Meredith WhittakerMar 10, 2024

Notable that this longstanding problem, which I and a few others have been naming for ~a decade, is now common sense.

It's true. AI is fundamentally a technology controlled by Big Tech. But the current 'solutions' to this problem would extend, not dilute, Big Tech control. 1/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/10/big-tech-companies-ai-research/

Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research

A growing chorus of academics say the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing researchers out of the field, compromising independent study of the technology.

The Washington Post
Show threadJesse KarmaniMar 10, 2024

@Mer__edith Great points. I noticed this around many different areas of research in the last decade plus, not just AI. Anything that requires researching humanity-scale problems — databases, distributed systems, etc. — seems nearly impossible to do outside of industry because academia can’t replicate the unbelievably large data and traffic patterns that very large, global companies see.

What solutions do you see to these kind of issues?

Show threadShadSterling
@jesseplusplus @Mer__edith this thread reminds me of the old rule that broadcasters, in exchange for the commercial broadcast license, must spend a certain portion of their broadcasting on public services (primarily news and education). I wonder if we should have a more general rule that any commercial infrastructure must allocate some fraction for public use. Maybe use their profit margin as the percentage, and use most of that percent of cloud hosting for research instititions
Mar 10, 2024 at 11:40pmIceCubesApp