Maybe I read it wrong but it seems the case being made is to overhaul the current NSF...with a different NSF? Like I'm failing to see what specifically the current government is doing to hamper AI progress that there should be a "focus on harnessing AI and out-competing China", and what harnessing AI actually means.
It means funneling public funds to AI and AI-adjacent companies that grease the wheels enough with the administration. It's like everything else: the administration decides it can control funds however it wants, regardless of what was legislated, and leverages those funds for quid pro quo transactions.
Say what you will about how to improve academics and scientific research, but the current administration's modus operandi is not the way.
I've received some individual grants from private foundations in another country. Those grants were essentially unconditional gifts, as there were some tax benefits with such grants. I could have spent the funding period surfing in Bali instead of doing research, and nobody would have had the standing to complain.
Things change if the funder wants to maintain control over how the money is spent. Once there are regulations and compliance requirements, things become risky for the individual. If you end up in a situation, where a reasonable person would employ a lawyer or another professional, it's safer to have a legal entity between you and the funder.
Some of this overhead is nonsense. A lot of it is training and fellowships. Some of it exists because the government has strong regulations to prevent self-dealing and fraud. I certainly think some of those regulations could be relaxed, but I’m not sure this administration would produce better ones.
If your research requires access to heavy duty machinery then it makes sense to partner with an institution already in possession of the goods. Be that university, national lab, or as a sole practitioner. Of course there’s some premium overhead built in to the rate. Hardware and institutional backing ain’t cheap.
I'd argue we have over-corrected on that stuff. Go back and look how processes worked in the 1950s and 1960s. People used to write relatively short proposals to do quite massive works. It's the meme: "You can just do stuff!"
I'd argue that this is one of the advantages of Anglo and Anglo-American culture that has become eroded over time. I've been reading about the British East India Company and how much discretion employees were afforded in carrying out their work: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-com.... They had like 35 employees in London and managed to take over Mughal India, which was a gunpowder empire with guns, cannons, 4-5x the state revenues and 25x the population of Britain. Pound for pound it's probably one of the most effective organizations in history.
The Federal laws on grants are Byzantine and I’m not going to defend them. I think they make research much too expensive, and the compliance costs exclude smaller businesses and institutions. With that said: the general public voted for them. They did this because politicians raised the specter of fraud (which is real) and the public does not like their tax dollars being stolen. The current administration is doing things right now that sure look a lot like the type of stuff that motivates even stricter laws in the future, and will cause blowback for years. So no, I don’t think they’re in a good position to leave us with “reforms”. If anything I think they’re going to be gone in two years and all their works will sum up to even more new laws designed to keep the next version of them in check.
> Disneyland. Walt Disney's conception of "The Happiest Place on Earth" was brought to life in 366 days. Source: Under Construction: A look inside Walt Disney’s Disneyland.
I love watching the “making of Disneyland” movies they have on Disney+. Really captures the American spirit of just doing stuff.
I'm curious if you are reading this from academics. My experience talking to history professors is a substantially less rosy view of the EIC, even if you somehow get to ignore the gargantuan amount of human suffering they created.
I’m not sure what historians could debate here. The EIC ultimately failed as a business once it became a government—the costs of governing wiped out the profits from the trade monopoly. But the administrative achievements are undeniable.
This is evident from undisputed historical facts. In the mid-18th century, England’s per capita GDP was only about double that of the Mughal Empire’s. The Mughals themselves were an organized, sophisticated, Persianate Empire with a centralized. bureaucracy. The technological advantage was incremental: e.g. iron cannons versus bronze cannons, standardized ammunition, etc. But the Mughals had vastly more manpower and state revenues. In the Anglo Mughal War, the Mughals obliterated the EIC forces with a 500,000 man army. Less than 75 years later, the EIC took over the Mughal Empire with just a few thousand European soldiers. It never had more than 35,000 European soldiers in India. That’s a crazy achievement. It would be like Amazon putting together a private army and taking over the EU.
If you read what historians wrote you'd know what they could debate. They are going to be far more informative than an entrepreneur writing about history.
Effective at what though? The article is not exactly painting a rosy picture of EIC, nor should it. More of an advertisement for laws and regulations that curtail such abuses and an educated populace that can see such a threat to their liberty.
> Effective at what though? The article is not exactly painting a rosy picture of EIC, nor should it.
The EIC overthrew a gunpowder empire with vast resources and one of the largest militaries in the world with 1,000 European soldiers and a few dozen administrators in London. There's incredible lessons in there, orthogonal to whatever you're talking about.
Moral posturing also doesn't equate to moral or ethical goodness.
That said, effectiveness actually is a frequent shortcut to goodness, in that effectiveness often leads to efficiency and efficiency is one of the best methods of indiscriminate uplifting of people in an otherwise unfair and imbalanced world.
Organizational effectiveness and efficiency is a moral virtue. It's a force multiplier that you can apply to whatever end you think is moral or ethical.
Maybe I read it wrong but it seems the case being made is to overhaul the current NSF...with a different NSF? Like I'm failing to see what specifically the current government is doing to hamper AI progress that there should be a "focus on harnessing AI and out-competing China", and what harnessing AI actually means.