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Fear and Loathing at LANL

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By scooby

 


LANL has put out a new mission statement for LDRD, or the SIP, as well as a new strategic vision for the future. This has caused an uproar amongst scientists and the lab fellows. The SIP basically says LANL will be doing very little science form now on and will focus on production and be much more narrow. What is odd is that everyone seemed to be caught off guard by this and saying this a complete mess and makes little sense. My feeling from looking at this is that it was thrown together in like 5 minutes by some out of touch managers who are after the next promotion. It comes across like they did this in secret very fast so they would get no input by anybody. That or its is just a power grab by a select group a managers. Mason is probably not happy about this but wants to move on to the next bigger position. No one wants to rock the boat. My guess a bunch of people will leave, (so what) will be replaced by lower quality people (so what), some managers will move up...mission accomplished.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The mere fact that anyone reads, writes, or objects to management mission statements tells you everything you need to know about our weapons complex.
11/23/2023 10:37 AM
Anonymous said…
Perhaps it relates to that OpenAI discussion, some claim they have achieved AGI and exceeded human intelligence, and that was the reason for Altman's firing and subsequent rehire.

In that case, much of the science done by human scientists will be deemphasized in the future, especially computations and theory.

https://youtu.be/LT-tLOdzDHA?si=g8W0229d9NyXV-7T

https://youtu.be/T1RuUw019vA?si=wU8drDN3Sh8nKgxE
11/23/2023 12:51 PM
Anonymous said…
What do you bet the LANL management team just asked ChatGPT "What would be a good mission statement for the future of LANL". It could explain the big AI push.
11/23/2023 2:50 PM
Anonymous said…
"In that case, much of the science done by human scientists will be deemphasized in the future, especially computations and theory."

So this will be irrelevant to the labs.
11/23/2023 9:41 PM
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