IBM Faces DOGE Questions?
February 17, 2025
Simon Willison reminded us of the famous IBM internal training document that reads: “A Computer Can Never Be Held Accountable.” The document is also relevant for AI algorithms. Unfortunately the document has a mysterious history and the IBM Corporate Archives don’t have a copy of the presentation. A Twitter user with the name @bumblebike posted the original image. He said he found it when he went through his father’s papers. Unfortunately, the presentation with the legendary statement was destroyed in a 2019 flood.
I believe the image was first shared online in this tweet by @bumblebike in February 2017. Here’s where they confirm it was from 1979 internal training.
Here’s another tweet from @bumblebike from December 2021 about the flood:
Unfortunately destroyed by flood in 2019 with most of my things. Inquired at the retirees club zoom last week, but there’s almost no one the right age left. Not sure where else to ask.”
We don’t need the actual IBM document to know that IBM hasn’t done well when it comes to search. IBM, like most firms tried and sort of fizzled. (Remember Data Fountain or CLEVER?) IBM also moved into content management. Yep, the semi-Xerox, semi-information thing. But the good news is that a time sharing solution called Watson is doing pretty well. It’s not winning Jeopardy! but it is chugging along.
Now IBM professionals in DC have to answer the Doge nerd squad questions? Why not give OpenAI a whirl? The old Jeopardy! winner is kicking back. Doge wants to know.
Whitney Grace, February 17, 2025
What Happens When Understanding Technology Is Shallow? Weakness
February 14, 2025
Yep, a dinobaby wrote this blog post. Replace me with a subscription service or a contract worker from Fiverr. See if I care.
I like this question. Even more satisfying is that a big name seems to have answered it. I refer to an essay by Gary Marcus in “The Race for “AI Supremacy” Is Over — at Least for Now.”
Here’s the key passage in my opinion:
China caught up so quickly for many reasons. One that deserves Congressional investigation was Meta’s decision to open source their LLMs. (The question that Congress should ask is, how pivotal was that decision in China’s ability to catch up? Would we still have a lead if they hadn’t done that? Deepseek reportedly got its start in LLMs retraining Meta’s Llama model.) Putting so many eggs in Altman’s basket, as the White House did last week and others have before, may also prove to be a mistake in hindsight. … The reporter Ryan Grim wrote yesterday about how the US government (with the notable exception of Lina Khan) has repeatedly screwed up by placating big companies and doing too little to foster independent innovation
The write up is quite good. What’s missing, in my opinion, is the linkage of a probe to determine how a technology innovation released as a not-so-stealthy open source project can affect the US financial markets. The result was satisfying to the Chinese planners.
Also, the write up does not put the probe or “foray” in a strategic context. China wants to make certain its simple message “China smart, US dumb” gets into the world’s communication channels. That worked quite well.
Finally, the write up does not point out that the US approach to AI has given China an opportunity to demonstrate that it can borrow and refine with aplomb.
Net net: I think China is doing Shien and Temu in the AI and smart software sector.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2025
Hauling Data: Is There a Chance of Derailment?
February 13, 2025
Another dinobaby write up. Only smart software is the lousy train illustration.
I spotted some chatter about US government Web sites going off line. Since I stepped away from the “index the US government” project, I don’t spend much time poking around the content at dot gov and in some cases dot com sites operated by the US government. Let’s assume that some US government servers are now blocked and the content has gone dark to a user looking for information generated by US government entities.
If libraries chug chug down the information railroad tracks to deliver data, what does the “Trouble on the Tracks” sign mean? Thanks, You.com. Good enough.
The fix in most cases is to use Bing.com. My recollection is that a third party like Bing provided the search service to the US government. A good alternative is to use Google.com, the qualifier site: command, and a bit of obscenity. The obscenity causes the Google AI to just generate a semi relevant list of links. In a pinch, you could poke around for a repository of US government information. Unfortunately the Library of Congress is not that repository. The Government Printing Office does not do the job either. The Internet Archive is a hit-and-miss archive operation.
Is there another alternative? Yes. Harvard University announced its Data.gov archive. The institution’s Library Innovation Lab Team said on February 6, 2025:
Today we released our archive of data.gov on Source Cooperative. The 16TB collection includes over 311,000 datasets harvested during 2024 and 2025, a complete archive of federal public datasets linked by data.gov. It will be updated daily as new datasets are added to data.gov.
I like this type of archive, but I am a dinobaby, not a forward leaning, “with it” thinker. Information in my mind belongs in a library. A library, in general, should provide students and those seeking information with a place to go to obtain information. The only advertising I see in a library is an announcement about a bake sale to raise funds for children’s reading material.
Will the Harvard initiative and others like it collide with something on the train tracks? Will the money to buy fuel for the engine’s power plant be cut off? Will the train drivers be forced to find work at Shake Shack?
I have no answers. I am glad I am old, but I fondly remember when the job was to index the content on US government servers. The quaint idea formulated by President Clinton was to make US government information available. Now one has to catch a train.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2025
Microsoft, Deepseek, and OpenAI: An Interesting Mixture Like RDX?
February 10, 2025
We have smart software, but the dinobaby continues to do what 80 year olds do: Write the old-fashioned human way. We did give up clay tablets for a quill pen. Works okay.
I have successfully installed Deepseek and run some queries. The results seem okay, but most of the large language models we have installed have their strengths and weaknesses. What’s interesting about Deepseek is that it caused a bit of a financial squall when it was publicized during a Chinese dignitary’s visit to Colombia.
A short time after a high flying video card company lost a few bucks, an expert advising the new US administration suggested “there’s substantial evidence that Deepseek used OpenAI’s models to train its own.” This story appeared X.com via Fox. Another report said that Microsoft was investigating Deepseek. When I checked my newsfeed this morning (January 30, 2025), Slashdot pointed me to this story: “Microsoft makes Deepseek’s R1 Model Available on Azure AI and GitHub.”
Did Microsoft do a speedy investigation or is the inclusion of Deepseek in AzureAI and GitHub part of its investigation. Did loading up Deepseek kill everyone’s favorite version of Office on January 29, 2024? Probably not, but there is a lot of action in the AI space at Microsoft Town.
Let’s recap the stuff from the AI chemistry lab. First, we have the fascinating Sam AI-Man. With a deal of note because Oracle is in and Grok is out, OpenAI remains a partner with Microsoft. Second, Microsoft, fresh from bumper revenues, continues to embrace AI and demonstrate that a welcome mat is outside Satya Nadella’s door for AI outfits. Third, who stole what? AI companies have been viewed as information bandits by some outfits. Legal eagles cloud the sunny future of smart software.
What will these chemical elements combine to deliver? Let’s consider a few options.
- Like RDX a go-to compound for some kinetic applications, the elements combust.
- The legal eagles effectively grind innovation to a halt due to restrictions on Nvidia, access to US open source software, and getting in the way of the reinvigoration of the USA.
- Nothing. That’s right. The status quo chugs along with predictable ups and downs but nothing changes.
Net net: This will be an interesting techno-drama to watch in real time. On the other hand, I may wait until the Slice outfit does a documentary about the dust up, partnerships, and failed bro-love affairs.
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2025
China Smart, US Dumb: The Deepseek Foray into Destabilization of AI Investment
February 6, 2025
Yep, a dinobaby wrote this blog post. Replace me with a subscription service or a contract worker from Fiverr. See if I care.
I have published a few blog posts about the Chinese information warfare directed at the US. Examples have included videos of a farm girl with primitive tools repairing complex machinery, the carpeting of ArXiv with papers about Deepseek’s AI innovations, and the stories in the South China Morning Post about assorted US technology issues.
Thanks You.com. Pretty good illustration.
Now the Deepseek foray is delivering fungible results. Numerous articles appeared on January 27, 2025, pegged to the impact of the Deepseek smart software on the US AI sector. A representative article is “China’s Deepseek Sparks AI Market Rout.”
The trusted real news outfit said:
Technology shares around the world slid on Monday as a surge in popularity of a Chinese discount artificial intelligence model shook investors’ faith in the AI sector’s voracious demand for high-tech chips. Startup Deepseek has rolled out a free assistant it says uses lower-cost chips and less data, seemingly challenging a widespread bet in financial markets that AI will drive demand along a supply chain from chipmakers to data centres.
Facebook ripped a page from the Google leadership team’s playbook. According to “Meta Scrambles After Chinese AI Equals Its Own, Upending Silicon Valley,” the Zuckerberg outfit assembled four “war rooms” to figure out how a Chinese open source AI could become such a big problem from out of the blue.
I find it difficult to believe that big US outfits were unaware of China’s interest in smart software. Furthermore, the Deepseek team made quite clear by listing dozens upon dozens of AI experts who contributed to the Deepseek effort. But who in US AI land has time to cross correlate the names of the researchers in the ArXiv essays to ask, “What are these folks doing to output cheaper AI models?”
Several observations are warranted:
- The effect of this foray has been to cause an immediate and direct concern about US AI firms’ ability to reduce costs. China allegedly has rolled out a good model at a lower price. Price competition comes in many forms. In this case, China can use less modern components to produce more modern AI. If you want to see how this works for basic equipment navigate to “Genius Girl Builds Amazing Hydroelectric Power Station For An Elderly Living Alone in the Mountains.” Deepseek is this information warfare tactic in the smart software space.
- The mechanism for the foray was open source. I have heard many times from some very smart people that open source is the future. Maybe that’s true. We now have an example of open source creating a credibility problem for established US big technology outfits who use open source to publicize how smart and good they are, prove they can do great work, and appear to be “community” minded. Deepseek just posted software that showed a small venture firm was able to do what US big technology has done at a fraction of the cost. Chinese business understands price and cost centric methods. This is the cost angle driven through the heart of scaling up solutions. Like giant US trucks, the approach is expensive and at some point will collapses of its own bloated framework.
- The foray has been broken into four parts: [a] The arXiv thrust, [b] the free and open source software thrust which begs the question, “What’s next from this venture firm?”, [c] the social media play with posts ballooning on BlueSky, Telegram, and Twitter, [d] the real journalism outfits like Bloomberg and Reuters yapping about AI innovation. The four-part thrust is effective.
China’s made the US approach to smart software look incredibly stupid. I don’t believe that a small group of hard workers at a venture firm cooked up the Deepseek method. The number of authors on the arXiv Deepseek papers make that clear.
With one deft, non kinetic, non militaristic foray, China has amplified doubt about US AI methods. The action has chopped big bucks from outfits like Nvidia. Plus China has combined its playbook for lower costs and better prices with information warfare. I am not sure that Silicon Valley type outfits have a response to roll out quickly. The foray has returned useful intelligence to China.
Net net: More AI will be coming to destabilize the Silicon Valley way.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2025
Who Knew? A Perfect Bribery Vehicle, According to Ethereum Creator
January 30, 2025
A blog post from an authentic dinobaby. He’s old; he’s in the sticks; and he is deeply skeptical.
I read “Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin: Politician Issued Coins Perfect Bribery Vehicle.” Isn’t Mr. Buterin a Russian Canadian? People with these cultural influences can spot a plastic moose quickly in experience.
The write up reports:
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has criticized cryptocurrencies issued by politicians as “a perfect bribery vehicle.” “If a politician issues a coin, you do not even need to send them any coins to give them money,” Buterin explained in a tweet. “Instead, you just buy and hold the coin, and this increases the value of their holdings passively.” He added that one of the reasons these “politician coins” are potentially excellent tools for bribery is the element of “deniability.”
Mr. Buterin is quoted in the write up as saying:
“I recommend politicians do not go down this path.”
Who knew that a plastic moose would become animated and frighten the insightful Russian Canadian? What sound does a plastic moose make? Hee haw hee haw.
Nope, that’s a jackass. Easy mistake.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2025
What Do DeepSeek, a Genius Girl, and Temu Have in Common? Quite a Lot
January 28, 2025
A write up from a still-living dinobaby.
The Techmeme for January 28, 2024, was mostly Deepseek territory. The China-linked AI model has roiled the murky waters of the US smart software fishing hole. A big, juicy AI creature has been pulled from the lake, and it is drawing a crowd. Here’s a small portion of the datasphere thrashing on January 28, 2025 at 0700 am US Eastern time:
I have worked through a number of articles about this open source software. I noted its back story about a venture firm’s skunk works tackling AI. Armed with relatively primitive tools due to the US restriction of certain computer components, the small team figured out how to deliver results comparable to the benchmarks published about US smart software systems.
Genius girl uses basic and cheap tools to repair an old generator. Americans buy a new generator from Harbor Freight. Genius girl repairs old generator proving the benefits of a better way or a shining path. Image from the YouTube outfit which does work the American way.
The story is torn from the same playbook which produces YouTube “real life” stories like “The genius girl helps the boss to repair the diesel generator, full of power!” You can view the one-hour propaganda film at this link. Here’s a short synopsis, and I want you to note the theme of the presentation:
- Young-appearing female works outside
- She uses primitive tools
- She takes apart a complex machine
- She repairs it
- The machine is better than a new machine.
The videos are interesting. The message has not been deconstructed. My interpretation is:
- Hard working female tackles tough problem
- Using ingenuity and hard work she cracks the code
- The machine works
- Why buy a new one? Use what you have and overcome obstacles.
This is not the “Go west, young man” or private equity approach to cracking an important problem. It is political and cultural with a dash of Hoisin technical sauce. The video presents a message like that of “plum blossom boxing.” It looks interesting but packs a wallop.
Here’s a point that has not been getting much attention; specifically, the AI probe is designed to direct a flow of energy at the most delicate and vulnerable part of the US artificial intelligence “next big thing” pumped up technology “bro.”
What is that? The answer is cost. The method has been refined by Shein and Temu by poking at Amazon. Here’s how the “genius girl” uses ingenuity.
- Technical papers are published
- Open source software released
- Basic information about using what’s available released
- Cost information is released.
The result is that a Chinese AI app surges to the top of downloads on US mobile stores. This is a first. Not even the TikTok service achieved this standing so quickly. The US speculators dump AI stocks. Techmeme becomes the news service for Chinese innovation.
I see this as an effective tactic for demonstrating the value of the “genius girl” approach to solving problems. And where did Chinese government leadership watch the AI balloon lose some internal pressure. How about Colombia, a three-hour plane flight from the capital of Central and South America. (That’s Miami in the event my reference was too oblique.)
In business, cheaper and good enough are very potent advantages. The Deepseek AI play is indeed about a new twist to today’s best method of having software perform in a way that most call “smart.” But the Deepseek play is another “genius girl” play from the Middle Kingdom.
How can the US replicate the “genius girl” or the small venture firm which came up with a better idea? That’s going to be touch. While the genius girl was repairing the generator, the US AI sector was seeking more money to build giant data centers to hold thousands of exotic computing tools. Instead of repairing, the US smart software aficionados were planning on modular nuclear reactors to make the next-generation of smart software like the tail fins on a 1959 pink Cadillac.
Deepseek and the “genius girl” are not about technology. Deepseek is a manifestation of the Shein and Temu method: Fast cycle, cheap and good enough. The result is an arm flapping response from the American way of AI. Oh, does the genius girl phone home? Does she censor what she says and does?
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2025
China Smart, US Dumb: Some AI Readings in English
January 28, 2025
A blog post from an authentic dinobaby. He’s old; he’s in the sticks; and he is deeply skeptical.
I read a short post in YCombinator’s Hacker News this morning (January 23, 2025). The original article is titled “Deepseek and the Effects of GPU Export Controls.” If you are interested in the poli sci approach to smart software, dive in. However, in the couple of dozen comments on Hacker News to the post, a contributor allegedly named LHL posted some useful links. I have pulled these from the comments and displayed them for your competitive intelligence large language model. On the other hand, you can read them because you are interested in what’s shaking in the Lin-gang Free Trade Zone in the Middle Kingdom:
Deepseek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning
Deepseek Coder V2: Breaking the Barrier of Closed Source Models in Code Intelligence
Deepseek-V2: A Strong, Economical, and Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Language Model
Deepseek LLM Scaling Open-Source Language Models with Longtermism
First, a thanks to the poster LHL. The search string links timed out, so you may already be part of the HN herd who is looking at the generated bibliography.
Second, several observations:
- China has lots of people. There are numerous highly skilled mathematicians, Monte Carlo and gradient descent wonks, and darned good engineers. One should not assume that wizardry ends with big valuations and tie ups among Oracle, Open AI and the savvy funder of Banjo, an intelware outfit of some repute.
- Computing resource constraints translate into one outcome. Example: Howard Flank, one of my team members, received the Information Industry Association Award decades ago for cramming a searchable index of the Library of Congress’ holdings. Remember those wonderful machines in the early 1980s. Yeah, Howard did wonders with limited resources. The Chinese professionals can too and have. (Note to US government committee members: Keep Howard and similar engineering whiz kids in mind when thinking about how curtailing computer resources will stop innovation.)
- Deepseek’s methods are likely to find there way into some US wrapper products presented as groundbreaking AI. Nope. These innovations are enabled by an open source technology. Now what happens if an outfit like Telegram or one of the many cyber gangs which Microsoft’s Brad Smith references? Yeah. Innovation of a type that is not salubrious.
- The authors of the papers are important. Should these folks be cross correlated with other information about grants, academic affiliations with US institutions, and conference attendance?
In case anyone is curious, from my dinobaby point of view, the most important paper in the bunch is the one about a “mixture of experts.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2025
National Security: A Last Minute Job?
January 20, 2025
On its way out the door, the Biden administration has enacted a prudent policy. Whether it will persist long under the new administration is anyone’s guess. The White House Briefing Room released a “Fact Sheet: Ensuring U.S. Security and Economic Strength in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” The rule provides six key mechanisms on the diffusion of U.S. Technology. The statement specifies:
“In the wrong hands, powerful AI systems have the potential to exacerbate significant national security risks, including by enabling the development of weapons of mass destruction, supporting powerful offensive cyber operations, and aiding human rights abuses, such as mass surveillance. Today, countries of concern actively employ AI – including U.S.-made AI – in this way, and seek to undermine U.S. AI leadership. To enhance U.S. national security and economic strength, it is essential that we do not offshore this critical technology and that the world’s AI runs on American rails. It is important to work with AI companies and foreign governments to put in place critical security and trust standards as they build out their AI ecosystems. To strengthen U.S. security and economic strength, the Biden-Harris Administration today is releasing an Interim Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion. It streamlines licensing hurdles for both large and small chip orders, bolsters U.S. AI leadership, and provides clarity to allied and partner nations about how they can benefit from AI. It builds on previous chip controls by thwarting smuggling, closing other loopholes, and raising AI security standards.”
The six mechanisms specify 18 key allies to whom no restrictions apply and create a couple trusted statuses other entities can attain. They also support cooperation between governments on export controls, clean energy, and technology security. As for “countries of concern,” the rule seeks to ensure certain advanced technologies do not make it into their hands. See the briefing for more details.
The measures add to previous security provisions, including the October 2022 and October 2023 chip controls. We are assured they were informed by conversations with stakeholders, bipartisan members of Congress, industry representatives, and foreign allies over the previous 10 months. Sounds like it was a lot of work. Let us hope it does not soon become wasted effort.
Cynthia Murrell, January 20, 2025
FOGINT: Russia Reveals How Important Telegram Is to Its Propaganda Program
January 8, 2025
This is an official dinobaby post. No smart software involved in this blog post.
Telegram that messaging service is important to Russia’s European propaganda efforts. Russia suggested that Telegram block messages from the Ukrainian government to Russians using Telegram April 2024. The filtering was big news in Ukraine; in the US, the Telegram action was lost in the cacophony of 24×7 digital information flows. This means that few Americans knew or cared about this Telegram acquiescence to the Kremlin.
A number of news outlets have reported that Telegram is more important to the Putin regime than many realized. Jurist.org reported in “Russia Threatens Retaliation Over Blocking of State Media Telegram Channels Across EU.” The write up states:
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that users attempting to access the Telegram channels of Russian state broadcasters, including RIA Novosti, Izvestia and RT, are being notified of limited access in the EU. Russia characterized the blockage as “political censorship” in violation of international obligations on free information access. Moscow warned that “specialized international organizations should duly evaluate these actions” and demanded a response from UN human rights mechanisms and UNESCO leadership.
The Jurist article adds:
This latest dispute over media access follows a pattern of escalating restrictions between Russia and the EU since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The war prompted the EU to impose massive and unprecedented sanctions against Russia, including restrictions on state media outlets accused of spreading propaganda. In June 2024, Russia blocked access to 81 European media websites from 25 European countries, affecting outlets like France’s Agence France-Presse (AFP), Le Monde, and Liberation. This action came after the EU banned four Russian state media outlets in May 2024. The EU accused the outlets Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta of disseminating propaganda about the war in Ukraine.
The question the article does not address is, “What are the likely retaliatory measures?” Russia has blocked major European news Web sites, including Der Spiegel and El Pais, among others. Mr. Putin’s “threats” have been characterized as verbal assertions, not cyber attacks designed to cripple key EU countries or direct kinetic action against the United Kingdom.
Several observations are warranted:
- Telegram is a big player for Russia’s propaganda machine
- The Kremlin’s grousing makes it clear that some Telegram marketing verbiage is baloney when asserting that the organization operates without compromising “freedom of speech”
- The frantic push by Telegram in the crypto space can be interpreted as part of the Russia-supported effort to undermine the US dollar and get around sanctions imposed on Russia as a consequence of the three-year special operation.
Net net: Telegram warrants close observation in 2025.
Stephen E Arnold, January 8, 2025
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