Yep.

The era of Google and big social media did real harm IMO. I suspect we used to have more scepticism around this sort of thing (dunno though). But getting addicted to things sure as hell is a good way to get you to ignore their problems.

The era of desktop computing really is gross in so many ways once you take a step back.

Oh I didn’t know that! Thank you!

So the mathematicians were using ChatGPT in their work and that’s how they think it was scooped?

Thoigh to be fair, this doesn’t change my tune. That we aren’t all presuming every interaction will be part of future training data is bonkers to me.

That’s exactly the kind of data that turned LLMs into chat interfaces. And where else are AI companies going to get human generated text and feedback?

The extent to which the keys of the world have been handed over to a skynet system is fucking crazy!

While this general story has its shape. The line at the end here…

AI is stealing human discovery.

Is striking in just how obviously true it’s been the whole time. It’s the business model, plain and simple.

I hope this story highlights this better for some. But also, it’s frustrating that any of this is new or surprising to anyone.

I mean surely it’s because it’s about buying a part of “the future” and leaving everyone else behind. For such a belief, going all in may be the only option. Which is, of course, kinda death culty.

straightup kleptocratic wealth transfer

Yea. That’s AI. And frankly the Internet since it became Facebook and Google.

And the bailout will just be a continuation of the process. Which is why talking about it matters, I think.

We may be on the precipice of a massive shift in human social organisation. It won’t be the advance of AI as intelligent tech. It will be the gaining of control of information and how society at large relates to the information machine. The Internet was the start, by promising mass decentralisation it merely facilitated mass centralisation.

AI will do the same. But not at the distribution layer. At the content and ownership layer.

no great use case for it.

Owning a piece of the new information age sounds like a use case to me.

I hate to be a harsh asshole about this … but having no valid justification doesn’t really mean anything anymore. That’s where our world is or is quickly going. And highlighting such a “truth” on the internet isn’t some magic spell like we believed it was in a fleeting moment of Twitter empowerment. Highlighting and knowing such a truth is just the beginning. It’s the minimum. And the powers that be are already playing many moves ahead.

Without knowing any of these details, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for me to hear about the likelihood of a Bailout.

So many are waiting for the Bible to pop or whatever. But let’s be serious, there’ll be a bailout of some kind. If the tech companies haven’t already made their political moves, there’s surely enough political interest in keeping this tech going if not taking control of it.

I can’t see how the power players won’t buy into the overarching sales pitch that this is what the future is and that one is either apart of it or not. Then there’s the military angle and staying competitive with China etc.

Yea I hear. We’ll see I guess.

Personally, I’m seeing much more falling in line instincts than anything else and fear that any “shock” and reaction is confined to bubbles without any solid culture and infrastructure to break out into any sort of effective movement.

It’s about the trend and the motives of those with power.

Ten years ago everyone was very surprised that an AI managed to beat the best human at Go, a board game. I don’t think anyone really saw that coming. There’s evidence that some with insight didn’t see it coming at all.

At that time, no one was talking about the current state that we’re in now. So what happens in 2036. And the next generation?

Unless you presume that the human mind is special and impossible to duplicate in important ways, I think there’s a clear set of possibilities here that need to be taken seriously. Sci-fi has been for decades, because they’re that obvious frankly. That the current AI is being over-sold and promised by its backers is basically meaningless. That an AI can write convincingly, even if only for a few pages, and couldn’t do so 5-10 years ago. That’s huge.

I don’t entirely disagree. I’d add that whatever other options there are, they involve skills, values and perspectives that are unpracticed and atrophied in modern western culture (and likely globally) to the point that that is its own problem.

What strikes me about the present moment is that it feels like particularly bad timing.

I’m not so sure that technological developments follow a well defined path and like to think about what alternative timelines would look like, especially with humanity being better prepared for them.

For instance, I’ve figured for a long time that the internet was a few decades earlier than it should have been for our social and political development. Probably TV too.

AI just feels 100s of years too early. Like we’re only just getting to grips with post-capitalism and climate change as ideas let alone problems we can solve.

To be honest, this moment was always coming or is yet to come for anti-AI folks.

The real issue isn’t whether it’s good or bad. The reason it’s such a hot thing is because generally it’s good enough to get people interested. And that’s very unlikely to go away.

Too interested? Sure.

But machines that are better than people at something people value about themselves. That’s where we’re heading if we’re not there already.

Which unlocks a massive question: What kind of world do you want to live in and how much are you willing to do to maintain it? Just about everything else is no longer a given. Not our value or importance, not our position at the top of the food chain, not our democracy or wealth, or the continuous growth of capitalism, or even our continued existence.

We’re basically at the beginning of an AI apocalypse movie. You can’t presume that you know the ending. You have to figure out how you want it to end. And not just for you, but your children and grandchildren children. Cuz it’s all at stake now.

Yep. The old ways are back in, basically. And the conveniences of the Internet mutated into their own monster in AI and broke all the promises information technology made.

Yea, like the matrix, the Internet is now an intrinsically dangerous place where anyone is potentially some highly capable AI with potentially very malicious intent.

Yea, this “data at the edge” approach, not “on the wire” Is interesting to me and makes sense.

Basically regressing on the convenience/power of the internet because it just isn’t safe and easy anymore and for anything personal that isn’t a server -> many users, yoi basically ain’t gonna need it.

What does self hosting look like in a world full of malicious AI agents?

I’m thinking of this post/thread from Veronica explains, where she explains that her hosted services are accessible only locally because tbe security headache isn’t worth it: https://explains.social/@veronica/statuses/01KWJCGV27JVBHP21E2JNWDBFH

As someone who doesn’t self-host but could and would want to, the state of AI has basically scared me off.

Happy cake day!

If you don’t mind, could you to explain why exactly?

Is it a GPL3 thing? Or favouring their own BSD licences?

I hear you.

Reminds me of a shower thought I had a while ago: why aren’t more churches/temples basically groves in forests? Even in an urban environment, why not cultivate some grand trees as a little forested oasis?

You could still put covers against rain and lights, fires and heaters against the dark and cold. Statues, murals and structures too.

Dunno, maybe I just like trees a lot.

Yes, but there’s certainly a disconnect here between what school entrained us to believe and what “real life” cares about, which is maybe the point here.

Not a new idea, I know, but watching the world upend itself over some tech “progress” highlights this gulf, not to mention how much school scepticism was right, to some extent, all along.