I feel the same way about AI that I did about crypto when it started becoming a thing:
• All of the moral practices that make it possible are fucked beyond repair.
• It’s spawning some of the worst companies, and enriching some of the worst billionaires in the world.
• While there are some genuinely useful, practical applications for it, there are so few of them, and they have had so little positive impact so far, that it doesn’t even seem like it’s going to be worth it anytime soon.
One can wish. But thru my lifetime, I've seen how we have gladly offshored manufacturing for the product of cheap labor, cheap goods. And until the recent (DEMOCRAT) recognition that we'd cut too deeply into essential industries, and re-establishment of some industries here, it was a downward spiral of trade deficit and weakening security.
AI is in an analogous position. As long as it produces 'cheap crap' that people like because of the immediacy and (false) economy, no real guardrailing is going to take place.
Externalizing cost and risk is the hallmark of capitalism. Taking stuff at one cost (trees, oil, data, land, other peoples money, etc) then selling it for profit, is basically Econ101. The evil part is how egregiously the costs can be avoided, externalized, or as in the case of fossil fuels... delayed for a few generations...
@oldguycrusty @nileane @sigmund
AI as a concept is being oversold. I think the reality of it is it is a natural progression in machine learning. We're in a position right now where its most visible applications to the public are online content generation, 6 fingers and all.
My son's in Silicon Valley in the machine learning biz, and we talked about this 12 hours ago, coincidentally. Even the projects he is working on, although they use AI/ML, are not directly interfaced with other parallel projects in the company. The machines are not yet scraping other machines. That's when the real fun begins.
But right now, AI's primary usefulness in the market seems to be pumping AI stock prices. From the cheap seats, where I sit, at least.
@nileane the timing is also not helping. Back in 2016 a lot of us realized how powerful and how fucked up big tech can be and the impact it can have in our world, misinformation being a big thing!
Did we try to solve this? No, we invested in AI where it's like throwing gasoline into a fire where we have no way of knowing if anything is true or not. What could go wrong?
… but it sounds like Scarlet Johansson!
@nileane @rafa Where we fail, is at realizing that our societal systems necessarily lead to these outcomes, and then at thinking about how we can fix them.
It makes no sense to expect capitalists living in capitalism to not act capitalistic while so many incentive structures motivate them to do so.
It's not helpful to sit here and think "this is stupid, this is harmful" of course it is. It makes some people money and so it happens..same as endless masses of plastic crap and commuting to work.
@nileane I feel like AI has more practical uses than the blockchain. The blockchain was basically "what if database but more complicated"
But no one seems interested in actually doing anything practical with AI. It's always "we added AI and now the service is harder to use and impossible to trust"
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18.5K Posts, 650 Following, 6.17K Followers · 🏳️⚧️ Présidente @[email protected] 📰 Design pour @[email protected] 🎙️ Silliest co-host on @[email protected] every week 🍊 I've been turning Mastodon tangerine since 2023 @[email protected] 🔍 I make TinyStart, a tiny launcher and emoji picker for your Mac https://tinystart.app 🐱 @[email protected]
And they both rely on enormous computing resources and consume vast amounts of electric power.
And just like the fossil fuel industries, they enrich a tiny few super rich (2%), while externalizing the true costs to the other 98% - hitting the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest.
@nileane YES! The three new laws of robotics, … or AI
Whatever
@nileane funny thing is that it seems like there’s a pattern for all these trendy tech tools.
Start unethically (use data without anyone’s permission).
Show users the product
Make them pay for the product. The riches get richer.
No consensus or whatsoever to govern the product/tech trend
Let it die out and move on to the next trend.
But regarding AI, although it has its applications in certain fields. I think heavy reliance on it is a mistake. Maybe I’m wrong though.
Both are essentially just ways to waste massive amounts of energy and make some fraudsters rich., while contributing to the destruction of mankind.
@nileane @SilverEagle unlike block chain there is one genuine application where LLMs excel: generation of bad information.
I can’t help but feel that LLMs are substantially worse than blockchain because their one really unambiguous application is to poison information sources in a way that’s never been possible before.
@nileane AI feels worse than crypto. You kinda opted in for crypto, toss money at it or not, you choose.
Artists did not get an option to be out of AI. The art theft and copyright violation against independent artists is just sickening.
I know NFTs stole artists' work to sell NFT, but not even that comes close. This directly threatens artists jobs, but requires stealing from them to do so :/
I’m wondering how many may have been hired purely as ‘prompt engineers’
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