Zero Credit For Carbon Credits. The Rush to Regulate #AI. A Billionaire Manifesto. And For Everyone Needing a Laugh – Scottish Comedy. #183

Adrian Monck

Oct 19, 2023

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome!

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1️⃣ Are Carbon Credits Cr*p?

Questions for climate change’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card

Two stories on Swiss carbon credit seller South Pole both start with drinks. Bloomberg:

Renat Heuberger gathered his co-founders on a glacier in the Swiss Alps for a celebration. The half-dozen men behind South Pole, the world’s leading seller of carbon offsets, raised their beers...

And the New Yorker:

A group of men assembled at sundown on the terrace of the Ruckomechi Camp, a safari resort on the Zambezi River... they were clinking gin-and-tonics... The party was led by Renat Heuberger, a 44-year-old Swiss entrepreneur...

Aside from requiring men with drinks, how do carbon credits work?

Here’s an example. South Pole pays a wealthy white Zimbabwean not to chop down trees in an area called Kariba. It then works out how much carbon not chopping trees down saves and sells this carbon ‘credit’ to businesses who can use it to balance off their CO2 and claim to be carbon neutral.

When Bloomberg questioned South Pole’s Kariba project earlier this year, Renat Heuberger wrote an angry response, accusing reporters of undermining the battle to save the world’s forests.

Carbon credits rely on the integrity of the projects claiming to mitigate CO2 emissions.

But Heidi Blake in the New Yorker portrays a carbon credit world where you can seemingly pluck numbers from the air and then put cash against them.

Her story ends with a weary South Pole CEO Renat Heuberger:

“I look at those young kids who come with their blockchain-enabled super-transparent solution, and say everything has been shit, what we did. OK. Calculate Kariba credits. Good luck. It’s not that easy.”

⏭ Dutch website Follow the Money has done a lot of reporting on South Pole.

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2️⃣ The #AI Research Monopoly Agenda

The Big Tech companies who want to licence science.

Karen Hao had a really interesting story in The Atlantic. The US Commerce Department:

“is considering a new blockade on a broad category of general-purpose AI programs, not just physical parts...”

These AI programs are so-called “frontier” models, a nebulous term co-opted by what one commentator calls “a small group of companies banding together to push their own interests,” convening as the Frontier Model Forum.

The lobbying undercurrent floats two possibilities:

Cutting edge research (whatever form that takes) will need a licence.
Stopping international collaboration on open source models

The first point? Hao explains:

“Evoking the spectre of future threats shifts the regulatory attention away from present-day harms of their existing models, such as privacy violations, copyright infringements, and job automation.”

And on the second she quotes Sarah Myers West of the AI Now Institute:

“[The idea that] this is a technology that carries significant dangers, so we don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands ... plays into the fear-mongering anti-China frame that has often been used as a means to pretty explicitly stave off ... regulatory intervention...”

Politico reports on the growing influence of Open Philanthropy helping fund #AI tech policy staffers in think tanks and politicians’ offices. They too are pushing licensing and control...

Tonight I’ll be returning to Oxford to hear Eric Xing debating #AI’s future.

⏭ The upstart AI open source champions? Meta!

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3️⃣ Inside the Mind of a Silicon Valley Billionaire

The Dr Evil doppelgänger with a revolutionary manifesto.

Marc Andreessen helped create one of the first web browsers.

He’s gone on to be a wealthy venture capitalist who also sits on the board of Meta (see ‘AI open source champions’ above), among others.

This week he published a ‘techno-optimist manifesto’ which – perhaps unsurprisingly – backs Meta’s view of unregulated AI.

Whilst it’s good to see push back on the sneaky industry lobbying above, when it comes in the form of a somewhat

Andreessen’s essay is a window into the soul of a Silicon Valley billionaire, revealing a mix of hubris and ahistoricism.

TL;DR? Sub-Nietzsche preach meets second-hand Rand.

He forgets tech-utopianism has often been associated with authoritarianism (the Soviets launched the first satellite), and that libertarianism – whilst great for billionaires – has less to offer people at the bottom of the ladder.

He ends with a quixotic list of heroes that includes one of the authors of the Fascist Manifesto (“Major Tech Investor Calls Architect of Fascism a ‘Saint’ in Unhinged Manifesto.”)

A Croatian philosopher of ... race.

And a man who presided over Britain’s first bank run in 150 years.

With friends like Andreessen, opponents of AI regulation hardly need enemies.

⏭ Andreessen also wrote a pithy career guide that is worth your time.

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4️⃣ Be Elon Musk! Run Your Own Social Network

A smart game puts you in charge of online safety...

Just click to play.

⏭ If you like that game, this one tests your moderator skills.

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5️⃣ Is Crypto a Terrorist ATM?

Not so fast. The rules are there... at least in the US.

There’s reporting this week on where Hamas gets its money. No surprise, it’s mostly taxes and cash. But a small chunk comes in crypto. As Reuters reports:

“After fighting in May 2021, Hamas-controlled crypto addresses received more than $400,000, TRM Labs said.
“However, since last weekend's violence, prominent Hamas-linked support groups had moved just a few thousands dollars through crypto, TRM noted.
“‘One likely reason for the low donation volume is that Israeli authorities are targeting them immediately,’ TRM said, adding that Israel had seized cryptocurrency worth ‘tens of millions of dollars’ from Hamas-linked addresses in recent years.
“Between Dec 2021 and April this year, Israel seized almost 190 crypto accounts it said were linked to Hamas.”

Meantime Yaya Fanusie of the Crypto Council for Innovation explains why the world needs to roll out US rules to make digital currency less convenient for criminals.

⏭ The Russian exchange helping fund crime and terror.