During an interview with AI company Stable Diffusions CEO Emad Mostaque, Peter Diamandis asked the following question:
When you build a massive model that is trained on everything out there, it’s not necessarily useful. But you talk about creating models for nations, for cultures, for companies, for individuals. Can you just give us the 101?
Answered Mostaque:
I think the way that models will be built is that you should look at them as Pizza bases. We’re trying to figure out what an optimal Pizza base is for a generalized image model. Then you’ve got maybe an Indian model with a bit of culture in there, and Indian fashion in there…
This presents us with a brilliant paradigm for approaching AI and technology in general.
Technological advances can possess a homogenizing potential, increasing the viability of concentrating production or the capacity of central entities to monitor subordinates. But this can always be offset by the decentralizing effects of having that technology reworked by local communities and adapted to their own (practical and cultural) idiosyncrasies. E.F. Schumacher wrote about this potential for decentralization in his classic Small is Beautiful, with regards to industrial technology, for example, and Mostaque has opted to make his AI localization-friendly by design.
Not all communities, either territorially defined or otherwise (professional associations, trade unions, etc.), will work towards unlocking this promise, as some will be in a better position to do so than others, but political and civic platforms should seek to set up virtuous case studies and raise awareness concerning them.
An optimistic model for integrating AI in ways that do no subordinate local needs and cultures, but instead empowers them, could constitute a major plank for those political orphans of both the Left and Right who are weary of the undemocratic, levelling effect of large funding mechanisms seeking ideological conformity and increased control through ‘ESG’ objectives, so-called stakeholder capitalism, and the like.
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Carlos Perona Calvete will participate in a panel discussion on the effects on human culture of the digital age at The European Conservative’s Event ‘Progress’ or Power: Decoding the Digital Future. He will be joined by fellow panelists journalist and author Rod Dreher, Visiting Research Fellow at MCC Brussels Dr. Norman Lewis, and Peruvian scholar Miklos Lukacs de Pereny. An additional panel discussion will focus on education, featuring Professor Antonio Alonso Marcos of CEU San Pablo, Isabela Sagastuy Linares, Director of the Acton MBA in entrepreneurship at the Francisco Marroquín University, Madrid, and Sebastian Morello, Senior Editor at The European Conservative, followed by a third panel focusing on the economy.
The event will take place at the Stanhope Hotel, Brussels, on Tuesday, September 19th. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
