Luis VillaDec 7
The widespread publishing of AI slop (and relatedly, even predating LLMs, the enshittification of Google search results) is a much more interesting discussion than most of LLM Discourse.
https://mastodon.green/@Tarnport/115679627597776698
Tarnport (@[email protected])

All the shrieking "If you don't like AI, don't use it, but quit trying to control others who do," is actually an ancient debate. It goes back to Hammurabi's Code and the Commandments of Ma'at: DO NOT POLLUTE THE COMMON WELL. It's the most ancient law we have. You can't pollute the river upstream and call it individual prerogative. Watch how fast you go down.

Mastodon.green
Show threadLuis VillaDec 7
(It’s important to highlight the Google search results problem, and the related bots-on-Twitter and Fox News on TV problems. LLMs are just one more contributor to the slow but steady poisoning to what was briefly the high point of our civilization’s access to knowledge—so if you only stop LLMs, you have at best slightly slowed the knowledge commons problem.)
Show threadLuis VillaDec 7

And to be clear, this is a bubble. And there are scams. But there were scams and bubbles around railroads and the web too. This isn’t tulips, and if you insist on telling people it’s a tulip they’re going to tune you out.

https://social.coop/@luis_in_brief/115680503358736664

Luis Villa (@[email protected])

@[email protected] the externalities are real, the cons are real, and the bubble is real. But if your conversation starts from “welllll actualllly it isn’t useful” then people aren’t going to listen to you on any of the problems.

social.coop
Show threadLuis Villa
Related: I don’t always agree with @pluralistic but this is leagues better than any other AI bubble criticism you’ll read today—long but absolutely worth a read and worth grappling with. His focus on labor power and industry intermediaries, rather than individual workers, is really important.
https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/115680616717668184
Simon Willison (@[email protected])

I thoroughly recommend reading all of Cory Doctorow's recent speech on AI skepticism, it's crammed with new arguments and interesting new ways of thinking about these problems https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

Mastodon
Dec 8 at 12:25amWeb
Show threadLuis VillaDec 8

And I need to sit with the “reverse centaur” analogy, a lot. He’s 100% correct that Silicon Valley’s plan is to sell the vision of centaurs while actually creating a reserve army of labour, cowed and ready to serve when needed as reverse centaurs.

And as someone who is a pretty happy (and real) centaur right now… I need to wrestle with that.

Show threadLuis VillaDec 8

Some other readings this morning: Robin Sloan is whimsical here, as is his wont. He’s “ambivalent, in the sense of having many thoughts and feelings at once”. So read lightly.

But the key thought to hold alongside Cory’s “reverse centaur”: if everything “melts into code”—what does this tell us about who/what will become centaurized?

[Robin hints at another branch to explore: “seeing like a state” has been always essentially about seeing like tabular data. What now?]

https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/all-that-is-solid/

All that is solid melts into code

More computer, rather than more human.

Robin Sloan
Show threadLuis VillaDec 8

And from @ethanz: have we literally instantiated Gramscian hegemony by encoding most knowledge into a single Thing? I think the answer is importantly “no”, because hegemony to me has always had an important component that lives in the heads of the people, and LLMs can’t encode, and will only somewhat influence, that component. But it’s still an important argument.

(If none of this made sense… read Ethan’s piece, he explains what it is and why it matters.)

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2025/12/05/gramscis-nightmare-ai-platform-power-and-the-automation-of-cultural-hegemony/

Gramsci's Nightmare: AI, Platform Power and the Automation of Cultural Hegemony - Ethan Zuckerman

Large language models lock values into place, making it hard to challenge the cultural hegemony of a particular form of western culture

Ethan Zuckerman
Show threadVerbmanDec 8
@luis_in_brief @pluralistic totally second this, been sharing it round - feeling grateful for the articulation
Show threadPollinatorsDec 8
@luis_in_brief @pluralistic Thank you for sharing ideas to pop the AI bubble, the sooner the better. #aibubble