Albert Pinto

Ultimately, the Left won't embrace AI because rather than salesmen and financiers, the left is composed of professionals, lawyers and educators who read the way AI misrepresents our expertise and conclude all its answers are equally fraught with error. When you don't know anything, AI feels smart.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/male...

A lot of leftists are transhumanists and techno optimists at heart. We just think tech is being used negatively, not that the tech itself is inherently negative.

Dan McQuillan is worth a read. He envisions a council communist style of governance for a people's AI.

mRNA, CAR-T, solar, UVGI, HVAC, sodium batteries, space telescopes, metformin, ductless turbofans, ceramics, storm modeling, acidic laundry rinse, 3D-printed organs, next-gen antibiotics, MP3 players, golden rice, dirigibles, induction cooktops, Wikipedia, infrared thermometers, modern meat packing,

"excited" is part of the fallacy here, capitalists are the ones who like the big sexy disruption apps; foundational internet tech is propped up by free software orgs that are left by definition, it is rarely exciting and we do it anyway. there's an xkcd about this

Everybody’s talking about the destruction of consumer electronics and that’s bad, but basically everything in modern life has a computer in it. Hospitals, airports, transportation, shipping, medical devices, farm equipment, and point of sale terminals had a good run

I think the advancements in CRISPR that can cure genetic disease are pretty cool personally

solar. birth control. MRI machines. the telephone.

I ran a few very unscientific polls about this a while back and the overwhelmingly popular answer was medicines and medical assistive devices.

mRNA vaccines and cancer therapies

"I was hoping bad bunny would get more into the weeds of the promesa debt restructuring" - @jeffstein.bsky.social

PROMESA content plz @scaggs.bsky.social @alexckaufman.bsky.social
ieefa.org/sites/defaul...

Lasers
Magnets
Meissner effect
Space Mining
Quantum tunneling (teleportation)
Zero Point Energy (may destroy solar system)
Negative Gravity Fields (Superfluidity - scale it)

I can go on

I mean vibrators are pretty popular.

Each arrest takes like a half dozen agents. They just don’t have the manpower for this. I am not even sure where the marginal utility of this type of thing would be. Maybe if they concentrated their efforts in one congressional district or something.

At presser announcing preliminary budget, Mayor Mamdani is outlining a budget that will be balanced by a hike on property taxes….unless Governor Kathy Hochul agrees to tax the rich to fill the city’s $5.4 billion budget gap.

AI's overall effect could be Matthew Effect on steroids: Rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

"AI’s economic impact depends heavily on countries’ ability to adopt and deploy it effectively, with significant variation across economies". bit.ly/4rlAIgd

Line chart of national GDP from 1990 to 2024, adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs (purchasing power parity). Key insight: China’s GDP rises steeply and overtakes the United States around the mid-2010s, reaching about $35 trillion by 2024; the United States grows more gradually to about $25 trillion by 2024. India shows strong growth to about $15 trillion by 2024. Russia, Japan, Germany, and Brazil remain much lower, roughly in the $2 trillion to $6 trillion range with small fluctuations. Data sources: Eurostat, OECD, IMF, and World Bank (2026). Note: values expressed in international dollars at 2021 prices. The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

📊 Explore updated data on global development from the World Bank—

How are countries around the world developing — in terms of their economies, infrastructure, technology, energy use, healthcare, education, food production, and much more?

ok thats funny
bsky.app/profile/ljla...

.@AstroKatie: "We got tricked by science fiction into thinking a futuristic city is all about flying cars and crystal towers and hologram billboards but what it really looks like is nice apartment blocks, good mass transit, pedestrian zones with shade trees and safe bike lanes."

espresso machines

the exciting parts of what china is doing is where it’s really pushing beyond the US: on renewables, batteries, trains, etc.

Really interesting response in thread bsky.app/profile/pari...

and don’t start with me on china. sadly china’s path of digital technology development is shaped by competition with the united states, resulting in it emulating many of the same problems as it competes to lead in the technologies silicon valley decides are important.

why won’t the left just praise every technology handed down from self-interested billionaires seeking only to enhance their power and profits?! clearly, they’re the ones in the wrong if they can’t get on board 😤

yes. anything michael dunne writes on EVs and auto industry is worth reading.

Public or Private?
Markets or Command & control?
National or Global?
If you find yourself stuck in just axis of debate, here is a different view.... phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri...

(great figure from Dustin Mulvaney's lectures on Energy transition dustinmulvaney.com/set)

RT @ModeledBehavior
One of the smartest observers in the world (@dunne_insights) on the auto industry explains what went wrong with the US EV market
The Car World is going electric, without America.
www.thefp.com/p/the-car-wo...

Material basis of the global production, consumption & information systems are being remade

One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to think that will imply a radical transformation in global politics

but yes, ccp is full of techno-marxists
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri...
bsky.app/profile/chri...

another piece of this: fund managers put in their Warsh predictions, higher Treasury yields and lower dollar
www.ft.com/content/ad49...

The left is missing out on AI As a movement, it has largely refused to engage seriously with AI, ceding debate about a threat and opportunity to the right

is there a technology that "the left" is excited about?
www.transformernews.ai/p/the-left-i...