varx/techMay 21, 2025

I very much get a "we just discovered radium and want to put it in everything" vibe from this whole generative AI bubble.

(Including the thing where companies used to slap the word "radium" on existing products even though they thankfully did not actually have any radioactive materials. Like "radium butter".)

Show threadJeff MartinMay 21, 2025
@varx I think the rich people that run the world are utterly fascinated by AI because it lets them access skills for the first time ever without needing to hire people. So more of this everywhere all the time just seems like bliss to them.
Show threadMartin Vermeer 86 47
@cuchaz @varx I think it is not that. Rather, it is about the *political* power to set the narrative. The same reason that rich people also buy media outlets for. For an LLM, reality is what the training corpus says it is, and the owner of the model controls that. And the big tech monopolies have a captive audience...
May 21, 2025 at 9:04amWeb
Show threadJeff MartinMay 21, 2025
@martinvermeer @varx Oh yeah. I definitely think that's another reason rich people love AI. They can finally get a "search engine" to lie the way they want.
Show thread60sRefugeeMay 22, 2025
@martinvermeer @cuchaz @varx On the corporate level it's about *agency*: the people at the top being able to set an absolute agenda that won't get watered down or filtered by intermediaries. Call centers used to be staffed by humans who were drilled to robotically follow a script with language carefully crafted by the lawyers. Now call centers are actual robots.