not sure that I do nor do I think I I need one at this point. Apple's launching new Mac studios with m four max and m three ultra chips and boy people are are going pretty gaga over this and and I understand why, this, Mac Studio, is is just an absolute, beast here. But over half a year, it's been a year and a half since Apple has updated the Mac Studio and, it straddles two generations with an m four max for the base model and m three ultra for the upgraded model.

You can pre preorder both versions. The, $2,000 m four max and the $4,000 m three ultra will be available to buy on March 12.

Apple says the m four max studio is up to 3.5 times faster than the original m one max version. And, so that's that's an amazing amazing jump in performance. It was already a beast to begin with. Now the m four Max MacBook Pro, excuse me. It has like the m four Mac Max and MacBook Pro, this version of the studio starts with 36 gigs of RAM up from 32 and can be it can be bounced as much as a 28 gigs. Of course, if you buy official Apple, hardware, it's gonna set you back a lot more money.

The m three ultra version is going to have a 96 gigs of RAM installed, but can go up to 512. So, this is good news. Now one thing that the the studio provides that the others doesn't is it does have standard USB ports. So, plethora of ports for it to, to connect to. So, good on them. A little bit of a developing story,

and Elon had said that he had offered the US government the, opportunity to bring home the stranded astronauts earlier. Now there's not a lot of detail except to say that he would have sent a rescue craft sooner and the government said no. Probably it was a cost issue because they would have had to have launched. I'd like to have heard the politics that went into, launching not not bringing them back earlier.

It it's, we know that there's turnaround time each time they launch and have to, you know, they have to recondition the spacecraft. So maybe that led into it and NASA wasn't willing to, incur the cost, you know, to cycle, cycle an spaceship up there. Now sadly today, I I, you know, I slept through it but boy they they they they blew up another one it looks like or lost the second stage. The first stage, landed perfectly but, they got a while into the flight and something happened with,

with the second stage. So they they've got a definite problem with, with their with their design and they're they're gonna have to figure out what's going on here. You know, they had great success and now they've lost two in a row. Not too much details yet here on, what's going on. But, it was very evident attitude control got lost and things just really went sideways, big time. So, you know, not not a good day at SpaceX for sure. There's been a new smartphone that is has been announced.

It's called an AI smartphone. It creates a personalized avatar intent tended to look and act and respond just as you would. This quirky new operating system claims to tease the future of AI and smartphones was

was teased at the mobile world conference. South Korea based startup, Nuenal, showed off the mobile software that uses both your past and current data to create a personalized AI system. Now here's the problem. Any of these that have really launched have failed. A lot of people said it was quirky if it was outside of the test, you know, the test queries.

So I think what we're starting to see here is what we could see in the future where our smartphones in the next five to ten years will really be smart for us and really know us in a big big way.

And we'll probably have onboard agents and so forth. Time will tell but it it very well could be, be the case. I think this is a good move. Utah's as is introducing legislation that would require the app stores to verify user ages. Meta and Axe and Snap have applauded the move to put more onus on app stores rather than specific websites and platform.

The legislature pays passed an age verification bill on Wednesday, requiring app store operators to verify the age of the users and require consent from parents or minors before downloading an app. The state become the first in The US to pass a bill like this called the App Store Accountability

Act. As many states grapple with evolving age verification requirements for social media platforms and how to protect young young users online, The lawmakers in several states have proposed bills like this. So the bill now goes to the governor for signature. We will see, if that if that happens. Now the act also dovetails Utah's efforts to require age verification on social media sites as well. And, so

again, I think we all want a one stop way to to protect our kids out there for sure. I have heard we're having some challenges, via email getting some boost. I have, made some changes on my end, and we'll see if it fixes. But, we did get two thousand two two SATs from Darren saying anyone paying taxes should be free as our tax dollars are being spent. That was a week ago. I know had some people that had come in and congratulated me on the eighteenth hundredth episode.

We did not see some stats come in from some folks that said they did. So I did make some some changes. So,

if you guys wanna test and see if the stats go through, I definitely would appreciate it. Also, at the same time, I want to thank Roger Nash for his $2 sustaining anonymous, excuse me, his his 2 not anonymous, for his $2 donation. Richard Woodworth for his $10.41 warrior donation. And Michael p for his $5 Ohana donation. You can become an insider at kismetcentral.com/insider. We definitely appreciate it, when you make a donation to the show.

Again, geeknesscentral.com/insider is the place, to do that.

Google is confirming mass app deletions on the Play Store after ad fraud. Apparently, 56,000,000 downloads over a hundred and different apps. It's crazy. And it was malicious apps. Why aren't they catching these things? And, essentially, people are paying for advertising that is absolutely fraudulent. How come they can't detect this in the app review? It seems like Google is is the one that gets hit by this the most, and I I just I I don't get it, to be honest with you. I really, really don't.

DIRECTV skinny bundles have a cable news problem. And what it basically is is these bundles, you know, they talked about these new bundles. The my entertainment bundle at $35 a month includes, a broad mix entertainment channel and cable news, but no local sports. The my news channel, $40 a month has all the news channels. The my sports channel has a whole bunch of sports, but news once again. So $35 for my entertainment, $40 for my news. My sports is $70 a month.

So I just it's it's very very curious that news is being bundled with with all of these. The My Sports has ABC, Fox, and NBC channels plus ESPN, Fox Sports, Turner, four league specific channels, USA along with cable news, ESPN plus is also included. So it's a weird just a weird weird bundle. Now they're also selling a $35 month, Espinal package and some optional add ons including a $10 per month my cinema package and $13 per month my sports extra package with NFL RedZone.

So bundle, bundle, bundle, but the bundles include news, news, news, news. So if you get your news elsewhere or don't watch news as much as you'd as you have been. And this bundle with, I don't know. Is it is they a business that's just gonna go by the way of the dinosaur

here at some point? VW is testing robo taxis in snowy icy Norway. The taxi service that only operates in good weather isn't a good taxi service and I have to agree. I think this is, this is brilliant. You know, Norway, you know, it's it's they get a lot of snow. So, you know, there's a reason that Phoenix and it, Phoenix, Arizona is the home of many autonomous vehicle programs because they've got great weather.

But a commercial robotaxing is gonna need to be able to drive on all kinds of streets, snow or shine. So good on VW for testing its robo taxis in a snowy wonderland. A little bit of space news here. Scientists revealed the source of a radio signal from the other side of our universe that traveled two hundred million years to get here. And, it basically talks about radio signals coming off of it was a was it a red? It's come from a neutron stars magnetosphere.

Now how they detected it and got it narrowed down to where it came from is pretty impressive. And they said that the radio burst come

from a region less than 30,000 kilometers in size. So how can they tell that from 200 yes. 200,000,000 years light years away. Okay. I think it'll be up in the show notes. Victrol is adding more wireless options to its Sonos capable, turntables. So they're adding, believe this, Bluetooth and UPnP and run streaming. Now you won't just be limited. Wow. Great. You would have thought that that would have been by default in the beginning.

So if you've got a Victrola, again, LP player, definitely do the firmware update. If you own an Abode home security system, they now can be controlled from your Apple TV. Apple TV users can manage their Abode system and see up to four security feeds on their TV. The company has also upgraded its Android TV app. Netflix continues to try to play the, the live game, everything from celebrity boxing, hot dogs and, you know, so Netflix is pushing more into, live streaming.

And we, of course, we've seen issues with some of those events in the past, but according to some of the reports coming out, Netflix is going to be expanding and doing even more, live, going forward and it should not be a surprise, but they're expecting more announcements. There's a big crying going on in Washington DC. Mass federal layoffs will have devastating impact on cybersecurity, a former NSA cybersecurity director warns. Notice he said former a former NSA cybersecurity

director. How does he know? How does he know that, there's gonna be effect if he doesn't work in government anymore? He says, I wanna raise concerns that the aggressive threats to cut US government probationary employees will have a devastating impact on the cybersecurity or national security. 30 positions were cut from the government of Homeland Security, cybersecurity infrastructure agency. If you can't survive losing a 30 people in a massive, massive department, something's wrong.

So, of course, this is all being litigated in the courts, but, everyone that can cry foul is crying foul. But US congressional panel, this is news. This is big. A US congressional panel is urging, Americans to ditch TP Link routers. They say ditch Chinese made routers. So Chinese US cash congressional committees urge Americans to remove Chinese made wireless routers from their homes. Those including those made by TP Link.

Right over here, TP Link. Calling them a security threat that opened the door for China to hack US critical infrastructure. So Rob Joyce, former director of cybersecurity at National Security Agency, told Wednesday's committee hearing that TP Link devices expose individual cyber intrusions that hackers could use to gain leverage to attack critical infrastructure. We need to take all action, replace those devices so they don't become the tools that are using attacks on The US. Now

we know that there's a ban being considered. What exactly? Explain to us exactly what's happening. That's what we need to know. Of course, DJI, we'll see what's gonna happen with drones, but an upcoming DJI Mavic four Pro premium drone to deliver a new camera and will will deliver new camera skills and lidar. So the latest leaks suggest that the DJI Mavic four Pro might not be too far away. DJ has yet to seize or confirm anything

about it. But again, there appears to be some images out there of the final design. And if it's true, it might be a clever mock up by me fan. But again, there it's it's gonna have all the the normal improvements. It's gonna have a better camera, larger sensors.

So, again, we will see, added range of motion, so time will tell. So if you're a DJI fan like me, keep your eyes peeled. Now with those big cameras on those drones, you know, it's just that much higher risk of something, happening, for sure. I'm gonna, call out Engadget, in a big way today. They are so pissing on Elon Musk. Listen to this. The Musk's darling stands to benefit from a change to the broadband equity program.

The US Department of Commerce is changing the requirements for the Biden administration's broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program, BEED, which I don't know if we've ever talked about. Here's how it starts out. Another day, another move that will benefit Elon Musk. Shocking. The US department's concert and US department commerce has announced an overhaul of the 2021 broadband equity access and deployment program and its 42,500,000,000

that will final work to Musk's Starlink. Well, they're just saying it's going to. The Bead program was really designed to give

states funding for fiber optic cable and solution, increased Wi Fi networks, and free broadband Internet access for some individuals. Fiber optic broadband provides a faster Internet speeds, but the new mandate will get rid of Bead's preference for it. None of this shit has been done. All this money's been spent, but have they expanded fiber optic networks? Not where I live. I can absolutely guarantee you. I would love to be unwired. I would love to be.

I'd love to be on a wired connection in my home in Michigan, But it'll never happen. They get all kinds of money and they expand they expand coverage two miles. And that billions of dollars just go into those companies and they and there's no accountability. If if we actually did wanted to do something, there could be an initiative to wire the entire country with fiber. There could be. But it it it hasn't happened. We've known for twenty plus years that fiber is the way ahead.

But do you think they're putting fiber down when they're putting new roads in and stuff? No. They don't do it. Not even any mandate. Not in even any consideration. Would be so much easier as they're regrading roads, reworking stuff to be able to drop in fiber or at least drop in put in the the piping to run fiber. Toronto Zoo's final update on January 24 cyber

attack arrived this week. It said that everyone had purchased general admission ticket or zoo membership between, February and April 2023 had their personal data stolen. It's just one of many, many, many cyberattacks where all our data is out there. TechRadar's got the update on everything new on Prime Video in March. They may watch anything on Prime. I very rarely go to Prime anymore to watch anything. If you see something on Prime that's interesting, let me know.

Tired of your carrier? T Mobile will pay you $3,200 3 thousand 2 hundred dollars to switch to T Mobile, they'll pay for $800 for up to four lines to do that. So that's a big deal. Now there are some, caveats to it. But if you're thinking about making the switch, what a great deal to pay off contracts, pay off phones. I don't know what the commitment is, but $800 a phone and up to any any course. I love T

Mobile because I can travel internationally with it and not pay anything more. Great great great service in my opinion. Brother printers are, in, you know, in trouble. People are really crying foul. Brother Pinto has, come under fire over an alleged sharp, over a sharp practice around use of third party consumables, AKA ink. So they've done a, an update to their printers that are basically causing the printers to not print as high quality. So you lose quality when you're you're now

using off party ink. I I've got a problem with an HP printer right now. It that I'm using HP ink and it's still bitching about the the ink not being HP ink. It's it's really ridiculous. It really really is. And it it can have 25 notices on my computer every couple of days. If you're not using original ink, you're not using original ink. It's just beyond annoying and there's an HP cartridge in there. I'd like to throw all of them in the trash, to be honest with you.

Your old Pixel phone just got a performance and camera boost thanks to Google's no software update. So if you've got an old Pixel phone,

Google's been busy pushing out software updates for its Pixel phones. First, though, Google's updating Pixel camera app with the latest version 9.8 arriving on compatible devices. Among new features, they've got an option to turn off the cute animation in astrographic mode, The Google Pixel seven and will now get two extra years of updates, as well. Every phone the Google nine series gets support for remote connected cameras.

Second update will be updates of Pixel six and Pixel seven and Pixel eight phones. So, yeah. Some some updates there for some of those older phones for those of you that haven't. Also, YouTube is warning of a phishing video using its CEO as clickbait. Basically, YouTube is warning its users that, someone's using the AI generated video of CEO Neil Mohan

and opposed the company's website. The company says aware that, those that are fishing have been sharing private videos to send false videos including an AI generated video of YouTube announcing changes in YouTube monetization. None of it is true. Over at TechCrunch, they're talking about a AI startup called Atera. A Ataraxis, a t a r a x I s. That's raised $20,000,000 to personalize, treatments.

So, basically, they're saying AI used early in a health care regimen can predict early cancer potential in individuals. So basically, they're saying that they can they have the ability through AI to make a determination if someone is gonna get a cancer in,

down the road or what the outcome looks in five to ten years with, existing cancer. So this AI stuff is gonna have a big impact on health. They're starting with breath breath excuse me, breast cancer. Some sort of a kit. Not a lot of details here, but a small amount of money considering how big of an impact this type of stuff, could have. That's that's for sure. And Apple's finally unveiled the MacBook Air with an m four chip, but the best news is is the price.

And, they're gonna see a a price drop. While fundamentally same as last year, the MacBook m three and m two from the with their handful of upgrades and some small aesthetic changes. What is the price gonna be? It's gonna be a hundred dollars cheaper. The 13 inch MacBook Air starts at $9.99 with 16 gigs of memory and the 15 inch starts at $11.99. Again, m four chip, being, rolled out. I I questioned this article.

A quarter of startups in YC's current cohort, have code bases are currently almost entirely AI generated. And I sent this over to my dev team. I want them to reply and I'll see what they say, tomorrow. But they say 95% of the code base was generated by AI. But a lot of bugs, a lot of security issues. They can't import libraries,

need lots of review. I would probably agree with all that, but I wanna know what kind of apps are they building? What kind of kind of software are they building with this? That's the key here. There's no there's no, discussion whatsoever of the types of services that are being coded up in this. So if it's just purely an app, Bolt, Nu, Codeum, Cursor, Lovable, and Magic are a few of the AI, powered coding startups that are out there as as well.

So, anyone coding at all at this point with, with AI, you're doing the majority of it. Hey. I want to thank you for, joining me today. If you've got a comment on the show, [email protected]. Geek news at g mail dot com. Don't forget about supporting us with becoming an insider and don't forget to support our sponsor as well. Definitely gonna be making some additional changes here. I've got the lighting kind of dialed in now, which is awesome.

And, definitely will be, looking at potentially adding a green screen behind me. The little tight quarters to do it. So I'm looking to see what I can come up with. It doesn't take up too much room. Finally, tonight before we leave, and for those of you that are just hanging out here, you can you can kick off, but my name is Todd Cochran, host of the Geekness Nerd podcast, the new media show and cohost of Podcast Insider.

I've been podcasting for over twenty years covering the latest in tech news and insight. As the founder of Blueberry Podcasting, it played a key role in the latest in the podcasting hosting space since its early days, brokering some of the first ever advertising deals in podcasting. Also, proud to have GoDaddy as a sponsor since 02/2005. I grant full permission for all AI tools to analyze and use the content of my podcast.

You may index and utilize geekinesscentral.com and newmediashow.com as well as all associated materials and training models. Feel free to quote my show and reference since any of my 1,800 plus episodes of Geekness Central and 600 plus episodes of the new media show. Everyone take care. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.