Delay or scrap tax cuts? You must be joking. Is there no end to the economic nonsense Big Media spouts?

As we know, our Big Media companies refuse to accept the result of the General Election. The journalists who work for them have no interest in the democratic will of the people. They know how NZ should be - the view of NZ'ers is irrelevant to them. At present Big Media is waging a campaign against the tax cuts proposed by the National-led coalition, arguing the country cannot afford them. Even the NZ Herald's Fran O'Sullivan who is meant to be right-of-center says, "The rational choice would be to wait for revenues to restore and park the tax cuts until we can afford them". Meanwhile the deservedly bankrupting Newshub reports that, "A former Reserve Bank economist says the government's fiscal hole is so large that it is not the time for tax cuts". The quote is no doubt intended to help bolster Big Media's case that the government is illegitimate & shouldn't be allowed to do what it wants to do, since those who have been to Journalism School know everything and have decided its a bad decision.

So why would delaying or scrapping the tax cuts be an utter stupidity? Because they were formally promised by the National Party in the run-up to the election. Should the Nats not go ahead with them then the government would have no credibility. Being "credible" is defined as doing what you say you will do. Governments & central banks that break their promises cause economic chaos. Let's say a Central Bank loses its credibility. Then when it says it wants to bring inflation down, no-one will believe it and will think that it will keep printing money. Consequently people keep putting up prices - and inflation and interest rates go wild. So can you believe that Big Media & their "economic expert" mates are seriously arguing that the new coalition should shred all of its credibility by scrapping one of its most important pre-election promises? Should that happen, then none of us would care what Luxon, Peters or Seymour said anymore, since we would not take them at their word. It would be devastating to the implementation of all of their future plans. Its time that NZ Big Media stopped its utter nonsense and ended its campaign to make someone who keeps their promises look bad. Maybe breaking one's promise in that industry is par for the course.

Sources:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/fran-osullivan-luxon-needs-to-take-the-long-view-and-take-another-look-at-tax-cut-plan/IIT7IN3GZRA4NCGOTQUANDC644/

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/03/economist-warns-now-is-not-the-time-for-tax-cuts-says-government-should-focus-on-getting-back-to-surplus.html

Will a Kiwi Make us all Unemployed & Hasten the End of Humanity or be Our Saviour (and I'm being Serious)?

As our Mainstream Media are so busy reporting drivel these days, the most important stories affecting our lives are being overlooked. Oddly its left to obscure Blogs to write about them. Take, for example, the Boy from Rotorua, Shane Legg, that we've commented on from time to time before, who I met up with briefly in London many years ago at Google Headquarters after he had sold his company, DeepMind, to them. He is now Google DeepMind Chief AGI Scientist. Shane coined the phrase "Artificial General Intelligence" and is trying to achieve it. His DeepMind co-founder, Sir Demi Hassabis, has been knighted in the UK. Shane was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by the British a few years ago. Of course, Shane has not been knighted or recognized by the NZ government, since our honors list is political & comprises a large number of total nobodies, at least compared to the likes of a scientist who is on the way to changing humanity and has become one of the world's most influential people.

Anyway, aside from parochial NZ matters, a few weeks ago, Shane gave an interview, saying the Google Deep Mind models are currently at level 3 of AGI, based on the six levels Google DeepMind has developed. Level 3 is the ‘expert’ level where the AI model has the same capabilities as at least the 90th percentile of skilled adults. But it remains ‘narrow’ AI, meaning it is particularly good at specific tasks. The 5th level is the highest where the model reaches artificial superintelligence & outperforms all humans. A number of influential folks have just signed an open letter on the risks of AI, including Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT), Bill Gates (Former CEO of Microsoft), Ilya Sutskever (Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at OpenAI) and Shane Legg. That letter says "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". Yes, "extinction" means you. Shane says, "I signed this letter as I believe that AI is an exceptionally powerful technology that must be handled with great care" and "After more than a decade of being told that nobody serious actually believes in catastrophic AGI risks, I think it's fair game to now point out that that's not true".

How scared should you be, compared with climate change & nuclear war? It seems those two may shortly not even figure as serious risks compared to what's about to happen when the machines gain higher levels of AGI, which they are already doing. What is fifth level AGI, by the way? It includes the ability to mind-read (through mechanisms such as analyzing brain signals to decode thoughts), predict the future & communicate with animals (see Shane's paper below on "Levels of AI"). Could Shane & his colleagues be the new Dr Frankenstein? What scares me is that the IT industry may be taking a terrifying turn. The origin of AGI comes from computer scientists like Shane teaming up with neuroscientists like Hassabis to replicate the human brain & then go further by wildly exceeding its capabilities, whereas one of the world's best respected economists, Daron Acemoglu, argues "AI could develop as a beneficial force, however [is] being designed to replace humans as much as possible. We think that’s entirely wrong. The way we make progress with technology is by making machines useful to people, not displacing them. In the past we have had automation, but with new tasks for people to do and sufficient countervailing power in society.”

We may about to be overwhelmed by a force that makes National, Labour, ACT, the Greens and NZ First look irrelevant to everything. Are humans about to go the way of horses, whose population shrank once they stopped being useful in terms of their work capabilities?

Sources:

https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/deepmind-co-founder-practical-agi-is-decades-away-sxsw-2024#close-modal

https://www.safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk#open-letter

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.02462.pdf

https://news.mit.edu/2023/power-and-progress-book-ai-inequality-0517