Cindʎ Xiao 🍉

RE: https://mastodon.social/@caseynewton/116456942253634796

Opponents of AI are often depicted as naive and ignorant. We are depicted as having our heads buried in the sand, unwilling to accept the great capabilities of AI, or as insecure and afraid of AI's capabilities.

I would like to flip this narrative around: I think pro-AI technologists who only look at AI's "capabilities" are the naive ones.

This is because the AI industry and the people funding, producing, and pushing AI tools are not at all working on the level of capability - they are working on the level of AI as ideology. They are interested in AI as a tool to devalue labour, suppress wages, justify layoffs, and foster dependency on centralized tools controlled by a few companies. Technologists who only focus on "this code can be written good by this tool" are not even playing on the right level. Programmers talking about "wow! look at the code it can generate!" feel to me at this point like the 2-dimensional inhabitants of Flatland.

Perhaps this sounds conspiracy-minded to you, but the way in which AI is practically being deployed across industries is very stark evidence of this. The quoted employee monitoring at Meta, to gather data for using AI to devalue the work of white-collar workers, is just one example. AI mandates, token usage dashboards, performance reviews based on AI adoption, AI code acceptance metrics, and even the time and energy spent on building AI tools rather than things that would actually improve product quality - these are all in service of the same ideology.

The AI industry, and those who push AI tools are fundamentally uninterested in making your work better or leaving you in control of your work. They are telling you this directly through both words and actions. I think ignoring that is a stunning level of naïvete.

#noAI

Apr 24 at 1:00pmWeb
Show threadDaniel DemmelApr 24
@cxiao you're right, but at the same time it seems these absolutely comical moves by AI-maxxers like Meta will be what finally wakes up people to the extremes of capitalism that we've been enduring and stewing in for years...
Show threadDan MorrisApr 24

@cxiao I'm no evangalist, but I am a realist. Fighting this shit as a single evil is like trying to fight the internet in the late 90's. Or even as simple as a "Just say No" campaign and stacking pot in there with crack.

The only solution is to somehow regulate and control the development and use. We have to ensure that specific kinds of datacenters are so expensive due to environmental reasons that only the most efficient tools are designed. We have to regulate workplace implementation to ensure protection of employees.

And others will say, "but internationally..." That's EXACTLY the same as saying we can't have labor laws because we can't compete with bangladesh/vietnam/cambodia

Anyway, it's coming, and we need to deal with it before it takes us down.

Unfortauntely, I have no idea how to do it.

Show threadmirthApr 24
@coldfish @cxiao I think a root enabler of many of these problems is too much corporate power over employees. If it was easy to quit many of these things wouldn't be workable.
Show threadKnightmareApr 24
@cxiao 'Opponents of AI are often depicted as naive and ignorant.' Yeah, it is called projection.
Show threadFLOSSbOxINApr 24
@cxiao
Do not get me wrong or boycott me. Where I work, they are doing something similar and probably even further.
😵‍💫
Show thread😷nioApr 24
@cxiao the problem with this perspective is while you would be correct about the ppl marketing the AI and a selection of its biggest proponents it's not really now "normal" ppl feel about it. focusing on refuting the most obviously outrageous and false claims to its capabilities does make the anti-AI content seem naive.
Show threadNu ModularApr 24

@cxiao Good analogy, in constricting multidimensional advancement, into oppressive value spaces, leaving the trailing Capitalism profits, for the wealthiest at the top of the trickle-down economics/abuse-of-power.

De Oppresso Liber

Replace #TechBros with the most ethical root infrastructure #scientists