AI Superpowers: China’s Sputnik Moment (Part 2)

April 13, 2019 Hunter Wallace 2020 Election, Alt-Punditry, Capitalism, China, Economy, Humor, Infrastructure, Race Realism, Racism, Technology 19

Editor’s Note: This will be another long day on this website. I’ve been reading Kai-Fu Lee’s AI Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order which our man Andrew Yang has brought to my attention and want to start breaking it down chapter by chapter.

Sometimes we quietly work on insoluble problems for years.

There are also eureka moments when a big breakthrough happens. In such a way, a number of separate problems that you have been working on for years are solved in a new paradigm, and you can start to make rapid progress. Such has been the last month or so of this blog. The posts are coming at such a rapid rate now because so many of these separate projects have suddenly converged.

It’s not even about Yang 2020 which is fun to analyze. Andrew Yang is nothing but an evangelist of what is going on right now in the world of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation. We’re on track to lose 40 percent to 50 percent of jobs over the next 15 years as an exciting new AI technology – deep learning, or “narrow AI” – hits the application stage throughout the global economy.

Kai-Fu Lee doesn’t mince words. He calls the application of “deep learning” to the global economy nothing less than the harnessing of the electricity of the 21st century. It is going to completely and rapidly transform the global economy in unimaginable ways. We owe Andrew Yang a debt of gratitude for running for president because this pressing issue has flown under the radar in Dissident Right circles. The American political establishment has been keeping quiet about it for obvious reasons.

THE. WORD. IS. OUT.

The people who are focusing on Yang are missing the forest for the trees. Once again, Yang is merely an evangelist. He is the Asian equivalent of a tree. The forest is the consequences of the application of deep learning to the American economy and how it will rapidly unsettle everything. The RAHOWA has been cancelled because cheap labor has been cancelled. In fact, it is not even an exaggeration to say that free-market capitalism has been cancelled and the modern world has been cancelled.

What do I mean by this?

As I have explained, I am a historicist. I’ve spent the last year studying and thinking about the modern world. I have really spent years studying the whole issue of plantation slavery and how all that got started in South America, the American South and the Caribbean. It occurs to me that the rise of free-market capitalism, whether in the form of chattel slavery or wage slavery, has arguably been THE dominant trend of the modern world with the construction of the global economy from Columbus in 1492 down to the present. I’ve always been deeply skeptical of free-market economics.

There is just something about that economic model that doesn’t add up. I look at how it has evolved across history and I just don’t believe the false advertising. It’s true that we are generating all of this enormous wealth, but where is it all going? It certainly isn’t being distributed fairly to the vast majority of the population. More to the point, why are we generating the wealth? Is it solely human beings creating the wealth or is it something else? Why didn’t it happen earlier in history?

I don’t think it is solely human beings creating the ever expanding economic pie. I think developing new technology, harnessing energy, management, trade and investment is a much better explanation. Where would Saudi Arabia be today without all of its oil wealth? Would the Industrial Revolution have begun in Britain without all of its coal? Isn’t it electricity and the gasoline powered engine that has made all sorts of impossible things possible? It’s not just merely humans working to create wealth.

I really do think the development of deep learning AI will focus the question. Are we going to preserve the current economic paradigm when 40% to 50% of the workforce is idled and yet we are generating all of this fantastic new wealth with a race of machine workers? If it is the machines who are creating the wealth, not human beings, then why would it be immoral to redistribute it?

What are the cultural consequences of this? How does this impact every aspect of public policy from immigration to education because it is inevitably going to do so? Can we just admit now that race exists because the development of AI means that robots are the new master race?

Kai-Fu Lee writes:

“But in that same match, I saw a reason for hope. Two hours and fifty-one minutes into the match, Ke Jie had hit a wall. He’d given all that he could to this game, but he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. Hunched low over the board, he pursed his lips and his eyebrows began to twitch. Realizing he couldn’t hold his emotions in any longer, he removed his glasses and used the back of his hand to wipe tears from both of his eyes. It happened in a flash, but the emotion behind it was visible for all to see.

Those tears triggered an outpouring of sympathy and support for Ke. Over the course of these three matches, Ke had gone on a roller-coaster of human emotion: confidence, anxiety, fear, hope and heartbreak. It had showcased his competitive spirit, but I saw in those games an act of genuine love: a willingness to tangle with an unbeatable opponent out of pure love of the game, its history, and the people who play it. Those people who watched Ke’s frustration responded in kind. AlphaGo may have been the winner, but Ke became the people’s champion. In that connection – human beings giving and receiving love – I caught a glimpse of how humans will find work and meaning in an age of artificial intelligence.

I believe that the skillful application of AI will be China’s greatest opportunity to catch up with – and possibly surpass – the United States. But more important, this shift will create an opportunity for all people to rediscover what it is that makes us human.

To understand why, we must first grasp the basics of this technology and how it is set to transform our world.”

The greatest Go player in the world was crushed by AI.

Elon Musk is right that we have to maintain human supremacy now. These dorks in China and Silicon Valley have just effectively restored slavery.

Look, we can’t afford to perpetuate the political correctness anymore because deep learning AI applications will easily decimate the working class and much of the middle class as well. It will lead to cognitive stratification where only the brightest people on earth can still easily secure gainful employment under free-market capitalism. In hindsight, cognitive stratification of the workforce and free trading away the industrial base … well, that explains a lot regardless of race?

We’ve got to elect Yang as president to harness the benefits of deep learning as it is applied to the US economy. In other words, conservative/lolbertarian economics as we know it today has been rendered obsolete by narrow AI. As a consequence, we need a populist-progressive coalition to create a 21st century New Deal for Millennials and Zoomers. What’s the alternative?

Once again, I ask all the lurkers reading this blog: what’s the alternative? Is it Blompf and the GOP Boomers refighting “socialism vs. capitalism” with AOC and Bernie Sanders in antiquated 19th century economic paradigms? Is it Beta O’Dork’s pointless campaign? Is it Buttigieg running on being gay in the 21st century – who cares? Is it Elizabeth Warren being a shrill old lady from Massachusetts?

None of that matters anymore. When you realize the implications of what has happened here, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what matters now. All we can do is stand in awe of what is about to happen to the global economy and figure out, as we have started doing here, how to move forward and live with it. The future is going to be a more exciting place than we have imagined.

You can’t unsee this shit!



These Boomers are talking about all sorts of unimportant things today like “reparations for slavery.” It is clear they know virtually nothing about the economic consequences of the abolition of slavery. They can’t even come out and say how dumb all this is because of the political correctness. The blacks are being replaced at McDonald’s right now by these automated machines and these politicians are trying to stir up resentment over not getting 40 acres and a mule in 1865.

What is deep learning AI?

“AlphaGo runs on deep learning, a groundbreaking approach to artificial intelligence that has turbocharged the cognitive capabilities of machines. Deep-learning based programs can now do a better job than humans at identifying faces, recognizing speech and issuing loans. For decades, the artificial intelligence revolution always looked to be five years away. But with the development of deep learning over the past few years, that revolution has finally arrived. It will usher in an era of massive productivity increases but also widespread disruption in labor markets – and profound sociopsychological effects on people – as artificial intelligence takes over human jobs across all sorts of industries.”

Is this like creating a positronic brain in Star Trek?

“What ultimately resuscitated the field of neural networks – and sparked the AI renaissance we are living through today – were changes to two of the key ingredients that neural networks feed on, along with one major technical breakthrough. Neural networks require large amounts of two things: computing power and data. The data “trains” the program to recognize patterns by giving it many examples, and the computing power lets the program parse those examples at high speeds. …

The result was like giving steroids to the old neural networks, multiplying their power to perform tasks such as speech and object recognition.”

He’s talking about in essence creating an artificial brain for a robot. The technology isn’t at the point where the robot comes across as fully human. Thus, it is “narrow AI” as opposed to “general AI.”

“But where was China in all this? The truth is, the story of the birth of deep learning took place almost entirely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.”

The basic technology has already arrived. It was created in the West. The Chinese are excited about racing ahead of the United States in the application phase, not unlike how China already has all these cool high speed bullet trains while we have … well, we have Blompf and Pelosi arguing about reparations for slavery and allowing the US-Mexico border to collapse.

“The West may have sparked the fire of deep learning but China will be the biggest beneficiary of the heat the AI fire is generating. The global shift is the product of two transitions: from the age of discovery to the age of implementation, and from the age of expertise to the age of data.”

So, the Chinese don’t really care that Americans created deep learning. No one cares because the United States has such a dysfunctional culture and government largely due to Boomers and political correctness while China has a functional culture and government and can now take the lead.

“What they really represent is the application of deep learning’s incredible powers of pattern recognition and prediction to different spheres, such as diagnosing a disease, issuing an insurance policy, driving a car or translating a Chinese sentence into readable English. They do not signify rapid progress toward “general AI” or any other similar breakthrough on the level of deep learning. This is the age of implementation, and the companies that cash in on this time period will need talented entrepreneurs, engineers and product manages.”

LOL surely these half-sentient robots powered by deep learning AI already know that race exists, amirite? AI has no need for these bullshit politically correct taboos.

“Deep learning pioneer Andrew Ng has compared AI to Thomas Edison’s harnessing of electricity: a breakthrough technology on its own, and one that once harnessed can be applied to revolutionizing dozens of different industries. Just as nineteenth century entrepreneurs soon began applying the electricity breakthrough to cooking food, lighting rooms, and powering industrial equipment, today’s AI entrepreneurs are doing the same with deep learning. Much of the difficult but abstract work of AI research has been done, and its now time for entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and get down to the dirty work of turning algorithms into sustainable businesses.”

It might be a good time to run for president against a bunch of Boomer morons?

“Realizing the newfound promise of electrification a century ago required four key inputs: fossil fuels to generate it, entrepreneurs to build new businesses around it, electrical engineers to manipulate it, and a supportive government to develop the underlying public infrastructure. Harnessing the power of AI today – the “electricity” of the 21st century – requires four analogous inputs: abundant data, hungry entrepreneurs, AI scientists, and an AI-friendly policy environment. By looking at the relative strengths of China and the United States in these four categories, we can predict the emerging balance of power in the AI world order.

Both of the transitions described on the previous pages – from discovery to implementation, from expertise to data – now tilt the playing field toward China. They do this by minimizing China’s weaknesses and amplifying its strengths. Moving from discovery to implementation reduces one of China’s weak points (outside-the-box approaches to research questions) and also leverages the country’s most significant strengths: scrappy entrepreneurs with sharp instincts for building robust businesses. The transition from expertise to data has a similar benefit, downplaying the importance of the globally elite researchers that China lacks and maximizing the value of another key resource that China has in abundance, data.”

Yang bids $1,000 a month or mainstream conservatism:

Blompf 2020 is campaigning on MIGA and “capitalism vs. socialism” aka taking the Boomers back to the 1950s which has totally failed on every conceivable front. As I write this, Diamond and Silk are shucking and jiving on Watters World. We live in Idiocracy.

Yang 2020 is campaigning on $1,000 a month, the death of political correctness, the end of decades of polarized Boomer politics and constructing a populist-progressive coalition to harness the power of deep learning AI to essentially create the world on display in Caprica.

Hmm … how many people currently grasp this? VERY FEW RIGHT NOW

Note: Is it possible to relaunch Caprica in light of all this shit? The show was ahead of its time.



About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

14 Comments

  2. I am seeing things here that I am not pleased with, HW. Let me preface my long response(s) by quoting a couple of points.

    1) Ethnonationalism is eminently Christian, and the pattern for God’s creation. As a Christian, this has to be a ‘given’ from the beginning.

    “The question that we as orthodox Christians must ask is, How does the Bible use the term nation? What kind of nation does the Bible promote? Does the Bible endorse a more traditional definition of a nation? ”

    http://faithandheritage.com/2011/01/a-biblical-defense-of-ethno-nationalism/

    2) Having just read almost all of Fraser’s “Dissident Dispatches” his analysis of Protestantism (Luther specifically) makes me wonder if your unquestioned adoption of not just Yang’s basic premise (which, by itself, is actually rather altruistic/Christian) but now the whole ‘Asian worldview’ might be due to a default in Luther himself, in his inability to formulate an ethnonationalist Weltanschauung. For starters, try reading this column, where this quote comes from:

    “Nowadays, the Alt Right is an embryonic social reform movement promoting identity politics for White people. If it is ever to set the mainstream Anglo-Protestant imagination alight, it must become a religious movement. To that end, Alt Right leaders must learn how to communicate and network with the religious people to be found in Anglo-Protestant churches. ”

    https://www.thepoliticalcesspool.org/jamesedwards/operation-excalibur-back-to-church/

    More on this, later. It’s Palm Sunday tomorrow- and Holy Week. Kinda busy, if you know what I mean….

    • For me, my faith isn’t just a philosophy. It’s THE living truth. But I don’t have a home in any denomination I know of. Most of them are Zionist, most don’t believe in obvious Biblical directives like women’s head coverings in church (because it’s too upsetting to the womenfolk and we aren’t in those ancient times), or think it’s okay to let women teach men (female ministers are verboten according to the NT), and so on. We won’t be able to set up any nationalist church within any major denomination. It will most likely have to be house churches, as in the original church, which was mainly underground. Kind of like how we are now, anyway. I’d prefer that we referred to ourselves as followers of “The Way,” as the first Christians did. Let Osteen and his sick brethren (most ministers, these days) try to push the camel through the eye of the needle, but they have abused the good name of Christ to the point where using the term “Christian” has almost become a self-parody.

    • Andrew Fraser’s book, ‘Dissident Dispatches” –
      https://alternativeright.blog/2017/10/01/dissident-dispatches-the-culturist-review/

      has a section on the Lutheran religion and its implicit iteration of an Ethno-nationalist theology for White Europeans, in contrast to the heretical Italo/Papal globalist model. Sadly, I cannot cut and paste the sections of this book that I wanted to note, as I alluded to in my earlier post (above). But one thing I have found is that Fraser (in arguing with his liberal seminary profs) quotes an online paper that lays out some pretty important ideas. Here is that link. It’s the best I can do at this point, HW.

      https://www.academia.edu/1881684/Brother_of_Germany_Martin_Luther_and_German_Nationalism_in_the_Early_16th_Century

      But get Fraser’s book, and his earlier tome, ‘The WASP Question.’ Both are excellent.

  4. “There is just something about that economic model that doesn’t add up. I look at it how it has evolved across history and I just don’t believe the false advertising. It’s true that we are generating all of this enormous wealth, but where is going? ” – We are sitting on the biggest credit bubble in history, and it is going to pop. But other than that, a lot of it is going back and forth between the suburbs and the cities every day at rush hour. Imagine all the work being done, all the energy being used, just to have a decent neighborhood(well that and virtue signal). Tremendous wealth is just being squandered.

  5. The Republicans and Democrats are irrelevant, but they can still do a lot of damage between now and their downfall. They’ll take Parthian shots at the future, as they retreat.

  6. Here’s a thought. Since factories will become building sized machines, rather than buildings filled with machines, there’s no reason why government couldn’t own some of them for generating extra revenue above taxes, and for more UBI payouts.

  7. So, what is Red China going to do with several hundred million chinx who will no longer be needed in manufacturing? There would seem to be only one anwer: send them forth to colonize the rest of the planet.

    • How about soylent green?

      They already have millions of Chinese men who can’t find a wife, as the Chinese committed infanticide on their females, when their one child policy was in effect.

  8. The elites in Western Europe and America faced a very similar crisis during the 1930’s. And for the reasons you are saying, the insane advances of electricity and the combustion engine radically changed the game. The farm combine alone profoundly changed whole countries. There was a reason for the dust bowl as farmers abandoned their farms as the prices of grains collapsed. And millions of people fled in desperation to the cities – and became interested in socialism.

    Between 1890 and 1930, real wages were flat for the average worker. Even though productivity had risen probably 5 fold in that period. A few people made a lot of money, but like we see today, instead of the society as a whole getting wealthier, it just meant people losing their jobs, or millions of others working jobs far below their real potential.

    This was because there simply wasn’t enough money in the system and specifically in the hands of the masses in order to buy the product that there was now potential to produce. That guy in 1928 getting reduced hours making the same as the people doing his job in 1898, simply couldn’t buy more. So the inevitable result was the great depression, where the knee of the curve of this system was eventually hit.

    The solution was the New Deal, which in Britain, Germany, France and co., they had effectively their own new deals. Eg.. the Nazi economic reforms weren’t a lot different than the Roosevelt administration reforms.

    Between 1942 and 1953, real wages for workers in America went up by 10 fold. The war gave the impetus to near endless printing and spending of money. And the creation of the modern state, it didn’t go away at the conclusion of the war.

    The money printing was on a scale sufficient to provide demand for what the economy was capable of producing. Which was 10 fold higher than in the 1890’s, because of the technological advances.

    Real wages are not different for the median American man from 1953 and going into the credit crisis in 2009. Even though technology in many areas has advanced a long ways since 1953.

    So now the US Federal government is responding agian, massive printing of money, reducing taxes while maintaining spending, expansion of social welfare programs. Just Wang brings up what must be the next big step once we hit the knee of the curve of what AI can do in terms of production, and creating entire new advances like health care advances too complex for humans to come up. Of course such thing swill be fabulously expensive, and people with no jobs cannot afford them, so ergo the funding must mainly come from the state in one form or another.

    • Great historical perspective, thanks! Freedom in America went from being about having your own land and estate like a lord, to hoping that your wages would keep you out of debt to the local lord. It didn’t take long to reduce the American worker from vassal to serf.

      “Eg.. the Nazi economic reforms weren’t a lot different than the Roosevelt administration reforms.” Since you mentioned FDR, he sent staff to Italy to learn from Mussolini. The New Deal was partially based on Fascist policies.

  9. “Once again, I ask all the lurkers reading this blog: what’s the alternative?”

    I think these are plausible, only UBI or #1 probable.

    1. Continue with evolution in our current systems. Extensions to unemployment benefits, like we had after the last recession, but extending out further. More make work programs. ACA/family Medicare expansion, more reliance on emergency rooms/medical bankruptcy.

    We never have security with this approach. It’s also very psychologically damaging to whites who value self reliance. I’d expect white death rates to continue to worsen, and racial birth ratios to grow more lopsided.

    2. Mass starvation.

    3. Violent revolution (and redistribution of the AI wealth)

    4. Sharp increase in charity from the wealthy.

    So on the important points I agree (recent AI developments will drastically reshape the economy; socialism vs capitalism is not helpful for framing the choices we face; UBI is much better than stumbling forward on our current path). Just commenting as you called out lurkers.

  10. The present System is too corrupt and decrepit to work with any president who wants to implement visionary changes. Too many powerful figures/institutions like things just the way they are.

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