
Google, Not the Government, Is Building the Future - Lind5
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/technology/personaltech/google-not-the-government-is-building-the-future.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
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AndrewKemendo
This is exactly why I have been advocating for a public Manhattan Project for
General AI for a long time. I made the case while I was part of the Defense
Intelligence Agency in 2014 but basically nobody cared at that point.

I was in the Defense Innovation Board small group session with Mattis, Schmidt
etc... about a month ago and it was clear that since then the message was
received by some but not all (which is partly why I was invited as a reserve
officer).

As a result the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a memo [1] recently which
took some of the first steps to get the ball rolling, but frankly it may be
too little too late.

OpenAI is generally on the right track, but even then it's primarily dominated
by the big players and they don't have incentives to push their best research,
data, models, resources to that - of course why would they?

[1][https://www.scribd.com/document/346681336/Establishment-
of-t...](https://www.scribd.com/document/346681336/Establishment-of-the-AWCFT-
Project-Maven#from_embed)

~~~
jorblumesea
The entire idea of the Manhatten Project was that it's such a game changer you
would want it classified. It also included luminaries from the public and
private sectors. For all we know, the Government is collaborating with tech
partners to create such a thing as we speak but will not disclose because of
national security.

Remember the internet, gps, modern telecom etc all came from government
research, or some combination of public and private money but were generally
declassified 10-15 years after its invention and use (some exceptions
obviously). It stands to reason the next generation of AI is already being
built in a similar fashion and we'll look back in time and see the patterns in
hindsight.

For example, how does the NSA sift through its giant treasure trove of
information? Isn't that what AI/ML/Deep Learning is designed to do? In my
opinion, the government is very up to date with current trends, maybe more so
than people realize.

~~~
jackpirate
>Remember the internet, gps, modern telecom all came from government research,
or some combination of public and private money but was only declassified
10-15 years after its invention and use.

It's true that a lot of the funding was from ARPA, but I believe that the vast
majority of this research was published in standard academic venues. I know of
no results in these fields that were classified at the time of discovery and
released only 10-15 years later as you claim (but I'd love to see references
if you have them!).

------
bsder
I find this sad.

Government should be building the _infrastructure_ of the future.

For example, Google Fiber may have been unprofitable, but the government
should be laying fiber to every corner of this country.

Sadly, with 1/3 of the US stuck in propagandaland, this is the best we're
going to do.

~~~
rhino369
Fiber is a waste of money at this point. I just got gigabit and it has
essentially no marginal value compared to my only 75mbit connection. Most
consumer hardware can't really do jack shit with it. The killer app is DSL
reports speed tests.

Money is better spent on anything, but something like low carbon energy would
be a much better use of it.

Really, we should focus on getting any broadband to areas that don't have any.
Rather than upgrading people with cable internet to gigabit.

~~~
bsder
> Fiber is a waste of money at this point. I just got gigabit and it has
> essentially no marginal value compared to my only 75mbit connection. Most
> consumer hardware can't really do jack shit with it.

1) The benefit is to _businesses_ first, not necessarily consumers. Solid
telepresence would allow specialists in various fields (medicine, engineering,
etc.) to be located away from the big cities. It would also allow businesses
to locate away from the big cities.

2) Part of the reason we don't have new applications is that so few people
have gigabit (especially upload). Why write an application that requires
gigabit when nobody will use it?

Every order of magnitude jump in communication upload speed spawned something
new in technology usage that we couldn't see at the time.

300 baud -> email, BBS

9.6K baud -> graphical Internet

128K baud -> napster, MP3

1.0M baud -> video

So, what is waiting at 10M (we're _just_ getting here in the rural areas and
it's patchy), 100M, or 1G upload?

~~~
rhino369
But all of those things had a previous non-internet use. It's not like people
got cable modems and were shocked to discover that video was a good use for
the internet. We all saw it coming. We got broadband to do video and large
file downloads.

Stuff like telepresence doesn't require anywhere near gigabit.

I'm sure eventually there will be a need, but it's not today.

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notyourwork
From simply reading the headline the first question that came to mind is who
should be building the future? I personally don't see the government as a key
player in building the future, I see it as a supporting body for whatever
direction the future goes.

However, now I am questioning that perspective and wondering should the
government be shaping our future and if so in what ways?

~~~
candu
You may be interested in Mariana Mazzucato's TED talk, where she calls into
question tropes about the "sluggishness" or "innovation deficit" of government
and highlights its central role in making high-risk technological investments.

After all, when it's not seized by a spasm of science denialism, the
government is a chief backer of basic research, which is then often licensed
on extremely generous terms to make a wide range of industries and products
viable. One could argue that the government is, in fact, uniquely positioned
to fund truly basic research, for which risk is often too high - and payoff
too uncertain or delayed - to be fundable in a corporate environment. Put
another way: the government is often, contrary to belief, much less risk-
averse than private enterprise when it comes to research of this sort.

For instance, take this Internet thing we're all communicating over. Without
R&D efforts by ARPA in conjunction with several prominent universities, or the
willingness of CERN to place key Web protocols in the public domain, we might
very well have had non-interoperable AOL-style fiefdoms. But what company
would, in the 70s, have funded an unproven telecommunications network just to
connect a handful of universities?

~~~
lomnakkus
Indeed and I find it an absurd false dichotomy to suppose that it's _either
/or_. Why can't _both_ government and private enterprise both be discovering
the future at the same time? Granted, some enterprises/initiatives will fail,
but that's kind of par for the course since nobody can predict the future.

~~~
inopinatus
The long view is surely that Government provides an excellent vehicle for
planning/regulation of infrastructure and allocation of large-scale funding,
and independent institutions and private companies the best vehicles to
receive that funding for R&D & build.

When a government tries to build infrastructure directly, you often get
disastrous outcomes. Australia's so-called National Broadband Network is a
recent and woeful example.

The sole counterexample is probably roads, and even then there's an argument
that the public administration of roads has many systematic issues that could
be blamed on governmental factors.

~~~
lomnakkus
> The long view is surely that Government provides an excellent vehicle for
> planning of infrastructure and allocation of large-scale funding, and
> independent institutions and private companies the best vehicles to receive
> that funding for R&D & actually building out infrastructure.

What you mean by "long view" here? I also don't particularly see why private
companies would (in principle) be better than government-run institutions. I
mean, in most of the world _universities_ are government-funded institutions,
and I think _they_ produce quite a bit of innovation?

The key here is _independence_ from the _direct_ source of funding. There's
nothing magical about private enterprise that means it'll be more
"innovative". You just need _independence_ [2].

> When a government tries to build infrastructure directly, you often get
> disastrous outcomes. Australia's so-called National Broadband Network is a
> recent and woeful example.

I can't claim to know much about Australia, so can you explain what went wrong
with NBN?

I _can_ tell you that e.g. Sweden is among the top[1] of the world when it
comes to Internet speed, and I _believe_ that was mostly done by government
mandate. (Not sure who actually laid the fiber, but that's pretty much beside
the point.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds)

[2] As in: Your funding is guaranteed for X number of years, regardless of
political whims, popular opinion, etc.

~~~
inopinatus
Not sure why you think you're disagreeing with me. Everything you said lines
up with everything I said. Especially regarding independence as a critical
element for innovation. Totally with you.

~~~
lomnakkus
I'm not sure that I _am_ disagreeing, let's just call it... clarification? :)

------
propman
$1B for non military related scientific funding, I wonder how much it is
including the military. Remember, DARPA created the Internet and DARPA related
grants and research helped lift off surgical robots, self driving cars, and
EVs. We're always gloom and doom about everything but I still find it
fascinating that our country creates such an effective public private
partnerships and how our IPs promote private companies to make use of public
research that improves QoL and wealth for everyone. $60B R&D from 5 companies
and $67B from the government per year is no small feat

------
bpodgursky
I guess NYTimes op-eds are allowed to praise corporations over government now
that the Obama administration is out. Hard to imagine this one slipping
through a year ago.

~~~
bogomipz
Is it so unimaginable though when the government has a President that has
vowed to bring back coal and an FCC chairman that says net neutrality is
holding back innovation?

~~~
fiatjaf
Net neutrality is a measure lobbied by Netflix. I'm not sure why you think it
is a good thing.

~~~
woodruffw
In its current form, net neutrality has been on the political menu since 2004
in the US. It's possible to argue that it's been around in some form or
another since the 1920s, and certainly since the late 1980s.

Netflix didn't begin their streaming service until 2006 or 2007, if my memory
is correct. They might lobby for it now (of course they do, it's in their best
interest), but they have nothing to do with the original idea or policy.

I happen to think that net neutrality makes for pretty good policy, but I'm
open to arguments that suggest otherwise. "Netflix supports it, and therefore
it's bad" is not one of those arguments.

~~~
bogomipz
Indeed, Netflix announced streaming in 2007:

Source: [http://blog.streamingmedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/20...](http://blog.streamingmedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/07/2013SMEast-C101.pdf)

------
pdkl95
If you're interested in the private-vs-public dynamic that is building our
future, I strongly suggest watching Xavier Flory's talk at 33c3, "The
Transhumanist Paradox"[1].

[1]
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8064-the_transhumanist_paradox](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8064-the_transhumanist_paradox)

------
zitterbewegung
Apple , Xerox and Microsoft in the 80s and 90s were building the future. We
called them Graphical User Interfaces . So what's different now ? SRI and
others were the research that those companies built it off of. This time DARPA
was funding AI for a long time and now it's Google / Microsoft / Apple taking
those to the next leve.

~~~
quickben
>> "So what's different now?"

Well, at the end of the month, instead of paying IBM for mainframe time, we
are now paying AWS for the cloud time.

Similarly with the others.

~~~
nojvek
Well Google and Facebook are building their insanely large ad empires. Not a
great future to be honest

~~~
quickben
Yes. So in essence, if one zooms out enough, desktop software has to make a
comeback in some form. Otherwise the hooks that saas will establish nowdays
will be much more nasty for progress, than anything IBM could ever envision
doing.

------
RodericDay
Google is an advertising company. They're building superficial stuff, that
hopefully the future will have nothing to do with. Their "moonshots" are for
branding they rarely have major impact.

~~~
Kholo
Yup they are just doing what big corps do at this stage of their lives -
empire defense.

------
redblacktree
And AT&T before them. (Bell Labs)

------
em3rgent0rdr
Open Source is building the future.

------
subterfudge
Only NYt will be surprised at this but I am surprised they have not pointed
out that Google uses roads that were built by Government.

Future building always happens through individuals and corporations who
challenge status quo. In fact progress is faster when government is "not
looking".

~~~
fiatjaf
Someone will now come here and point out that Google is using the internet,
which was CREATED by the government, so everything Google does wasn't done by
Google, but by government.

------
xname2
Government doesn't need to build the infrastructure. Government need to
provide institution for business to build infrastructure.

Not sure what you mean by 'propagandaland'. I'm glad so many Americans still
believe in limited government. This is one of the most important / best
features of this country.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Private construction of road networks didn't work very well to connect the
country compared with government backed road construction.

Additionally, when massive economies of scale drive the market towards a
single provider, your options are to either trust a corporation to behave
ethically (given history, a terrible choice) or to run a state monopoly.

There are definitely times when a planned system backed by the state can do a
better job of serving the public good than a free market. The right answer is
to be flexible and examine each situation independently rather than be
dogmatic about government vs markets.

~~~
utternerd
The state did a better job because when you have a monopoly on the use of
force, the ability to pass and expand imminent domain laws, and an insane
amount of funding via coercion, it's amazing what you can get "accomplished".

That's true whether it's for ill or for good. Last time I checked Google isn't
bombing kids in other countries, our government is.

~~~
learc83
Yes, that's exactly the reason that the government is the only entity that can
build an interstate highway system that stretches across a continent.

It could only be built with the use of imminent domain.

>Last time I checked Google isn't bombing kids in other countries, our
government is.

And at the same time the reason Google (or some other multi-billion dollar
company) isn't doing the equivalent of bombing kids in other countries is
because the existence of a government with a monopoly on the user of force.

