JenniferplusplusYou can't put the genie back in the bottle π€‘
Meanwhile, the genie is only kept out of the bottle by the force of literally the entirety of the world's available investment capital
Obviously, the models are going to continue to exist. Probably. So will the data sets, the libraries, and the generalized knowledge of how to build them and what that gets you, in a technical sense.
And if you think that's what AI is?
π€‘
For the record, AI is a technocratic political project for the purpose of industrializing knowledge work.
That industrialization of knowledge work has 2 parts. First, is mechanization. Making knowledge work dependent on some particular machine. This is already the case, with computers generally. Knowledge work is thoroughly computerized. But, those computers are small, cheap, universally available commodities. That doesn't serve the second part, so they're forcing in new layers of mechanization, and removing access to the old machines.
Second, they ensure those machines can only be obtained through large investments of capital. Thus, all knowledge work can be done only at the pleasure of the capitalists who own the machines. Personal computers don't help them, there. But a black box hosted service that consumes the entire web to build and a whole country's worth of electricity to operate sure as hell does.
"AI" is merely the banner under which they are organizing and justifying this project. The implementation details are just the implementation details.
So you can see how that genie is extremely prone to returning to it's bottle.
It only stays out as long as they can keep shoveling an ever increasing amount of real resources into it. And it turns out the resources available are finite
Anyway, AI fans keep claiming that AI is like the industrial revolution, and yeah, it is. But somehow, for some reason, people broadly view that as a good thing. But it wasn't. It was this. It's the thing I just described, but for physical goods. And now they're coming after art, and science, and correspondence, and law, and medicine, and bookkeeping, and it is incomprehensible to me that anyone at all would be in favor of this
wakingrufus@jenniferplusplus
It is a lot like the industrial revolution: depressing wages, degrading working conditions, and destroying the environment
It is a lot like the industrial revolution: depressing wages, degrading working conditions, and destroying the environment
Cairo Braga@jenniferplusplus this is a brilliant thread, thank you!
John Abbe (aka Slow)@jenniferplusplus @cairobraga Apple has run out of most Mac Studio and Mini models because there are so many people who understand this, and do not wish to be subservient to the cloud any longer. Silver lining: Another crack at a world where every household as a decent server and every neighborhood has a small tech geeks co-op to steward them.
Cacajao calvus ucayalii@slowenough @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga I love the idea of neighborhood IT co-ops. Fo any actually exist? Are there resources to help set this sort of thing up?
@RedFacedUakari @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga There are definitely a bunch of co-op incubators out there, for example: https://belovedcommunityincubator.org/
I don't know of any neighborhood tech co-ops, but people's interest in switching away from big tech providers is pretty high right now, so I believe there is hope at least for many small tech co-ops to succeed even if they couldn't yet make a living doing tech infrastructure & support for literally just their neighborhood. #cooperatives
omar@RedFacedUakari
> I love the idea of neighborhood IT
I wish but neighborhood barely works for social exchange and common good, so "IT", don't hold your breath.
@omar @RedFacedUakari @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga Yes, local IT co-ops are unlikely to happen in isolation, and more likely to happen in the context of general rising of local community, mutual aid, and other neighborhood-scale organizing. City Repair in Portland, Oregon has worked on this sort of thing a bit, I'm sure there are many others.
People are getting rather organized in many places right now to defend others in their communities, so, many opportunities for community-building!
@slowenough @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga
Mac is a wrong solution, Apple can control these devices and make it unusable, even if you are in your rights.
Honestly, I don't see how Europe would let it happen, I mean locking down hardware/software, even if they bring back manufacturing and were leading their own software. If it happens it's purely to serve US interests.
I don't want to wait for a pseudo moderate/democrat US president (this guy is not acting alone), we must cut it off now!
@omar @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga Oh yeah I wasn't suggesting everyone get a Mac, just pointing to it as an indication of a rapid increase in the number of people who are buying hardware so that they can run models locally.
That suggests it is a good time for new PC makers to get into the market!
@slowenough @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga
Just to clarify, It might sound like an anti-american stance, but it's not, I call for better balance and diversity.
@omar @jenniferplusplus @cairobraga I'm American, and I very very much support humanity having more redundancy in our computing supply chains. :-)
Brokar@jenniferplusplus I wouldn't compare AI with a genie rather than with Pandora's box because you won't get AI back into anything.
Not that AI is good or bad but too many companies and investors have pumped so much money into AI that it's about time to think of ROI.
AI is no charity even though one of the leading companies has Open in its name.
So, imo AI stays as long as the investors don't have their money back and it can take a long time until that happens. And then the earning starts.
Neo Ehproque@Brokar @jenniferplusplus surely in 10 years time the investors are not still burning all their money at the current rate because they've run out of money? And we're not building data centres at the current rate because can't power them?
Marc Trius@jenniferplusplus how do small language models that can be run locally or self hosted factor into this? Perhaps they represent tools that can still be controlled locally rather than by large investors.
Counter arguments:
1. They still need to be trained
2. Hardware prices are rising, hardware capable of running even small models may become out of reach
@alter_kaker mostly by recruiting people who should know better to defend the AI project, it seems
@jenniferplusplus I'm sorry, I don't understand
@alter_kaker how do small language models that can be run locally or self hosted factor into this?
They don't change anything at all about the power dynamics. They don't change anything at all about whether you can do or economically benefit from work that capitalists disapprove of. What they do is distract people who are concerned about those facts, and make everyone else spend time explaining to them that they don't actually change the political situation at all.
jell@jenniferplusplus Recently called it "a social weapon masquerading as a technology" because of ALL of this and more.
Dr. Bruce Simpson@joshuaelliott @jenniferplusplus The GPT has been weaponized. The noosphere is under assault. The contingency must be handled. The consequences are potentially species ending. AGI and ASI are fantasies here -- the true adversaries are human. The really sad part is that the technology isn't even fit for purpose, but the market fundamentalist vs state capitalist factions are using it to engage in what is a noospheric hot war. The Potemkin effect in mass media: Total Information Warfare.
@joshuaelliott @jenniferplusplus The "garden rake" effect of GenAI technologies is something to behold. I literally cannot use LLMs in particular for serious computer science applications without engaging in the same prompt/context/temperature adjustment boondoggles, even if I do, I'm up against proprietary system prompting and token burn, and it's a distraction from my actual work. I could just pivot to deep learning but down that road leads future serfdom.
@joshuaelliott @jenniferplusplus The problem of knowledge work vs public policy is convincing the body politic: "It's hard for people who have had, let's say 20 or more years of schooling to understand that there are people out there who think that
education is a lie." -- @mattsheffield
education is a lie." -- @mattsheffield
sortius 
@jenniferplusplus I was thinking about this today. It's like they watched Star Trek or other sci-fi, saw the "black box" devices that relied on a central service to run, and said "I want some of that".
They want us all to have dumb devices we pay them for that use their services, that we pay even more for.
The saddest part is every single company seems to be onboard with this, despite them suffering greatly now because of it
𫧠socialcoding..Where it gets interesting I think is to consider the flip side of the coin. So big tech and the corporate world is all-in on AI technologies that serve to further erode social fabric of society, towards dystopic future if they have their way. A risk clearly perceived by many people who have a longing and human needs for real connection and social cohesion.
Big tech AI does not deliver there. It does not address people's needs in these regards.
Another way of formulating is saying that Big Tech is retracting from the 'market of real human connection'. In other words it leaves market space, places for people and small initiatives to most excellently fill these gaps. At the smaller scales, inter-community, across institutions and non-profits, small sustainable businesses, paying real attention to people and their needs instead of placing an artificial entity in front of them that separates them from others, becomes the true unique selling point for a commons.
[SUBJECT_NAME_HERE]@jenniferplusplus The current high prices on hardware for personal computers also help there, and I predict that even well after the AI bubble burst, we will never see hardware prices like the summer of '25.
There's a song to write there I think.
Architekt die Welt@jenniferplusplus I wonder whether it will actually lead to us getting more analog in the end. Basically reverting to what itβs been like before computers became mainstream. Cause if you piss off your consumer base little too much they can decide to ditch your whole set of artificial limits all together. I see many people doing just that with social media now, we cut heavily on our use, select things like Mastodon instead of the Meta, resorting to books for entertainment etc.
GRASSY KNOWLES@architektdiewelt @jenniferplusplus
my growing numbers of homeless friends have wire snips and contractor bags full of zebra mussels.
oh, and one more thing:
they have nothing left to lose.
crabby>> ditch...all together
I hope this will happen, and personally plan for it, too.
Once the total surveillance will come, that is currently masked as "age verification", I think I'll just stop using >95% of the online world. Will I shed some tears ? Maybe yes, but on the other hand it will be so much fun to build local networks again, and to open up new spaces which are not controlled by this unholy government/bigtech melange. Kind of like the 90s.
Josh@jenniferplusplus
Thanks for this, it's a very clear explanation.
Thanks for this, it's a very clear explanation.
Chris@jenniferplusplus this is such a good description of what I've been thinking too, but couldn't figure out how to put into words
GREENHORSE@jenniferplusplus the arc of technology aka "Moore's law" says that these technologies will get smaller and more efficient over time. Many of these AI data centers will eventually become unemployed.
Dingswart@geoffcmason
Can't await the first attempt of an AI-center to exploit other AI-centers to stay on top of the energy-supply-chain.
Can't await the first attempt of an AI-center to exploit other AI-centers to stay on top of the energy-supply-chain.
sosquqer@jenniferplusplus so now the knowledge work gets the knowledge work https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/knowledge-workers
SeanBurlington π ποΈ@jenniferplusplus one of the oddities that allowed computers to be relatively open with interchangeable components is the historical accident where IBM was dominant in the world of mainframes, when they were late to the PC party they accidentally created an open standard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
This was not intentional on their part - they aimed to make a closed system from the start
Matt Campbell@jenniferplusplus How are they removing access to the old machines?
Joshua Barretto@matt @jenniferplusplus I assume this is a commentary on the increasing lockdown of devices, attestation, etc. especially in the mobile sector and especially for lower end consumer devices. What Cory Doctorow might call 'the war on general purpose computing'.
@matt by making them unavailable to buy in the first place. By forcing the ai into both sides of every exchange with every bit of software they control. By requiring id to use them at all.
EvoScale@jenniferplusplus The wealthiest #TechBros #oligarchy #FossilFuels oppressors are consolidating as much wealth as they can, by employing classical #DivideAndConquer strategies to squeeze from the bottom up. This means unleashing as much power as they can to siphon as much money, as they can, from the masses. They clearly helped a great deal with campaign contributions toward the current US administration, and are now congealing in China to do similar, at scale.
Joining growing group movements like #NoKings, is one of the most powerful ways to counteract these #AbuseOfPower strategies. The first step is the easiest: signup electronically, get more involved locally.
Christopher Neugebauer@jenniferplusplus This thread is π₯
aldroidia@jenniferplusplus i love it when people use the genie expression. it's like "ah good, so you are familiar with the mythology of genies and what they do"
π‘πππΊππππΊπ π°ππππ±@jenniferplusplus
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle" - spoiler alert: it wasn't Jeannie anyway, but her evil sister!
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle" - spoiler alert: it wasn't Jeannie anyway, but her evil sister!
Houba@SmartmanApps @jenniferplusplus
It is a funny metaphor, because all it takes to put a genie back in a bottle is three wishes.
Passwordsarehard4@jenniferplusplus we canβt fit the genie back in the bottle because they keep it filled with VC money, which is odd because the genie also isnβt real. It should still fit.
Fredrik BΓΌlow@jenniferplusplus well said
McNeely@jenniferplusplus this is one of those statements that sounds hyperbolic but really isn't π«
Dan Schnau@jenniferplusplus you know, that's a good point. I'll remember that next time someone says that to me in "meatspace"
Sablebadger@jenniferplusplus I look at it like the blockchain, and NFT crazes we went through. Those genies are still out of the bottle but it doesn't occupy too much attention any more.
I worked at an AI startup for a while (I needed a job) and the CEO cited both those periods for his current company.
I think AI might have more staying power as it can be used (for good and bad) by regular folks, but I think the bubble is busting open soon enough. That job I had showed me that the market isn't there.
The Psychotic Network Ferret@jenniferplusplus Everybody, read this thread ^^^