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AI is Polytheistic, not Monotheistic: How AI Will Change Politics, War, & Moneywww.youtube.com/watch?v=LM7snohbu4k
285 sats \ 3 comments \ @supratic 5h AI
Technologist and founder Balaji Srinivasan to explore how the metaphors we use to describe AI—whether as god, swarm, tool, or oracle—reveal as much about us as they do about the technology itself.
Balaji, best known for his work in crypto and network states, also brings a deep background in machine learning. Together, the trio unpacks the evolution of AI discourse, from monotheistic visions of a singular AGI to polytheistic interpretations shaped by culture and context. They debate the practical and philosophical: the current limits of AI, why prompts function like high-dimensional programs, and what it really takes to “close the loop” in AI reasoning.
This is a systems-level conversation on belief, control, infrastructure, and the architectures that might govern future societies.
More insights from Balaji newsletter here https://balajis.com/p/ai-is-polytheistic-not-monotheistic
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 1h
I like the overall take, and the reasoning about targeted disruption of proprietary models through open-weight model releases, regardless of who does it 1, concurs with what I've observed and how I extrapolate that phenomenon too, as laid out in the linked tweet from the article:
China thinks it has an opportunity to hit US tech companies, boost its prestige, help its internal economy, and take the margins out of AI software globally (at least at the model level).
I just wonder how long it will last.
It's easy to now celebrate that FOSS is currently the weapon of choice in the global LLM-race and that there is evidence that the CCP strategy is to align with open weights, but I remind myself daily that this is weaponization only and not the embrace of open source principles. We often see that once market share is determined to be sufficient (or a competitor sufficiently hurt), the tools used for capture are abandoned or weakened. 2
Nit:
Polytheistic/Monotheistic feels like a bit of a misnomer, especially since the rest (of the article) focuses on utility and not that AI is in any way a higher being (because it isn't a being.) In the context of AI, poly kind of disqualifies theos, not only because there are multiple models, but also because each model can be ran multiple, independent times.
I think that if we change this into polylithic (many models running in many, decentralized instances) versus monolithic (a single grand Skynet-like "AI" that runs as a single instance, even if it's distributed), it makes more sense - but I'm not really sold on that terminology either.

Footnotes

  1. Chinese companies have done it, but Meta has done this too and at least announced (#1060587) it will continue doing it in some form. ↩
  2. You can see this play out in more mature software sub-industries like for example mobile, where Google is now "sabotaging" AOSP (#1005566). ↩
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @perscrutador 5m
In this race, there is no victory. They will have the weapon, and you will have one that cannot fight them or defend you from them. The best way to win is not to use it and to encourage people not to use it by showing them how ridiculous it is. Because if they don't see how ridiculous it is, they will pay with their own freedom. This is already happening.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @perscrutador 15m
AI is empirically decentralizing rather than centralizing. Right now, AI is arguably having a decentralizing effect, because there are (a) so many AI companies and (b) there is so much more a small team can do with the right tooling, and (c) because so many high quality open source models are coming.
There is definitely a false sense of decentralization, since any idiot can run an llm on their own network. They forget that the data is there, being processed, stored, and improving this shit. Any attacker, such as a company that cares about data and all its sacred secrets, will go away with your digital friend. The worst thing is not that, but having codependency on something that makes you lazy and dumb with the false promise of being productive.
AI is probabilistic while crypto is deterministic.
The entire text is well written, and I agree with much of what has been said. I am glad that there are experts who actually speak the truth, demystifying what many others want to elevate to Olympian heights.
I will follow what else this gentleman has to say.
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