A note for readers: for my own sake, I’m choosing to not write about the ongoing American War on Iran today. But if you came for those updates, know that Hope and I are safe and well. We returned to Abu Dhabi yesterday midday. In-person school resumes this week and we’ll see how long the ceasefire lasts.

On Wednesday morning, back in Thailand, I somehow talked myself into reading a Dune prequel. For those unfamiliar, the Dune Universe is the creation of (problematic) author and fellow Tacoman, Frank Herbert. Herbert attended my beloved Lincoln High School, where I worked for a decade. No, I didn't teach him. We missed each other by about sixty five years.

Dune, the first book at least, has been adapted twice into a film, although I’d argue only once successfully (you can watch the trailer for David Lynch's unfortunate 1984 version below). 

The second adaptation is helmed by Denis Villeneuve, one of my favorite filmmakers [Enemy (2013), Sicario (2015), Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017)] . Villeneuve has successfully molded the two halves of the massive first book into a modern epic.

Many of the desert scenes in the film are shot in the Empty Quarter here in the UAE. Longtime readers are likely having déjà vu at this point. Here are previous editions of the newsletter discussing Dune:

• Dune Hits Different When You Live In Arrakis

• A Spoiler-Free Appreciation of Dune Part II

The third and final Dune film is coming out in December and its trailer became the most viewed preview in the history of YouTube—37 million views and climbing as of this writing.

It’s kinda worth watching both trailers and thinking about the way two legendary filmmakers told the same story. In fact, that’s the topic of this video essay. 

It’s also worth considering why Villeneuve seems to be stopping here, rather than continuing with the story. Having read the first four Dune books I found they offered diminishing returns. My take is that Frank Herbert wrote one great book but published six. 

Nevertheless, despite my misgivings I decided to dive back into the Dune Universe and I picked up a prequel published in 2002 called The Butlerian Jihad. For those unfamiliar (and I don't judge you for being so) the Butlerian Jihad is a critical event in the Dune universe. In the novels and Denis Villeneuve’s films, AI, androids, and other familiar sci-fi technologies are conspicuously absent. That absence stems from the Butlerian Jihad, a human revolt ten thousand years before the first novel that led to a lasting ban on AI and “thinking machines.” It is akin to the Dance of the Dragons and Battle of the Trident in the Game of Thrones books—universe shaping events that occurred outside of the main cannon but are central to it. 

I am early in the book and it's relatively dense but I am curious enough about the story to ride out the sometimes tedious dialogue of characters named Erasmus, Agamemnon, and Xavier Harkonnen.

But what brought me back to the Dune Universe is the news. Let’s call a spade a spade. There is far less desire for AI technology than investors and venture capitalists want there to be. According to Pew, just 17% of the public think “AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the US over the next 20 years.” 

Earlier this month someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI. Not to be outdone, someone else this week shot a gun at Altman’s home. To be clear I don't endorse either of these actions, especially if you're reading this and happen to be a Fed. But the reason we are seeing AI inserted into everything is that consensual adoption is abysmal. While OpenAI boasts about 900 million users, their paid user base is reported to be 50 million people, giving the company one-third fewer paid users than the streaming service Paramount+. 

Meanwhile, the AI companies argue:  

1. AI is the future of every industry (it’s not);

2. AI can do anything and everything a human can do (it can’t);

3. AI is going to take everybody's job (it won’t, but these companies sure are going to try).

It's not surprising that large swaths of the populace seem unenthused about the entire project. But what is surprising is that Herbert set the Butlerian Jihad so far into the future, imagining the war 10,000 years from now. From where I sit, it feels like the timeline for an uprising against so-called thinking machines is coming much, much sooner. 

The venture capital class and the current administration are attempting to tie the future of the entire American economy to the success of artificial intelligence. It's worthwhile to keep an eye on rising anti-Ai sentiment and think about the wider societal implications of the technology. 

To put it in context, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are expected to spend $385 billion annually on data centers between now and 2028. Similarly wealthy countries are making different bets on the future around renewable energy and high speed rail. For the price of two years of those data center investments, China could build enough high speed rail lines to nearly circle the globe. 

Don’t worry I will show my work: China builds high-speed rail for about $20 million per kilometer. US companies are investing around $365 billion per year into data centers. Two years of that investment, about $730 billion, would be enough to build roughly 36,500km of rail, which would fall just 3,500km short of circling the globe.

If you combine this with the President making a $1.5 trillion budget request for the Pentagon, it’s just a dumbfounding amount of money going to things that will not improve the lives of people one iota and it seems more and more people understand that.

I'm going to leave it there for now. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on “AI hesitancy.” Yeah, that feels like a nice neutral term to use. 

How are you using current LLMs?

What concerns do you have about AI companies and their influence in society?

Do you think I am off-base here?

Feel free to sound off.