Armin RonacherJan 12
The future is unevenly distributed.
Show threaddtanzerJan 12
@mitsuhiko Interesting. But not totally unexpected. People here seem to be more skeptical, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Show threadArmin RonacherJan 12
@dtanzer It's also not necessarily a good thing. There is a reason people over here are called luddites at times.
Show threadEugen RochkoJan 12
@mitsuhiko @dtanzer You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing 🙂
Show threaddtanzerJan 12

@Gargron I can't speak for @mitsuhiko of course, but for me it's not a bad thing, but also not necessarily a good thing (again - see above 😉 ).

But in this case, I think there is not a big case against waiting for the hype to calm down: Those tools are very easy to learn, and *everyone* is winging it right now anyway.

Show threadArmin RonacherJan 12
@dtanzer @Gargron I happen to think that there is very strong case to make that it's a bad idea to wait for the hype to calm down, particularly for politicians and decision makers. Late movers will be punished in this space. Particularly for us Europeans we will become hyper dependent on other countries and it will become close to impossible for us to compete over time, particularly if the foundation labs decide to close the door behind themselves through the legal systems.
Show threadIBBoardJan 12

@mitsuhiko @dtanzer @Gargron Politicians and policy makers absolutely shouldn't be late movers.

They need to get on top of things and legislature appropriately before the shit hits the fan and the LLM companies shrug and say either "we told you we didn't guarantee anything" or "externalities like society and the environment aren't our problem when we're making investors money in the short term".

That's not the same as "they need to listen to the hype from the companies selling it and throw all of their support and national investment behind it with a blank cheque to do what they want".

Show threadArmin RonacherJan 12
@ibboard @dtanzer @Gargron No, we don't need legislation, we need investments.
Show threadJonathan HendryJan 12

@mitsuhiko @ibboard @dtanzer @Gargron

I suppose they should have jumped on blockchain and NFTs, and the Metaverse, too. Massive waste of taxpayer money and huge transfer of wealth to sleazy venture capitalists.

Show threadArmin Ronacher
@jonhendry @ibboard @dtanzer @Gargron no, those things are not comparable.
Jan 12 at 11:49pmWeb
Show threadJonathan HendryJan 13

@mitsuhiko @ibboard @dtanzer @Gargron

Sam Altman was one of the people promoting crypto blockchain nonsense, specifically "worldcoin".

The VC firms pushing crypto and NFTs were the same ones pushing AI.