| | | | | By Jeff Brown, Editor, The Bleeding Edge | | | | What an incredible week it's been, especially for artificial intelligence and the digital assets industry. | | | And other than the AI sector, no other industry had more positive news than the digital assets industry. Yesterday brought President Trump's executive order Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology which you can read here. | | A presidential working committee on digital assets has been established that will be headed by David Sachs, the newly appointed AI & Crypto Czar. Included on that committee will be the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chair of the SEC, among many others. | | The executive order also announced that the U.S. government will explore creating a "stockpile" of digital assets (i.e. not just Bitcoin). It also explicitly prohibits any efforts to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC). This is a fantastic development. | | Several onerous regulations and rules were either rescinded or frozen pending a regulatory review. | | Better yet, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has been tasked with leading a digital assets working group at the SEC to develop a framework for the digital assets industry. Peirce has been a strong advocate for the industry for years now, this is another fantastic development. | | There are too many other positive developments to list that are pro-crypto and signal a radical swing towards a pro-innovation stance towards developing the digital assets industry. I've never been more excited about blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and other digital assets than I am right now. | | We have so much to look forward to this year, | | Jeff | | Limiting the Reach of Agentic AI? | | | Jeff, I wish you a happy new year full of good health and success. I'm going to respectfully disagree with your essay on January 6 about agentic AI. | | It will be helpful to complete knowledge work for sure. But, not everyone is hardwired to be a financial analyst or executive manager who spends all of their time reading reports on a computer or discussing business strategy in meetings. Not everyone enjoys those kinds of activities, and thus not everyone wants to completely eliminate all of the "mundane" tasks of their lives. | | Some people enjoy cooking and cleaning as a break from sitting at a computer and staring at a screen. Some people enjoy the social interaction with the waitstaff at restaurants. Some people enjoy the experience of shopping at a store and seeing other people. I might even say we are failing to teach the next generation how to enjoy these so-called "mundane" activities and healthy face-to-face activities. | | What about raising children? Is that something that people enjoy doing, or is that another activity that we should delegate to AI? The COVID pandemic proved that people become depressed if they are locked up and isolated for too long. And people can't generally do one thing for very long because they need variety and change. | | Like you, I also dislike WEF members like Harari who think most people will become "worthless" in the future. But to his point, what will people do with their time if we delegate everything to AI or robots? | | I see AI a bit differently. Though it will reduce the cost of many things, it is very difficult to predict the effects on everyone's purchasing behavior. For example, there's only so much organic ice cream that anyone would buy even at a tenth of today's inflated prices. We will still need to work a full day and need downtime so that we don't feel like cogs in the machine. | | – Joe B. | | | | Hi Joe, | | Thanks for bringing up some very important points. And you might be surprised to know that I agree with you completely. | | When researching and writing about this topic, I shared what I believe will happen (my prediction of future adoption). This is quite different than what I want to happen, or what I believe might be better for society. | | Just look at cultural norms today and how they resolve problems. If someone has a bad flight on United, for example, they complain on social media, tagging United Airlines and "spamming" thousands of people with irrelevance rather than simply calling customer service directly or even connecting with customer service via a chat window. | | So many want to play the victim and try to belittle people or companies over social media rather than simply having a conversation to peacefully and professionally resolve an issue. | | Sadly, it has been getting worse. And the pandemic didn't help, to your point. | Your reference to Yuval Harari – the Scientific Advisor to the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab – represents a prevailing belief by many involved with the WEF. For those that haven't heard him speak about us – the useless, worthless people – I strongly encourage you to spend just 2 minutes and listen to what he has to say here in his own words. | | But I look at the adoption of this incredible technology differently. I don't believe it will make us all worthless. I believe it is empowering. It will free up much of our time if we want it to. And that's the key point, it will give us the choice to use it in the best way that we see fit for our own lives. | | To your point, many of us will still split our own wood and cook our own meals. We get pleasure out of going to the farmers market for fresh food, shopping in stores, and maximizing our opportunities for social interaction in our communities and networks. | | I'm actually one of those people. And the technology is actually going to give me some of my time back so that I can actually have more time for family, friends, health, and the simple pleasures in life. | | But many people will also use this technology to do less. It will allow them to disintermediate most if not all transactions, and it will result in poor communication and conflict resolution skills. Again, that's not what I wish for, it's just what will happen. An unfortunate consequence. | | Agentic AI is the ultimate technology for reducing friction in life. It will feel like a magic button to anyone who uses it, and once it has been adopted, there is no going back. Better yet, once agentic AI is manifested in the shape of a humanoid robot, it will become that much more useful as it will be able to interact with the physical world. | | Also to your point, some people will use this technology to raise their children. I won't be one of them, but it will happen. After all, some people outsource their parenting to other humans already today. This new technology will make it even easier. | | Whether we like it or not, we are in for a world of change. I'll do my best to make sure that we're all aware of what's coming, and make suggestions about how we can navigate and, of course, profit from these changes. | | | | | | If you are looking for the perfect retirement stock… Your search is over. AMD, NVIDIA, META… none of these companies could exist without this firm. And it could be yours for only about $20 a share. Click here for the ticker >>> | | | | What Really Happened to the Nord Stream Pipelines? | | | Jeff, | In reading [your recent] article The Bleeding Edge – Progress Over Politics, I was fascinated by your statement that "the U.S. government blew up the Nord Stream pipelines as an act of economic sabotage against Russia." I spent an hour on the internet trying to find another source to verify this statement but had no success. Will you please let me know your source? Thanks. | | The article was a great informative read, and I was flabbergasted to read about the extent to which government agencies are aiming to stifle progress. | | – John S. | | | | Hi John, | | Your experience doesn't surprise me a bit at all. Sadly, the censorship industrial complex is still firmly in place, with the exception of X. Major internet platforms like Google, Facebook, and even LinkedIn are still actively censoring information that is contrary to "their" desired political narrative. | | This is typically done through shadow banning, censoring, and suppressing information, making it impossible or extremely difficult to find. And sadly, the truth behind this U.S. proxy war with Russia using Ukraine is in one of those categories. Fortunately, I believe that this horrifying and corrupt war will come to an end quickly in the coming weeks. | | As for your specific question, the credit has to go to Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who was the first to provide evidence of what actually happened regarding the Nord Stream pipelines. | | His work is behind a paywall, but there is a seven-day free trial, so you'll be able to access his fantastic research. He broke the story on February 8, 2023, with the following article: | | | | He followed up that research on February 15, 2023, outlining how the actions the U.S. took against the Nord Stream pipelines created one of the largest environmental disasters in history. And yet, not a word was written about it by the press…. Because they were instructed by the White House not to. | | | | He went further demonstrating how the Biden administration was actively covering up the truth and spinning false stories about the event in his piece on March 22, 2023, aptly titled: | | | | And then on April 5, 2023, he outlined all the fake details in the CIA's cover story about the event. It was at that point I grew concerned for his safety. | | | | There are a few more follow-up pieces which are all fantastic. For anyone who would like to understand "how the sausage is made" for a government cover-up like this, I can't recommend Hersh's research enough. But fair warning, it may make you upset. | | There are several other very interesting topics that he has been working on as well. I hope you find it both enlightening and useful. | | How Will Autonomous Rides Handle Last-Mile Services? | | | Quick question about "last-mile" service for autonomous ride services. I live in Boca Raton, FL, and like many here, in a gated community. I have found that regardless of what app, drivers are routinely directed to our exit gate vs. the entrance gate. I have found this with many other communities where we visit. With a live driver, this is easily sorted out by simply directing to the correct entrance via call or text, but how would a driverless Tesla handle this situation? Further, other friends live in secure high-rise condos, where the address might be the security gate, but that doesn't get you to the valet entrance. Ultimately, I suppose if the cars are "learning" then these kinds of scenarios could be resolved after several trips, but seems a challenge in the early stages. I also wonder how the security guards are going to respond when driverless vehicles start pulling up to gain entrance. Probably not well, based on my experience if you don't have a license, correct address, and resident name. Curious about your experience using your Tesla and FSD. Best! | | – Curt H. | | | | Hi Curt, | | This is a really interesting challenge for self-driving software. After all, if a self-driving software platform is working exclusively off GPS-related address information and that data is off (which happens a lot), it can result in exactly the situation you described (i.e. the car basically gets to the correct location as per GPS data but doesn't know to navigate through the gates the last 300 feet to a specific home in a gated community.) | | I can tell you that through many version 12 releases, I had mixed success with this issue. I was still really happy because Tesla's full self-driving (FSD) AI was able to get me safely to where I wanted to go, but it just didn't complete those last hundred feet where I had to take over. Not a big deal at all, but also not good enough for something like a CyberCab that doesn't have a steering wheel. That raises an interesting question that I'll get to in a moment. | | Version 13.2 of FSD has been a major improvement, and I've seen success in some of these situations. Tesla has been taking in real-world data when its customers are taking over the wheel to drive that last bit to the final location. | | That's the power of Tesla's technology architecture and massive "fleet" of more than 7 million Teslas on the road using Autopilot and FSD capturing video every step of the way. Tesla can study both the video and driver actions when they take control in order to determine what the correct course of action should have been for the FSD neural network. | | We can think of this as Tesla crowdsourcing data at a massive scale to improve its FSD performance. This is why every release of FSD software just keeps getting better. | | But back to my earlier point, what would happen in a fringe case where the software doesn't have the data and there is no steering wheel to take control? There are two possible solutions that I can think of that might be incorporated into a future release of FSD. | | One might be to enable voice commands for the car. For example, a passenger could say "Enter through the steel gates, turn right, and my house is the third one on the left with the large oak tree in the front yard." Teslas are entirely vision-based systems, so FSD can literally "see" its environment. | | The second solution would be for a teleoperator to teleport into the CyberCab and take control of the car to get through that short, final stage of the journey. All Teslas have connectivity using 4G wireless technology which is sufficient to be able to do this, and soon Teslas will start to be manufactured with 5G modems for even faster, lower latency wireless connections. If I had to guess, I'd say with certainty that all CyberCabs and Robovans will be manufactured with 5G, as will all new Teslas sometime within the next 24 months. | | In time, I envision Tesla's FSD software to evolve into having a "memory" of its specific owner's driving locations. This will enable an individual Tesla to tailor its knowledge base for those fringe cases where the specific location of the house or garage might not be as simple as something that is directly located off the street address. | | That's all for a very exciting week. I hope everyone has a great weekend. | | Jeff | | | | | | | The commissioning of the most powerful supercomputer in history has barely evoked a yawn… | | | | | | Nothing like Stargate had ever been suggested before… | | | | | | JFK's vision inspired millions who wanted to pursue careers in science and engineering… Trump's mission to Mars will do... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | To ensure our emails continue reaching your inbox, please add our email address to your address book. This editorial email containing advertisements was sent to riku221199@gmail.com because you subscribed to this service. To stop receiving these emails, click here. Brownstone Research welcomes your feedback and questions. 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