Cabel Sasserthis graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive.
when you’re inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn’t.
Justin Cox@cabel UCF making waves again. 😂
SnoopJ 🔜 #PyConUS@justincox @cabel go Knights lmao
aburka 🫣
WestSeattleBill@aburka @cabel Maybe Gloria Caulfield, Vice president of strategic alliances, Tavistock Development Company? https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucfs-spring-2026-commencement-set-for-may-8-9/
myrmepropagandistI can't imagine "the internet" getting boo'd like that in 2001 Grads would have cheered along for "internet"
Or even like bitcoin in say 2010, lots of people were skeptical but would not have just boo'd
This is remarkably unpopular.
Landa 
@futurebird
Proponents are always comparing it to the industrial revolution, but maybe it's better compared to the likes of leaded gasoline, CFC aerosol cans, or asbestos anything.
Maybe some of us have learned to spot a pattern.
@cabel
anonymousplI was going to say "no asbestos is useful" but thinking about that more I think you are correct, because so are LLMs in a very narrow setting, just like asbestos, but instead we have foolish business persons who want to put this stuff in everything.
bencourtice@futurebird @anonymouspl @[email protected] @cabel when I did asbestos handling training, they explained that it didn't get banned for lack of uses - it's very useful! - but because it happens to kill people horribly. A geologist friend was recently diagnosed with mesothelioma after workplace exposure many years prior. It's still killing people.
PalmAndNeedle@bencourtice @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel asbestos is awesome, from a material science perspective
@PalmAndNeedle @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel yeah. As long as someone else has to actually work with it!
Ratsnake@bencourtice @PalmAndNeedle @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel so what you are saying is we should make AI handle asbestos
@ratsnakegames @PalmAndNeedle @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel Yes! we can bury both of them in the same registered landfill together
We Must DissentAnother material that is just taunting us is lead. Basically perfect option for so many use cases but so, so poisonous
Marianne@bencourtice @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel yep, since it takes decades for the cancer to develop, we're now seeing the impact on people who were installing it in the 60s-80s.
It's horrific, very hard to treat, most won't survive. We didn't know at the time, is the thing.
But we already have evidence that LLMs can kill people too. The absolute lack of giving a shit is overwhelming.
robertogonzalez@noodlemaz @bencourtice @futurebird @anonymouspl @cabel I'm afraid we did know about asbestos way before the 60's. First lawsuit is dated in 1929. We just didn't care enough. Same thing happened whenever a profit is in sight, see GHG as a quite prominent example.
cuan_knaggs@futurebird purpose built llms with a specific defined focus can be game changing. llm-as-a-service is useful for spam generation @anonymouspl @Landa @cabel
opotamus@futurebird @anonymouspl @Landa @cabel
True. As well as killing off their own consumers and workforce, but at a slower rate than those foolish business persons' short term profit windfall so they ignore it, also like asbestos.
Plus those foolish business persons will never properly be held accountable, also like asbestos.
ROTOPE~1 ⭐️
Mensch, Marina
The Sleight Doctor 🃏🍉@anonymouspl @Landa @futurebird @cabel I've started comparing it to universal acid, because it eats away at and degrades the quality of everything it touches. 🤷🏻♂️
Neo Ehproque@Landa @futurebird @cabel from what I've read the industrial revolution brought a sudden degradation in the living conditions of textile workers, the destruction of their environment, child labour in inhuman conditions, and *worse textile products*. So, yeah, it seems like an apt comparison, if we are all textile workers now.
@Landa @futurebird @cabel re:asbestos someone also compared it, in that once the bubble bursts we're going to spend decades removing slop from the internet (and god knows where else)
@ehproque @Landa @futurebird @cabel that was Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) in a Guardian piece from January of this year:
"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur
@gainfullydozy @Landa @futurebird @cabel @pluralistic yeah, I suspected (after clicking "Send"); thanks
@ehproque Maybe that's why they like it so much.
Too many children not getting maimed by machinery.
@futurebird @cabel
Too many children not getting maimed by machinery.
@futurebird @cabel
Chris GodwinI've often thought of it like the 1950's fascination with radiation.
Radioactive substances and nuclear engineering can do some amazing things.
In the 50s however businesses insisted on marketing nuclear science into everything including things like the "Gilbert U-238" science kit made for children and the countless 'amazing glow in the dark' products.
Not to mention all the government projects where people were accidentally exposed to contamination
Some of the government exposure was totally "witting" no "un" about it. People were used like test animals to find out what would happen "for national security" ... which really makes one question if you want to help keep a nation that would do such things secure at all.
And of course, you can guess which people were deemed disposable enough for this research.
@futurebird
yeah… I've read about several of these projects :(
yeah… I've read about several of these projects :(
@Chrisgodwin
Radium toothpaste! Radithor! Complimentary Foot X-Ray every time you shop for shoes! Radium-paint wristwatches!
There's definitely some kind of pattern visible if one wants to look.
@futurebird @cabel
Issue is that those were actually cool *but* destructive. Chatbots don't really offer much outside of novelty. There are some use cases like coding where they might offer some value, even if I find the idea of babysitting some Markov chain soul crushing, but all of those are, or ought to be, purpose trained.
FediThing 
Those all sound appropriate, also maybe a touch of the radium craze from the early 20th century (such as radium chocolate bars).
@Landa @futurebird @cabel The industrial revolution made a lot of people very poor, forced children into labor, reduced the life expectancy of workers, and enabled a speed of ecological destruction that now leads us into systemic collapse. There is only a specific time and place in the world - e.g. the relatively rich global north post WW2 - where the industrial revolution can be framed as something to be aspired and repeated.
Rob WilliamsonI think the industrial revolution comparison is fair. The industrial revolution impoverished millions over generations, globally destroyed a class of artisan specialists, and most (India & China notably) have barely caught up to their relative standard of living before it.
IMO, the IR gets an undeservedly good reputation because of the labour movement's victories in spreading the benefits of industry to the general population in the 20th century west.
@eswag
Yes, large parts of the benefits usually attributed to the industrial revolution should be credited to the labour movement instead.
Alas, that's not how the topic is taught or even written about most of the time.
Ailbhe
Phie Lux 
@eswag @Landa @futurebird @cabel I agree that it’s a good comparison in that we should be highly skeptical. The Industrial Revolution has wrought numerous harms on human beings, possibly including our eventual extinction. If this really is a revolution on the same scale (which I doubt), maybe this time we should give some thought to the harms and risks before reshaping everything around it.
@sabrina @Landa @futurebird @cabel
We tried that last time. The Luddites have a very bad press because the industrialists controlled most of the presses.
Not to say the Luddites were universally good foresighted people, but as far as I can tell (which is an amateurish mishmash of tidbits from mostly forgotten sources, treat with skepticism), they also weren't mindless technophobes either. They had, to use a dreadful contemporary phrase, "legitimate concerns".
Dieu@eswag @Landa @futurebird @cabel that's a great point. But at least the steam engine and the machines it enabled did what they were supposed to do well and reliably instead of randomly exploding or running backwards or whatever. One can hardly count AI among "means of production" with a straight face.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I think there were more steam and other explosions than one would want, but I take your point.
The machines also enabled mass production of high quality weapons, so anyone who looked like they might not want to deconstruct their local industries and send all their wealth to the owners of UK sweatshops would soon find their capitals being randomly deconstructed by mass produced explosive shells.
Models enable the deconstruction of common experience?
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I think we're seeing the supercharging of the old trick that Nye Bevan characterized so well:
LLMs and associated slop ducts have persuaded people dying of covid to support the people whose recklessness got them infected. I'm not sure what people down the rabbit hole *wouldn't* vote for at this point. They're so hacked.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
I remember reading Tom Paine's Rights of Man during Brexit, & chuckling despairingly when he claimed that (paraphrased badly), just as all city dwellers pitch in to help with the harvest, so no person will vote against their own interests.
I read that at a time when British crops were rotting in the fields because no bugger wanted to pick them, a year or so after a vote to prevent the poor sods who did want to pick them from being welcomed into the country.
@hllizi @Landa @futurebird @cabel
A note of encouragement is that reality continues to be real.
It's taken a lot to drag the masses out of their cocoons of wealth, but it's happening. People in the US are seeing each other get shot in the face by government thugs, Brits working 2 jobs are sleeping rough. It's difficult to believe the bullshit on your phone when the rest of your body tells you you're cold, hungry and unsafe.
@Landa @futurebird @cabel I think fly paper might be a good comparison. From the flies' perspective.
Violet MadderOne big difference: Asbestos was an accident.
Botslop is a deliberate and calculated attack, and "AI" in its current form is a weapon.
Ulrike Walter-Lipow@futurebird @cabel Well, I guess there are quite a few people in the audience who have been told that their just received diplomas may be decorative on their bedroom walls, but will not give them access to rewarding, well-paid jobs like they were promised 4 years ago ... soooooo ...
Alexander The 1st@futurebird @cabel Notable too, her next line, "A few years ago, A.I. was not a factor in our lives" *does* get cheered, so they're clearly not out for the speaker themselves, but the specific message.
As opposed to people who thought Conservatives were confused when they cheered when one of the Conservative speakers was say "Do you want impeachment?", and was not expecting the cheering then either...and figured they could point out that they were *supposed* to be opposed to another impeachment of Trump this recent year.
@futurebird @cabel The "internet" didn't bring deepfakes and teenagers being told to kill themselves. Nor did bitcoin have that effect. So far A.I. (LLMs) in the wider public are more damaging than doing good. So this reaction is no surprise to me.
Eshu Marneedi@cabel Every day the UCF Knights stray further from the light.
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦@cabel @ShaulaEvans I'm guessing those grads have discovered what the job market is like, since AI-related layoffs.
@deborahh @cabel @ShaulaEvans Don't even need to discover - just need to have seen the result from others in the market, or just...have heard enough about LLMs to be opposed to them.
Thankful Machine