Mastodawn

uncapybarable 1d ago

so just to be totally clear AI is "democratizing" programming by taking something that used to free to do and making it so you pay a subscription fee to an American corporation to do it while being barred from ever actually understanding how it works, am I getting that right?

Ramsey Nasser 2d ago

take it from me, an Arab from Arabia: when white men talk about bringing you "democracy" they're probably trying to kill you

@nasser sooooo true!

The Witch of Crow Briar 1d ago

@nasser In this sense “AI” actually is the purest distillation so far of “democratization”, aka “stealing everything of yours that isn’t nailed down, selling it back to you (or, ideally, renting it back for as long as possible), *then* killing you”

Alex McLean 1d ago

@nasser Very well put !

@nasser as an Iranian, I agree

@nasser In fairness, they’re usually trying to take your oil, usually violently.

But yes, getting people to subscribe to cognitive functions they would normally develop themselves is the final frontier for late-stage capitalism.

three tigers in a trenchcoat 1d ago

@nasser AI is hard at work democratizing Iran, or so I hear... 😖

Muss das sein.1d ago

@nasser and steal your oil.

ΞVΞ🦋1d ago

Same thing happens to Black and Brown people IN America. When white men show up in our neighborhoods talking about “lowering crime”, they’re coming to kill us, predominantly our men

Ali the Brave 21h ago

@nasser
Brown or black people dying is just a positive side effect of bringing democracy. The aim is maximising exploitation.

When the people have stuff that rich white men doesn't control, they want to democratise things towards themselves.

@nasser I think they were meaning to write Domesticating, common error!

@nasser This is genuinely such an acute way to frame the whole thing.

AI coding is just a shitty abstraction layer -- and it only works for solving easy problems, so you eventually paint yourself into a corner when you need to expand your code to do more.

@nasser and i'm pretty sure one day there will be restrictions on what code your are allowed to write. i remember listening to a fascnating documentary on french radio where a guy saved hundreds of lives during WWII by making false identity papers. (i'm not sure of my translation of "faux papiers" ^^).
let's try to do that with AI next time it could save lives 🤡

@maxime_andre @nasser I mean, the war on general purpose computing is already in full swing.

cuan_knaggs 1d ago

@maxime_andre @nasser there was also a group working with population data, that slow played all their work so they could find the records of jewish citizens and destroy them before they got handed over. they all landed in front of the firing squad

R://i.ch.ard.exe 1d ago

@nasser knowledge as a service :(

Andrew France 1d ago

@nasser I wish I could make my brethren really understand this particular sentiment, if nothing else about LLM usage, and the logical conclusions that follow.

@nasser Kill AI it now before it is too late. It may be artificial but it certainly isn't intelligent.

prom™️1d ago

@nasser it’s also an attack on academia. capital has gained too much power for its own good.

"Democratizing" but it's "giving people who can pay a big magic button to generate code, art or music" instead of "giving people access to the financials and practical means - time, money, tools, materials, whatever -to learn how to code, make art or play music" 😑

@nasser AI solves coding in the same manner public writers solved illiteracy.

Matt Palmer 1d ago

@nasser sounds like it's colonising programming, which is quite a good phrase, really.

MacCruiskeen 1d ago

@nasser Isn't that how our democracy works now?

@nasser @davidgerard if it was “democratising” then presumably the people should have a say in how it’s managed? Welles, we should be able to vote on how we train models and such?

One of the key things it’s doing is saying “all code must now flow through a central corporate gate keeper”.

Can we argue that “privatising” fits better, or some similar word?

Peter Hull 1d ago

@FayeDrake "enclosing"? "embracing "?

Organ Harvest Coordinator

sparkles_aromantic

neocat_flag_agender_256

</IsmellaNEEEEEEEEEERD>1d ago

Yes

Kaitlyn~Ethylia 1d ago

@nasser AI is another tool for oppression. It allows the rich to compensate for being talentless losers by stealing from people so they don't have to pay them

NoraBell 🏳️‍⚧️🌈1d ago

@KaitlynEthylia @nasser Wild how you can apply that statement to the whole of capitalism too.

Ramsey Nasser 1d ago

@NoraBell @KaitlynEthylia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

Enclosure - Wikipedia

@nasser Hey, just like Elon Musk "democratized" Twitter verification by making you pay for it (and it doesn't actually verify anything anymore).

seance_mpx 1d ago

@nasser I didn't think of it that way .... but yikes. You're right.

Jens Finkhäuser 1d ago

@nasser exactly right.

@nasser Yeah, that's how American democracy works.

Also sometimes the person who gets the second-most votes wins.

David Mankins 1d ago

No, you’re not quite right. Whether you choose to understand how it works is entirely up to you. There are also non-subscription models that you can run on your own hardware, but they’re not yet as good, though catching up.

Sir Dr Rusty o the Isle 🖤💛❤️21h ago

@nasser indeed. Greed without bounds.