Carlos Cámara
Christine Lemmer-Webber"We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter..." -- Sam Altman
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2032012809433723158
There you go, there it is. Yup.
Water is life. So is intelligence.
I'm not claiming that they're right, that you are actually buying "intelligence" from them by the meter, I think that's misleading.
But also, the fact that that's the *framing* goes to show to you that they absolutely, completely want it to be, and want to sell intellectual slavery, as far as they can get it.
Lykso@cwebber Every day radicalizes me more. I need to figure out what flavor of communist I am now.
refraction 
@elexia @cwebber Yeah, that's fair. I'm somewhere on that spectrum, but I haven't read enough of either's literature to have a clear idea of where I fall. I'm not a humanist, which seems to make many anarchist positions difficult, but I also recognize that the State is fundamentally a protection racket.
If I say any more, I'm definitely going to say something stupid (if I haven't already!). Better for me to listen, I think.
Papa Exmatrikulatus 🏴🏳️🌈@lykso
If you have not read it until now: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
An anarcho-communist classic!
mk30@lykso I don't think you have to be a humanist to be an anarchist. I consider myself an anarchist whose allegiance is primarily to the land (meaning, the biosphere, and the specific area I live in), and who feels primarily accountable to the land. I guess you can consider me biophilic.
I live on Hawai'i island, and the local term for it is "aloha 'aina".
xyhhx 
Preston Maness ☭
Travis F W@aspensmonster @lykso @cwebber i'm just anti-libertarian
All the "tech bros" Fedi complains about are libertarian.
Jan Antoš@lykso @cwebber better not, “love” the people from western countries glorifying communism. Come to us to Eastern Europe, we will show you monuments of remembrance of victims of communism, and you hopefully will understand you are talking nonsense. Communism and Nacism should never exist. Shame on people who glorify any of those brutal despotic systems.
@janantos I'm no tankie, and I was raised on horror stories from both regimes. I have no interest in reviving Stalinism.
@lykso communism in its academic definition is utopic idea, reality and human nature leads to totalitarian regimes. Maybe people should focus on social state. Communism is evil, period.
Violet Madder
David Culley@janantos @lykso Marx explained how capitalists exploit workers. Marx thought that once the entire world realized how bad capitalism is for workers, the world will be ready for socialism. But socialism must come after the revolution. Before socialism, first all workers of all countries must unite, as Marx famously said.
Lenin who was a big fan of Marx said, frustratedly, that he had a couple of conversations with workers, but nobody wanted to believe what Marx said. Lenin thought that people were too stupid and too indoctrinated to realize how they are exploited. The workers had no class consciousness. So Lenin introduced the authoritarianism to Marx's ideas. The stupid workers didn't understand Marx, but he and his intellectual friends understand Marx, so he decided that he and his group of intellectuals should be in power and make all the decisions for all the stupid workers who shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for themselves because they didn't even read Marx or didn't understand him if they did.
Stalin who was a big fan of Lenin said, after Lenin had died, the authoritarianism sounds great! But rather than a group of intellectuals (the party), it should be him and him alone in power. So Stalin turned Lenin's already authoritarian ideology into a full-blown dictatorship. And Stalin also broke with both Marx's and Lenin's idea that the workers should first *want* socialism (revolution) before they get socialism. Stalin said let's give them socialism even though there was no revolution yet. So Stalin took everything away from the poor Russian farmers and had those who resisted killed.
Also, Marx (a German) had always said that the revolution must begin in rich, advanced, already industrialized countries. Lenin (a Russian) said fuck that, who says the revolution can't start in piss-poor Russia that is centuries behind and is not at all industrialized?
I can understand that as an Eastern European you are traumatized by Stalinism and rightly say it was evil. But Stalin went against everything that Marx had taught.
If you hate on communism, please get the facts straight. Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism are three distinct ideologies. Even though people throw them all in the same pot and label all three as #communism.
@davidculley @lykso I am not saying capitalism is good, but first read The Communist Manifesto (it’s only fairly small amount of vomited letters) then read Orwell’s 1984 and then we can continue speaking.
PS: Marx declared dictatorship of proletariat, how this does not oppress my freedom, he advocated the state to take complete control, he associated centrally planned economy (history told us this does not work, we even did not had enough toilet paper in Czechoslovakia, there was waiting queues for car purchase long as 5 years and more), next he was proposing abolishment of all private property and inheritance (good luck with that). He proposed everyone will work where state will say (here we go to Gulag or conscription to work camp) and we can continue. But the biggest flaw is, his naive view that when this proletariat class seizes power, how it will voluntarily give it back to society) he is contradicting himself, on one side he is “abolishing” classes and on the other side he say, here is citation “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from bourgeoise, to centralise all instruments of production the hands of State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as ruling class “. Don’t you see how he is promoting totalitarian system not different from Stalinism (I can say, Stalin just implemented it up to the last letter how he said). And as last life time expectancy was more than decade smaller than in western countries. We even did not produced quality xray machines (eg. Pediatric machine was western Germany imported Siemens), when in 90s after “velvet revolution” the German technician visited that department, he did not believed he see museum piece in works (shooting several times higher doses that moder machine that time), all he said “das ist historische”. How I know? My mom was head of x ray department in the biggest children hospital in Central Europe (Prague Motol)
PS: Marx declared dictatorship of proletariat, how this does not oppress my freedom, he advocated the state to take complete control, he associated centrally planned economy (history told us this does not work, we even did not had enough toilet paper in Czechoslovakia, there was waiting queues for car purchase long as 5 years and more), next he was proposing abolishment of all private property and inheritance (good luck with that). He proposed everyone will work where state will say (here we go to Gulag or conscription to work camp) and we can continue. But the biggest flaw is, his naive view that when this proletariat class seizes power, how it will voluntarily give it back to society) he is contradicting himself, on one side he is “abolishing” classes and on the other side he say, here is citation “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from bourgeoise, to centralise all instruments of production the hands of State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as ruling class “. Don’t you see how he is promoting totalitarian system not different from Stalinism (I can say, Stalin just implemented it up to the last letter how he said). And as last life time expectancy was more than decade smaller than in western countries. We even did not produced quality xray machines (eg. Pediatric machine was western Germany imported Siemens), when in 90s after “velvet revolution” the German technician visited that department, he did not believed he see museum piece in works (shooting several times higher doses that moder machine that time), all he said “das ist historische”. How I know? My mom was head of x ray department in the biggest children hospital in Central Europe (Prague Motol)
@davidculley @lykso we can continue, with political screenings if you are suitable for university education (are your parents in party, are you organised in youth movements related to party, etc. ) If not, we proletariat will not give you the higher education, because you do not deserve it. You know we have saying (political joke, that’s not that funny) “We all are equal, but some of us are more equal”. That says it all.
@davidculley @lykso you know what happened when that whole eastern bloc communism collapsed? Majority of these state companies got bankrupt, you know why? Because they have been producing decades old technology that lacked even humble concurrency to western products, you know when you centralise production and development you destroy inovation. We have very long list of killed projects, very good pieces of technology that newer went to production because based on centralised planning, only high power train engines (locomotives) could be produced in Soviet Union not in Czechoslovakia. We have Czech television documentary series about such projects called “Zašlapane projekty” (Stuck Project - in meening grounded). It is easy to idealise communism, but you should liste people from families who experienced that regime. Eastern Europe countries have declared Communist ideology and Parties as unlawful, we treat them as criminal organisations or thread to constitutional order. And I can say in majority of these counties even when not banned, they did not made it in significant power in elections, this is will of people.
@janantos @lykso You experienced Stalinism or forms of government inspired by it. Again, I agree that those were horrible, but I'm talking about Marxism and that is different from what traumatized you.
About centralized production and development destroying all innovation:
In all countries there are thousands of bakeries. The "production" of bread is decentralized. In the West we never had to stand in line (for more than 5 minutes) when buying bread, which was not the experience in the Soviet Union, right? In the West (and all countries since 1989), different bakeries could even charge different prices for their bread because they operate independently from each other, whereas in the East, the centre that made all the decisions even determined the price of bread, for all bakeries in the country. Right? That's how people in Eastern Germany (DDR) ended up having to wait years for a Trabant car.
Now look at Apple's iPhone. There is one single factory in the world, producing all iPhones in existence. (Edit, since you miss my point: Even if there are two or three factories in the entire world, it's not that every town in every country has its own iPhone factory like it has its own bakery.) All iPhones are shipped to world-wide customers from that one centrally producing and developing factory. The iPhone is designed in California, one central location in the world. There aren't iPhone factories all over the world, decentralized. No, it's just one factory at the center. And yet the iPhone was a huge innovation. Capitalism (the West) does central production all the time and it doesn't kill all innovation and progress. So, central production doesn't have to suck.
@davidculley @lykso correction, central production in state organisation sucks, you are comparing apples to pear. Your Apple example is flawed we have another phone producers, more appropriate example will be all phones are produced within the same corporation/factory. Not mentioning you are factually wrong on Apple (factories in China, India and Vietnam). Read Manifesto first as I already said. You wanna take communism way, be my guest, I am meanwhile going to stockpile popcorn for this epic show. But you should hear our warnings, we experienced how this will end up and we are not going to follow you and don’t even try to force us to do so, how Marx was proposing in his Communist Manifesto. I hope the western people just putting equal sign between communism and socialism. We can discuss social state how we to some degree for example have in Europe (there we have common touching points), but don’t dare to apply communism on top of me, I will fight back till end and I will not be alone.
@davidculley @lykso btw Stalinism how you are still repeating as broken record does have nothing to do with completely broken industry, lack of goods, not being able to produce elementary things such as toilet paper, female hygiene stuff, etc… that’s simply output of state centralised production, and I don’t even want to repeat, there was almost non existent innovation outside of army production. The centralised production in big scale across several industries just sucks in big scale, even Czech Communist party in late 80s acknowledged it, whole industry was in ruins.
@davidculley @janantos To be clear, I don't think centralization of production is generally a good thing, whether driven by political or market pressures. I gather that I am more Luxemburgian than Leninist.
These critiques of the USSR are not new to me and they miss the mark for me because they rely on the Bolshevik appropriation of the word "communist" and its subsequent erasure and suppression of all other tendencies aside from its own.
@lykso @davidculley except majority of my complaints are backed by Marx Comunist Manifesto.
@janantos @davidculley Backed by your own interpretation of it, compounded by your own insistence that it encompasses the whole idea. Like this is a religion with holy texts.
@lykso @davidculley the whole idea good bless is illegal on par with nacism in parts of Europe I am living.
@janantos @davidculley I certainly wouldn't recommend you refer to yourself as either big-C or little-c C/communist in that context, then!
John Mierau@cwebber Perfect phrasing. I'm sure they'll sell a cheaper price plan if you get your kids to sign on to accepting your debts after you die, too.
Karel P Kerezman@cwebber They're inventing a market that they can corner, or at least try their damnedest to.
Jenniferplusplus@cwebber The closest they've ever come to a consistent definition of intelligence is something that can do economically valuable work.
Under that definition, what he's proposing is that you would rent the ability to do work, at all, from him. And that is in keeping with the ai/vc set's stated goals and past actions.
Matt HallYeah, I think I'm in pretty strong agreement with this.
That what's being 'sold' is 'work' not 'intelligence'. It's not _thinking_ about a problem it's _iterating_ until it's RNG kicks out a good-enough solution. An endless parade of, "How 'bout this one, boss? 😃"
Intelligence isn't manifested in 'work'.
The choice of the word 'intelligence' is a deliberate mislabeling of what they would _like_ to be selling.
🔥Cassandra🔥@401matthall @jenniferplusplus @cwebber It's clearly not intelligence; their entire product is unconcerned about fact.
Meg@jenniferplusplus @cwebber yes! This is a thing I keep coming back to in how I feel about what's going on. The effort here is to build the ultimate "rent a shovel" service where the entire economy is dependent on an oligopoly of cloud providers to functionally do work.
I can live with a lot of things I don't like, but that's basically anathema to me.
happyborg@jenniferplusplus I think there's a word for that 🤔 sl.. sla.. um slavery!
Gotit?
Class Wario@jenniferplusplus @cwebber it’s the value portion that’s terrifying, beyond the implications of some tech bro claiming all of humanity’s collective online output as their own. If 99% of people’s value has been labor (synonymous with “intelligence” here), and that labor is offloaded, there’s no value of people anymore. Capitalism: this breaks the market for the thing selling labor back to labor. (Techno Feudalism: intelligent people are worthless, expendable.)
IntrospectionException@classwario @jenniferplusplus @cwebber
Once you put a value on things, you have to put a value on people. Once you value people, it is easy to devalue people. Once they are devalued, you can decide they aren’t worth keeping alive.
Once you put a value on things, you have to put a value on people. Once you value people, it is easy to devalue people. Once they are devalued, you can decide they aren’t worth keeping alive.
RRB
TheStrangelet 
@cwebber Exactly. With this they are claiming universal intelligence, but it's more of the same capitalistic theft. Here they are not only attempting to enclose and charge for all of the digital commons, but also enclose and charge for as much of the copyrighted creative human work they can get away with.
Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama@cwebber
.
It’s reality they are taking from everyone
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like they think there’s something else or something 🤮
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It’s reality they are taking from everyone
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like they think there’s something else or something 🤮
Jose Luis Peruyero@cwebber
If we combine AI with dysgenics, we have the perfect explosive blend.
If we combine AI with dysgenics, we have the perfect explosive blend.
Strfnurfn@jlperuyero @cwebber that movie made me very uncomfortable because it felt a little too real, but at least it was set in some distant future, right?, because (d)evolution can't happen that quickly... But now with LLMs, we've find a way to degrade human intelligence on a much faster timescale. 😳
@earthtoneone @cwebber
Five hundred years in the future, I suppose counting from the making of the film (2006). That makes some 15 or 20 generations.
The weak point in the plot is that nobody knows what intelligence is, and what part of it you can inherit.
Sometimes I think that the most important part of intelligence is critical thinking, and that we have already lost that...
Five hundred years in the future, I suppose counting from the making of the film (2006). That makes some 15 or 20 generations.
The weak point in the plot is that nobody knows what intelligence is, and what part of it you can inherit.
Sometimes I think that the most important part of intelligence is critical thinking, and that we have already lost that...
tobychev@cwebber
On the other hand it seems stupid, who ever heard of a water company worth trillions? I doubt what Altman really has in mind is becoming wholly owned by a alliance of municipalities.
I think you are right that they imagine themselves as plantation owners, but then their poor understanding of the real world makes them substitute in something else to be more palatable.
Paul_IPv6don't say that too loud or some techbro will try to invent artificial water...
computer maus@paul_ipv6 @cwebber i mean we already have artificial water in the sense that companies are stealing ground water and reselling it at high prices as if it was something special
Chris Dolunt ☀️🌱⚙️📖🎲@kate @paul_ipv6 @cwebber And making our ponds and lakes go dry in the process. I'm looking at you, Ice Mountain.
gws
Noortje Van Leeuwen@paul_ipv6 @cwebber to late i already made it, it's H₂O·O₂·(H₂O)⁻¹
And my company "total not fake" derived it from:
H₂O₁₊ₓO₂⁺
(Me hoping the people get the joke)
ĞÖKÜ👻👻™@paul_ipv6 @cwebber aren't they selling filtered water in sealed cap bottle?
AlexanderVI@cwebber what I'm getting is intelligence is water.
Hang on a sec.
Sebastian@AlexanderVI @cwebber So? How did it go?
@AlexanderVI @cwebber Keep us updated. And please, keep in mind that hyperhydration is a thing. 🙃
cuan_knaggs@cwebber wasn't the 1995 documentary tank girl, with lori petty, about this?
Haelwenn /элвэн/ 
@cwebber And Altman is all out of it :)
william.maggosthey'd have no moral problem hoarding all the oxygen.
Bj�rn
m
MFierst
Solarbird 
@cwebber non-X-hosted copy of the video