Actually the "thousand flowers" metaphor is part of Silicon Valley culture going back 30 years.
At least I have heard this any number of times in relation to technology innovation, entrepreneurship, "lean startups", etc. I bet a lot of the people who use the term have no idea of its origins in Mao's China.
See for example, this article from Inc magazine in 1984, which begins as follows:
"Not too long ago, fortune 500 companies looked at small-scale entrepreneurial companies as fodder for acquisition -- if they were big enough to make the effort worthwhile -- and little more. The executive who dared to suggest that Goliath might learn from David was likely to be trampled by a herd of MBAs waving printouts on the economies of scale that flowed from a centralized and rationally managed organization...
Then something happened...The micromillenium was born in a Cupertino, Calif., garage."
I am not a communist, but I must point out, that it works exactly the same way with capitalism too.
If you got some time, there is a great documentation called 'The Century of the Self', which shows (among other things) how modern marketing in western countries started and evolved.
Sounds like a perfect use for it. I'm understanding his use of it as that the thousand flowers should only bloom in the beginning, and later the field should be much tighter regulated. When you replace people's lives with different AIs, it becomes much less tragic, thankfully.
Tone of your comments suggests that you're arguing with me, and yet, you didn't write anything that contradicts with my comment. Are you sure you understood what I wrote?
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
The way I've been thinking about AI is that it reduces the need for grasping administrators with a surface understanding of technology. I'm not too surprised that the head administrator would see it in terms of his office gaining manifold new powers, though.
Blooming flowers is a metaphor used by orators from practically every country and kingdom in the course of human history. I don't think this particular formula has anything to do with the hundred flowers campaign, in spirit or in origin. "Let a thousand flowers bloom" has been used by people opposed to heavy government regulation in the tech sector for decades. I even remember the head of FINRA using some variation of the phrase in the Senate hearings on Bitcoin (somewhat surprisingly).
EDIT: Actually, looking into the history of this particular phrase and its use in the West, I may be mistaken here.
When some startup CEO says they are on a crusade to change customer service do you get visions of knights on horses riding through Asia Minor? When your girlfriend tells you not to put words in her mouth do you flash back to 2 Samuel 14:3?
Language is great at evolving and incorporating colorful and evocative phrases while stripping out the original connotations.
Yes, I expect this kind of reuse from most people. But it was surprising to hear one world leader using another world leader's most historic phrase from decades beforehand, where the phrase is historic precisely because it was murderous and insincere. So I mentioned it.
I'm reminded of another riff on that phrase from the book Nexus by Ramez Naam, which was also said in the context of AI and incredible (and potentially incredibly dangerous) technologies:
By "the point," do you mean that the government intends to initially encourage innovation, only to later stifle, repress, and criminalize the elements it doesn't like?
I mean, that's the reasonable application of the metaphor, right?
Obama's a thoughtful guy. I'm guessing he knew what he was saying. Perhaps it's a warning, looking at the history of tech, invariably all are tested for nefarious purposes, whatever the original purposes were.
I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign