Relative to his level of fame, his actual level of contribution as far as pushing forward AI, I’m not so sure about.
I deeply appreciate his educational content and I’m glad that it has led to a way for him to gain influence and sustain a career. Hopefully he’s rich enough from that that he can focus 100% on educational stuff!
IMO governments, like websites, should be boring but effective, focused on small day to day improvements, not all flash and empty marketing chasing cultural trends...
But try convincing a democracy that politicians should be paid more.
I believe the basic pay is £86k. They're not brain surgeons or rocket scientists, so even that is not that bad.
But I believe the average gravy train bumps this up 3X with extras.
It's a literal gravy train of subsidies and expenses and allowances! Sure the basic pay is, well, it's arguably not that bad ... but the gravy on top is tremendous. Not to mention the network contacts which plug their gravy train into the more lucrative gravy superhighway later.
Yeah, voters don't want to pay MPs more. Yet when voters are asked, they want highly intelligent, motivated people. They want them to have technical expertise, which means time spent in higher education. Then they want them to work a full time job in Parliament during the week, but also be open to constituency concerns on the weekend. And once all of this is pointed out, voters concede that maybe MPs deserve to be paid on par with professionals like doctors. (It's a different matter that UK doctors are underpaid).
> But I believe the average gravy train bumps this up 3X with extras.
Citation needed. They're on a shorter leash now with expenses. Don't go citing one or two bad apples either, show us what the median MP claims as expenses. According to you, it should be around £170k a year.
In general, politicians and their aides in the UK are underpaid. Most capable people find they're better off working in Canary Wharf or elsewhere in London. An example is the head of economic policy for the Labour Party earning £50k while writing policy for a £2 trn economy. (https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/01/19/british-politic...)