David Gerardthe AI bros are OUTRAGED and wish to speak to the MANAGER
Claire, The Ultimate Worrier@davidgerard his correct title is "king of fediverse"
@waitworry Website Boy (Respectful)
Mihail Zdravkov@waitworry @davidgerard the admin of each instance is its king. Hence, Eugen is the king of kings.
FeralRobots
Marc ☀️🌊🏖️@davidgerard Everyone knows that the head of Mastodon is John Mastodon
The Drop Bear 2.0 
@korrok I mean, can’t they even do basic research? ; ) @davidgerard
Twotired@korrok @davidgerard I heard it was Joan Mastodon.
schrotthaufen
Ratsnake Games 🔞@schrotthaufen @davidgerard the fuck?
can you just @ some famous Mastodon guy and then declare yourself "Product Strategy Advisor to Mastodon Core team"?
Like, yeah, I guess he did advise
Gonzalo@schrotthaufen @davidgerard he is not a good fit for this position, in case this truly exits.
Trev 
@schrotthaufen @davidgerard best title for someone who clearly doesn't understand what mastodon is trying to do
Cameopilot@davidgerard
That was a no-win post for Eugen. I'm sure the puppy-killers are just as incensed at being compared to ai-bros...
That was a no-win post for Eugen. I'm sure the puppy-killers are just as incensed at being compared to ai-bros...
Kierkethumbs up convincingly@davidgerard hide your puppies
Lady Errant@davidgerard That thread has done WONDERS for my blocklist.
Cassander@davidgerard I feel like folks who are functionally illiterate (that is, unable to interpret text-based communications, even through an accessibility tool like a screen reader) are going to have a bad time on a primarily-text-based social networking site.
Fish in the Percolator@davidgerard also, reading through that thread, someone seems to be projecting 😅
Steffie 🏳️⚧️ :rubber_pride-heart-600: :triple-moon-transfem: @davidgerard Is John Mastodon back posting again?
John Francis 🇨🇦🦫🍁💪⬆️@steff @davidgerard John Mastodon is a distributed being with a shard of consciousness within each regular Mastodon user.
So yes.
@johnefrancis @davidgerard like the spirit of Christmas?
It was my recollection, that John Mastodon was the all-powerful CEO of Mastodon, Inc. who decided to turn himself into an AI agent, and was immediately defederated. SO say, you can still catch glimpses of his lonely isolated toot in the public times…
@steff @davidgerard I haven't heard that one, but its hard to keep track or even imagine all the possible outcomes of a distributed, quantum, transcendental being like John Mastodon
@davidgerard @steff cuts wood faster than Paul Bunyan and Joe Mufferaw, tougher that Chuck Norris's mythology.
Nuclear Oatmeal@johnefrancis @steff @davidgerard
We are all John Mastodon and John Mastodon is all of us.
Except for that guy over there. <points>
María Arias de Reyna@davidgerard Interestingly, he automatically assumed that "loving puppies" means "hating AI" and "loving AI" means "hating puppies".
If he really thought AI was as cute and good as puppies, his thoughts should have led him the other way around...
Szabó Em, Enigma He-Art Director 
@davidgerard "fedi is an echo chamber!"
Uh.....do you know what an echo chamber is? When everyone hates slop generators almost universally.....sigh....I can't explain things to a rock.....
Dr. Evan J. Gowan@davidgerard What is hilarious about this is that AI bros could easily start their own pro-AI Mastodon server, but that would require doing some actual work.
Cap Ybarra@DrEvanGowan @davidgerard there's no megabucks in preaching to the converted
JennyFluff 
💾@davidgerard everybody knows you need to talk to John Mastodon
♿ 🏳️🌈 La pantera roja@davidgerard Is John Mastodon available?
saucerlost@davidgerard
For what it's worth I consider myself the ass of Mastodon
For what it's worth I consider myself the ass of Mastodon
Legit_Spaghetti@davidgerard "See ya! And try not to kill any puppies on the way out!"
Jon@davidgerard hmm ... I often say that Jimmy Carter was a much better ex-President than President....
GJ Groothedde 🇪🇺@davidgerard I have a problem with my car and demand to speak to Henry Ford!!1!11
@davidgerard
also that does not sound like something Eugen would say, so now I'm curious.
also that does not sound like something Eugen would say, so now I'm curious.
Jacqueline@davidgerard eugen rochko, the white boy who decided to code this god forsaken website
@davidgerard (I love mastodon, but still)
Eniko Fox@davidgerard objectively incredibly funny
Mark T. Tomczak@davidgerard I thought we all knew that the head of Mastodon is John Mastodon.
Eugen is just a very dedicated servant of the people.
Tock@mark @davidgerard Eugen is to Mastodon as Sam Adams is to Portlandia.
(Except we know John Mastodon's first name, we had to wait through eight seasons for "The Mayor's" first name.)
Richard K 
@davidgerard "people who have an interest in something"
That's vaguebooking.
That's vaguebooking.
Griever (Commissions open)
FreediverX@davidgerard
“I just came back to Mastodon, which I don’t normally use, to make this shitpost asking to speak to the manager.”
“I just came back to Mastodon, which I don’t normally use, to make this shitpost asking to speak to the manager.”
@davidgerard So if we're not going to be nice to AI acolytes, they threaten to be even more pissy with us?
Um. Okay. James, here's your bucket. You can relieve yourself outside.
@davidgerard I fucking hate people who have an interest in something. They’re like puppy-killers.
grrl_aexPuppy killers? nah...
ai bros are destined for a much deeper pit of hell than mere puppy killers.
NiLace@davidgerard HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It's funny. We all know Eugen is not the head of Mastodon but our Dark Emperor Lord.
mathew@davidgerard "They stole your code and your art, they built racism into their systems, they're eliminating your job or making it worse, they're enabling criminal fraud, they're trashing the environment, they're making computer hardware unaffordable, they're taking down your web site with their crawlers, and they’re about to crash the economy. Also, their technology is being used to drown out legitimate content with spam, push fascism, generate child porn, and target bombs at hospitals. So why won't you be civil to them and their fans? They just want to talk at you about exciting new uses for the technology, and bully you into accepting it by telling you it's inevitable and you'll be left behind if you don't use it. Your gatekeeping is a tragedy, we should be welcoming them to Mastodon, otherwise number won't go up."
David Fleetwood - RG Admin@mathew @davidgerard And there is zero case for AI if and until these issues are rectified. Not explained away. Not dismissed. Not ignored and swept under the carpet. Rectified.
@reflex @davidgerard Absolutely. Show me ethically trained LLMs, with appropriately low power consumption, use cases that benefit society, and solid controls against surveillance and abuse, and I'll be interested. It's a shame the technology has become 99% the purview of the worst people.
Kg. Madee Ⅱ.@kgMadee2 @mathew @davidgerard I would accept more slop (but of course with caution) if it wasn't built on horrible data by horrible people consuming horrible amounts of resources.
@reflex @mathew @davidgerard yeah, then at least it would be "just a tool" that you need to use right
@kgMadee2 @mathew @davidgerard Yes, and I could fairly evaluate what it could be trusted to do (not much in it's current state) and what to keep it away from (almost everything). It could be developed slowly and iteratively with the attention to detail such capabilities warrant.
marquis de karabas-barabas@mathew @davidgerard Not that I'm pro AI, but they didn't just steal the nice things and then add the evil things. The racism stem from the same source as the art and code..
@presidiet @davidgerard Oh yes, absolutely. The racism came from the training data, so ultimately from society — but the negative view of AI and the dislike for any tech bro pushing it comes from society as well, it's the mainstream view. So at least in those two areas he highlights, Mastodon is reflecting society in general.
Kwaze Kwaze@presidiet @mathew @davidgerard
I mean, if I let a bunch of cockroaches get into some cake batter because I'm negligent and not bothering to pay attention to what's getting in the batter would we quibble that I didn't actually bake cockroaches into the cake?
Or would we say "yo this freak baked cockroaches into this cake he gave us cockroach cake"
@kwazekwaze @mathew @davidgerard Gosh, I don’t really know how to respond at an adequate level..
My point was that the quote externalizes negative attributes which we possess. Which rids us, in our own mind, of the responsibility and of the consequences of our actions. Instead we pin it on someone else.
The negative attribute, in this instance being racism (which you imagine to be of another species in your allegory) comes from us. I think that might just be a bit bigger issue than that some of it ended up in ai.
So I guess I’m saying: yo, some of the cockroaches from my cockroach infestation ended up in the cake you baked. I should probably call pest-control rather than pin it on you.. yo
My point was that the quote externalizes negative attributes which we possess. Which rids us, in our own mind, of the responsibility and of the consequences of our actions. Instead we pin it on someone else.
The negative attribute, in this instance being racism (which you imagine to be of another species in your allegory) comes from us. I think that might just be a bit bigger issue than that some of it ended up in ai.
So I guess I’m saying: yo, some of the cockroaches from my cockroach infestation ended up in the cake you baked. I should probably call pest-control rather than pin it on you.. yo
@presidiet @mathew @davidgerard
Blame isn't zero sum. You can blame society/all of us white people for the racism we've put into the world while at the same time blaming developers for negligently ingraining it in the products they seek to embed across as many social systems as they can 🤗
To continue the roach metaphor: If I know I've got a roach problem I ought to at the very least be wary of roaches getting in my cakes.
@kwazekwaze @mathew @davidgerard Congratulations, you’ve just summarized my own original point back to me:
Not that I'm pro AI, but they didn't just steal the nice things and then add the evil things. The racism stem from the same source as the art and code..
I ducking hate this website
Not that I'm pro AI, but they didn't just steal the nice things and then add the evil things. The racism stem from the same source as the art and code..
I ducking hate this website