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There’s an old story that, sometime in the 1960s, NASA spent millions to create a pen that worked in space. American engineers worked for years on a high-tech marvel that could write in zero gravity. Facing the same problem, the Russians used a pencil. It’s a myth, unfortunately. There is a “Space Pen,” but it was developed without government funding; pencil shavings turn out to be unacceptable fire hazards. But the story is too perfect to die: a perfect critique of technocracy and groupthink that — alas! — never actually happened. In January, AI found its pencil. Some technical background is necessary here. Any large language model, like ChatGPT or Grok, must be trained on human-written text. The AI assigns numeric values to different words; by combining these numbers, it predicts what words will come next. When its predictions are wrong — when they aren’t human-like — the AI adjusts its numbers and tries again. This process requires extraordinary amounts of time and computation. To accelerate it, developers use specialized hardware called Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs, that are optimized for these kinds of calculations. (They’re prized by bitcoin miners for the same reason.) Unfortunately, the best GPUs are ruinously expensive — and an AI lab might need thousands of them. That’s a high hurdle, and it’s one reason only a handful of companies have invested in top-tier AI models. Why Is DeepSeek a Disruptor? All of that might be about to change. Two weeks ago, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a new model named R1, which is roughly as powerful as the best existing systems. But DeepSeek claims they trained their model for only $5 million — still a heavy sum, but an order of magnitude less than rivals like OpenAI. DeepSeek’s success seems to rest on several innovations. All computers store numbers as patterns of ones and zeros, or bits. Computer bits work like scientific significant digits: the more bits used to represent a number, the more accurately it can be stored. Most modern AIs use 32 bits per number; R1 sometimes uses only eight. That makes every calculation less precise, but also cheaper and faster — meaning DeepSeek can quickly build large models without top-shelf GPUs. As well, R1 uses what’s called a mixture of experts (MoE) model. ChatGPT is built on a single model that tries to “know” everything: it can write a poem, suggest programming code, or diagnose medical symptoms. Companies without OpenAI’s resources have instead built more targeted AIs; an engineering firm might train its system to design bridges, without teaching it to write a sonnet. An MoE approach builds on this idea, training dozens of smaller models as “experts” in different areas. When a user asks R1 a question, it can hand the problem off to whichever expert matches the problem most closely. The result might not be as flexible as ChatGPT, but the individual experts can be easier (and cheaper) to train than one all-knowing model. It’s hard to know how to react to all this. It’s clearly bad news for companies like Nvidia, maker of those high-end GPUs, whose stock fell by more than $600 billion after R1’s release. More broadly, it marks the first real challenge to American dominance in AI, with some experts warning that the US must quickly expand funding for further work. On the other hand, it’s not obvious a slight edge in AI offers a commanding strategic advantage — and surely R1’s success shows that “shovel more money at the problem” is not always a winning approach. It’s also possible that R1’s budget is as phony as that Russian space pencil. For their part, OpenAI claims that DeepSeek effectively stole their training work — roughly, that the Chinese taught their AI by checking its answers against the American model. If true, R1 isn’t a leap forward; it’s a Temu ChatGPT. There’s a certain delicious irony here. For years, generative AI companies have ruthlessly harvested online text and art, waving off claims of copyright violation. OpenAI’s success depends on this data — but the original authors and artists will see none of the profits. If the tech giant now feels that its own data has been unfairly harvested, well, that’s sauce for the goose. Or, as one wit on X put it: “i cant believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI.” Maybe all of this is a reason not to heavily subsidize AI. Investment rests on the idea that the best model will give its inventor an advantage over rivals, economically or militarily. If true, early AI innovators might gain a lead that snowballs into larger and larger gaps. But if gaps in AI performance can be quickly closed — whether by fair means or foul — then there’s less incentive to get there first. The result might be slower, more contemplative development — and a world in which no one holds an eternal advantage. READ MORE from Brian Dellinger: Making Friends: AI and Companionship An Eye on AI: Five New Things to Watch in October The Internet Has a New Problem: Deepfaked Pornography The post The Promise and Peril of DeepSeek appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In 1981-82, my third year as a graduate student in English at Stony Brook University on Long Island, I shared a house in the neighboring town of East Setauket with two of my fellow students in the English department. While living there, I became acquainted with a friend of theirs. Kevin Killian was a year or two ahead of me in the graduate program, and four years older than I was; I never really got to know him well and never saw or communicated with him again after our time together at Stony Brook. Leaving with an M.A., he moved to San Francisco and stayed there the rest of his life, becoming, in the fullness of time, part of a circle of avant-garde West Coast writers that — small world — included a couple of friends of mine. But back to graduate school: one fine morning, to my astonishment, he showed up at the East Setauket house with a painting he’d done. It was a gift. For me. I knew he wrote, but I didn’t know he painted (and I couldn’t fathom why he’d decided to give me one of his creations). Now, thanks to a new book, I’ve discovered that he not only wrote and painted but also had an intense interest in a wide variety of artistic genres — an interest that, over the course of his life (he died of cancer in 2019) developed into real expertise. That book, edited by Hedi El Kholti and Robert Dewhurst (and equipped with a reliably pretentious introduction by the supremely effete poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum), is entitled, and I kid you not, Selected Amazon Reviews. You see, it turns out that Kevin was, of all things, an extraordinarily prolific writer of Amazon reviews. (This book, whose contents were written between 2004 and 2019, clocks in at just under 700 pages, and was cut down after his death from an original word count of over one million.) Kevin was also, as his presentation to me of that painting demonstrated — what ever happened to it, I wonder? — a generous soul. Nine-tenths of the reviews in this book, most of them no more than a page long, are full of praise: four or five stars out of five. And they cover a remarkable gamut of merchandise — novels, poetry, movies, pop albums, a Creole cookbook by Maya Angelou, a movie quiz book, a dog-care book, a biography entitled Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, a men’s cologne (“The scent itself,” Kevin pronounces, “is sort of woodsy”), a Black & Decker tool (“Did you ever get in a jam when hanging a picture…?”), khaki shorts, and a book called Airport Planning & Management (“Like many young men, and I daresay women, I was drawn to airport management after exposure to Burt Lancaster’s sterling portrayal of a harried airport manager in the Ross Hunter classic Airport”). From the first time I laid eyes on him, I thought of Kevin and myself as being very different types. Living in New York after grad school, I became the literary critic for the just-launched New Criterion, where I specialized in long-form takedowns of grungy, overhyped dirtbags like the loathsome Allen Ginsberg. By contrast, Kevin was the kind of guy who adored Allen Ginsberg — the kind who, well, moves to San Francisco, hangs around with performance artists, churns out nakedly autobiographical novels and experimental plays, and edits a “poetry zine” (all of which Kevin actually did). And indeed some of the reviews here reflect a taste for offbeat writers of the sort to whom I’ve always tended to give a wide berth, not to mention a political perspective that deviates considerably from my own. Reviewing the 1945 British classic Brief Encounter — a tender love story, mind you — Kevin says that it brings to mind the “British empire and the way in which the entire social structure in which Laura and Alec [the lovers in the film] are conducting their ‘private affair’ is already compromised by its dependence on Black slave labor, etc.” No, it doesn’t. Then again, there are other occasions when one expects Kevin to serve up a reflexively PC reaction, and he doesn’t. And hey, at least he loves Brief Encounter, as I do. Indeed, his taste in old movies turns out to have overlapped with mine to a far greater extent than I ever would have imagined. Among his — and my — faves: Shadow of a Doubt, The Yearling, The Heiress, The Lost Weekend, Ninotchka, and even the extremely obscure Until They Sail. Like me, Kevin was fond of sweet, corny old pictures. He watched White Christmas every Yule. He cried when he saw Judy Garland’s A Star Is Born for the thousandth time. He even appreciated the merits of Cavalcade, the Frank Lloyd movie, based on Noel Coward’s sentimental, patriotic stage extravaganza, which won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1933 but whose reputation has been on the decline ever since. Nor was he too much of a cinema snob to appreciate the virtues of a crackerjack thriller like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle or to declare Scream 4 the best of that series of slasher films. He enjoyed mediocre pictures that could be appreciated in a campy way — awarding five stars apiece to Love Story and Valley of the Dolls — but drew the line at schlock like Meet the Fockers (three stars: “nothing happens and nobody really cares”). And he could be very funny: “[A]s Walter Pater told us, all art aspires to the condition of Basic Instinct 2.” Get a load of the way he begins his review of the 1938 Katharine Hepburn comedy Holiday: I never really liked this movie much until my wife and I invested in one of those newfangled “Hepburninators” on TiVo, which allows you to watch a full-length Katharine Hepburn movie in half the time by eliminating all scenes in which she appears. Now, as I watch Holiday in relative comfort, freed from the worry that at any moment she may show up and spoil all the fun, I can relax, for like the old saying goes, an hour without Katharine Hepburn is like a month in the country. I don’t get the Hepburn-hate, but it made me laugh. His longest review, by the way, is of Vertigo (“the greatest movie of all time, at least I think so in certain moods”), about which he serves up a provocative theory or two — making me wish he’d left behind a collection of fewer but longer and more probing critical essays. As I guess I’ve made clear, the range of his taste was unusual — although he plainly had a special place in his heart for the French nouvelle vague and for avant-garde California writers such as himself. One minute he’s naming Marcel Duchamp, along with Andy Warhol, as “the central art figure of the last century,” the next minute he’s penning a touching posthumous tribute to Rodney Dangerfield (“You always saw things the way the common man did”) or Christopher Reeve (“You won America’s heart playing the part with all the conviction and vulnerability in the world, and so when your riding accident happened we were there for you too as we cheered on your fight against immobility and pain”). He describes himself as Truman Capote’s “greatest fan of all time.” He gives John Updike’s lame 2006 novel Terrorist the thumbs-down it deserves. He says that he managed to get through Finnegans Wake (inconceivable) and once considered it “the greatest novel of all time” (even more inconceivable), but tells us, in 2008, that his favorite writer is now his friend and fellow small-press West Coast novelist Dennis Cooper. To his credit, he doesn’t let his politics keep him from appreciating the likes of John Wayne, “one of the greatest Hollywood stars.” And not infrequently, his high-culture bent peeps to the surface, to humorous effect, when he’s addressing middlebrow material, as in his review of Leslie Caron’s memoirs: “Every page has some La Rochefoucauldian pensée on love, on death.” Here and there, Kevin provides glimpses of autobiography: several of his reviews begin with some variation on the words “As an American boy growing up in rural France.” Turns out he had his “own subscription to the International Herald Tribune from ages six to ten” and read Gigi in French at eleven. (Who knew? By the time I met him, he was one more guy from Long Island.) As a boy he “had an inappropriate relationship with a priest.” (Somehow I’m not surprised.) Later, he was a Deadhead who followed the Grateful Dead “from stadium to stadium.” (Oh well. Chacun à son goût.) In late middle age, he made an “annual jaunt to Iberia” to revisit the museums in Madrid. Which raises this question: what did he do for a living? Yes, he wrote prodigiously, but never the kind of stuff that makes any money. How could he spare the time it took to bang out all these Amazon notices for free? How could he swing those trips to Spain? Surely nobody ever put more work or wit or skill or style into reviews for Amazon. Jeff Bezos should have put him on the payroll. Why am I writing about a collection of Amazon reviews? Because they add up to a fascinating portrait of one man’s unique mind — complex, quirky, deeply engaged, and engaging. Because writing online can feel terribly ephemeral (especially to someone old enough to have been raised in a print culture), and it’s nice to see worthwhile material written for the Web preserved between covers for posterity, however much of a pipe dream that may ultimately be. And because reading these reviews is not unlike having a long, rambling, congenial, and bibulous conversation, by turns serious and silly, with someone whom I knew very briefly long ago and whom I now dearly wish now that I’d looked in on during one of my many visits, over the decades, to the City by the Bay. Selected Amazon Reviews — which is beautifully produced and edited, the dust jacket amusingly designed to make it look like a volume from the Library of America — isn’t the kind of book, of course, that you read through, from start to finish, all at once. But I did glance at every page and I’ll definitely be keeping it close at hand, dipping into it delightedly from time to time to explore its contents more thoroughly. READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: The Fishing Place: A Marvel of a Movie Grilling Hegseth: Democrats Expose Their Spiteful Hypocrisy Politically Incorrect Comedy Still Survives The post Who Was Kevin Killian? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In a desperately needed move this week, President Donald Trump fired Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB), and installed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as acting director. The leadership change comes after the agency aggressively expanded consumer protection laws and their enforcement. In the waning days of the Biden administration, when most agencies were pausing operations and preparing for a change in leadership, Chopra launched a flurry of lawsuits and official actions. The bureau went after banks for charging “junk fees” that were mostly routine fees, sued Walmart, accused Rocket Homes of creating an illegal “kickback scheme,” and tried to effectively stop nonbank financial institutions from making personal loans. (READ MORE: Federal Agency Gone Wild: Why the CFPB Needs Immediate Reform — and a New Chair) These actions drastically enlarged the regulatory scope of the CFPB, with little concern for the potential impact on businesses and consumers. Under Chopra, the bureau even ignored rebukes from congressional leaders like Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC). There’s no question the Biden-era CFPB with Chopra at the helm pursued politically-motivated, ideological goals at the expense of its core mission to protect consumers from banks and other financial services companies. But now Bessent is at the wheel. In a Monday morning memo to CFPB staff, the acting director immediately halted movement on proposed or final rules and guidance. He suspended effective dates of rules and put a pause on investigations, enforcement action, material agreements, public communications, and reports. It’s a strong first step toward reorienting the CFPB to serve its stated mission. Bessent should continue to make haste undoing the disastrous 11th-hour regulations and lawsuits issued under Chopra. Next, Bessent should look to restructure the CFPB to prevent such out-of-control behavior from ever happening again. Under the CFPB’s unique structure, it receives funding from the Federal Reserve. This puts the agency outside of Congress’s annual appropriations process and shields it from the oversight to which all agencies ought to be subjected. This absence of accountability is not acceptable for American taxpayers and businesses. Although the CFPB’s funding structure was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2023, the Trump administration and Congress can still work together to make the CFPB more accountable to the public. They should immediately bring the agency under the annual appropriations process and require its leaders to go to Congress each year and make a case for continued funding. Next, they should completely overhaul the CFPB’s mission and orient it toward helping consumers, rather than waging ideological battles against private businesses. Certainly, Bessent will continue the Administration’s efforts to crack down on DEI policies by eliminating the CFPB’s stated goal of “promot[ing] diversity and inclusion best practices,” but he shouldn’t stop there. The CFPB should no longer measure success based on how many enforcement actions it launches or how much money it shakes out of businesses. A truly successful CFPB ought to focus on educating consumers and making the financial services industry more transparent, as its mission statement requires. Bessent needs to get this agency back on track or — if that’s not possible — shut it down.  READ MORE from Brandon Arnold: Federal Agency Gone Wild: Why the CFPB Needs Immediate Reform — and a New Chair Brandon Arnold is the executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union.  The post CFPB: New Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Deployed to Fix What Rohit Chopra Broke appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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