Jamie TehOf all the questionable things about AI, I'm starting to think its biggest crime is simply the staggering amount of resources it has pointlessly drawn away from other, more important work and the way it has corrupted even organisations that were previously doing great work in some misguided, race-to-the-bottom belief that this is actually the most important thing for humankind.
@jcsteh I know right?
Quentin@jcsteh the amount of damage to basically every major tech company is staggering, from the programs and code which have been wrecked, loss of reputation, good people losing their jobs or being taken off good projects for AI work... And as consumers we can't even complain because you have to deal with the AI chat bot...
@Quentin Worse, it's not just limited to major tech companies. This even applies to some smaller ones, even some not-for-profits, but it extends far beyond tech companies now.
@jcsteh true, we've even had a complaint that the development time spent on ai image description should have been spent on more pressing issues. I did explain that the work was done by an external project and surely having external developers familiar able to work on our code is a good thing, even if you don't use this particular feature. You can't win either way. But at least we were very clear to ensure it is offline & private, and if you don't to use it, don't enable it and you're no worse off than now. Or if you want to use the online models, keep using the add-ons you're using now
Strypey@jcsteh
> Worse, it's not just limited to major tech companies. This even applies to some smaller ones, even some not-for-profits
... including Mozilla, and some governments, including the EU;
https://disintermedia.net.nz/open-letter-the-european-union-must/
Mario Angst@jcsteh I am involved in a lot of discussions on the resource use of "AI", and yes, we should keep an eye on that, but I often also come back to this point. The most maddening thing to me is probably both the money wasted and headspace preoccupied by this hype that could have been somewhere else instead.
Obviously it is too easy of a story - it is not like magically everyone would have poured their energy into caring about planetary boundaries and injustices instead, but if even a tenth of what went into the AI hype would have gone towards that...
Obviously it is too easy of a story - it is not like magically everyone would have poured their energy into caring about planetary boundaries and injustices instead, but if even a tenth of what went into the AI hype would have gone towards that...
@jcsteh I can't imagine it's easy working for one of the organisations that has been so corrupted. I mean I find the amount of time NV Access puts into "AI" upsetting, and we've got nothing on Mozilla in that regard.
@saschacowley The thing is... I'm not even saying we shouldn't put time into AI. I think there are absolutely areas where it can have benefit and be less ethically and environmentally questionable. It's the race to "do AI" at the cost (both financial and otherwise) of everything else that bothers me.
Borris
jilleduffy@jcsteh Yes. This.
We need to start talking about "cost" differently.
Chris Mills@jcsteh @Em0nM4stodon makes me think of a bunch of stone heads on a remote Pacific island.
Stefan Scholl@jcsteh “resources it has pointlessly drawn away from other, more important work”
Now I'm thinking about the beginning of “Idiocracy”.
🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp@jcsteh Under capitalism the vast majority of human labour is steered towards a myopic focus: profit for the capitalist class, that means more hours on the job less time spent with people you care about.
"
The evil of the present system is therefore not that the “surplus-value” of production goes to the capitalist[...]The evil lies in the possibility of a surplus-value existing
" Pëtr Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread
http://libraryqxxiqakubqv3dc2bend2koqsndbwox2johfywcatxie26bsad.onion/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread-1926-edition
gudenau
Dr Suzanne she/her@jcsteh I really don't need one more reason to hate ai, but now I have one. 🤔
@iveyline
Chupacabra 78704@jcsteh
Merely a diversion. Like sports events.
Merely a diversion. Like sports events.
Pete Carrier CARRIER-media Ltd@jcsteh I've been quite happy to quietly switch off Ai whenever it pops up everywhere, but was terrified to see it leak into my companies accounts package where one must formally agree that Ai makes mistakes and then also accept I'm fully responsible for submissions to the Tax authority. Gulp.
Please stop helping!
miki@jcsteh The amount of resources it is using, especially when compared to how much the same work would take when done by a human, is... greatly exaggerated, a Chat GPT prompt (with a modern model) uses as much energy as ~10 seconds of Netflix afaik.
You're absolutely right on your second point though. While AI is definitely going to change the world, your site for ordering takeout burgers or whatever does not need three AI assistants.
@miki I'm referring more to the resources that organisations put into trying to be part of this - money, people, time, strategy - rather than the resources used by the actual machines. But that could've been clearer, sorry.
@jcsteh Yeah, that part you're not wrong about.
There are a couple of orgs for which being "part of the AI revolution" absolutely makes sense (Google comes to mind), but I 100% agree about the rest.
It's not always obvious which kind you are, though. In hintsight, the crypto revolution was best avoided unless you work with international payments / 3rd-world countries, while anybody who avoided the mobile and internet revolutions is no longer with us, and may they rest in peace.
Maybe this is just inevitable, maybe it's better to potentially waste some resources than to potentially face irrelevance.
@jcsteh Yeah, that part you're not wrong about.
There are a couple of orgs for which being "part of the AI revolution" absolutely makes sense (Google comes to mind), but I 100% agree about the rest.
It's not always obvious which kind you are, though. In hintsight, the crypto revolution was best avoided unless you work with international payments / 3rd-world countries, while anybody who avoided the mobile and internet revolutions is no longer with us, and may they rest in peace.
Maybe this is just inevitable, maybe it's better to potentially waste some resources than to potentially face irrelevance.
TAV Creations
Godfrey642@jcsteh
1000% agree
Im furious about AI. It's being sold as this amazing resource that is so good for us all. But it isn't.
Apart from the VAST drain on energy (that we none of us can afford financially or resource-wise globally) it's a drain on us individually. We WILL become stupider and less capable in all sorts of ways.
Im sick of it all. And we are never given a choice about it.
Sick of business interests telling me i need this or that technology that I really don't need and really don't want.
Sure there are exceptions:
disabled ppl or elderly need AI and huge cars and Alexa/Siri and driverless vehicles to make their lives way way easier. And that's what it should be there for.
But for the majority of ppl those things are superfluous. We don't need them. We really don't.
But we are being MADE to want them bc the market gives lucrative profits for a select few if we ALL have to use them to pay for the research and development. I don't need things delivered to my frigging garden by drone, but a small number of ppl do. God forbid someone develops these things out of the goodness of their hearts bc elderly need help. But no, let's squeeze the cash out of everyone on the planet telling them they need some delivery bc it's cool apparently.
So we are made to use internet banking bc then they take cash away. We have streamed entertainment rather than going out and making our own bc all the pubs and cinemas are shutting. We are made to use chat bots on phones bc the take ppl away. It makes me effing furious
#AI #aiwillkillus #aiwillbeourdownfall #aiwillnotfixit #aiwilleliminateusall