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AI is not your friend

gerrymcgovern.com

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Re: AI is not your friend

#41

Post by richrichie »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Or is tech folks finding out that they're the baddies and not happy with their reality hitting that of the rest of society? I think it's the latter, but only history will tell. "Tech Is Not Your Friend" would've been more apropos, hype cycles and all that (adtech, crypto, gen AI, etc). Just cut the "changing the world" facade (not wrong! just not for the better in a lot of cases) and come right out with "we're…

Capitalism is to blame, not tech. The system would pervert anything, tech just happens to be profitable.

The “system” does not exist in vacuum. It is powered by the same people that would power other systems such as socialism, communism, etc. And they all suck even more.

Re: AI is not your friend

#42

Post by toomuchtodo »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Or is tech folks finding out that they're the baddies and not happy with their reality hitting that of the rest of society? I think it's the latter, but only history will tell. "Tech Is Not Your Friend" would've been more apropos, hype cycles and all that (adtech, crypto, gen AI, etc). Just cut the "changing the world" facade (not wrong! just not for the better in a lot of cases) and come right out with "we're…

Capitalism is to blame, not tech. The system would pervert anything, tech just happens to be profitable.

Some people harm, some do not, all exist in the system. Excuses are easy ("the system made me do it"), despite free will and executive function. I admit, more effort is needed to close the gap to make harmful people less harmful, considering imperfection of the system.

Re: AI is not your friend

#43

Post by pksebben »

"Powerful technologies, when placed in the hands of bad actors with ugly motives in an incentive structure that encourages usury, are bad".

Sure. But how about we do something about all the rest of that instead?

Open source all the things. Create locally runnable software. Move from social networks to social protocols. Decouple from the economic juggernaut whose only goal is to maintain a stratification of social class and persist an artificial scarcity that keeps people wage-enslaved. Then we can develop all the superpowered tech we want without stressing about this bullshit, and maybe (just MAYBE) develop something to prevent the oceans from boiling over before 2100.

Re: AI is not your friend

#44

Post by temporarely »

Too bad Gerry didn't ask an LLM to help him out with the article. A 'bit' over the top. In fact, it did make me wonder if this is supposed to be a send up sponsored by the Ad Council..

"Free. Any world built on free is a scam world, a grift world, a con world, a world of lies. And so much of the Internet is built on free. Because free is a lie. A Big Lie."

OSS, gerry.

Now mom and dad can't make ends meet not because of advertising but because the political economy changed. It is not because mom and dad are induced to consume more by advertising. No, Gerry, the purpose of advertising in that case is to offer 'consolation of consumerism' to deal with realities of the political economy and their seat at the table.

No, Gerry, the actual problem with advertising is that it is used as a pretext to foist the Surveillance System on the Western "democracies" so that the little snitch we "must" carry on our person is made prone to surveillance "because advertising".

The problem with AI as an social intermediary is that it can manipulate us, not to "buy stuff", no Gerry, but to change our minds about actually important matter. Stuff like keeping the folks who have a perch at the table above and want to keep it that way for themselves and their issue perpetually in power and control.

Re: AI is not your friend

#45

Post by kjkjadksj »

shinycode wrote: post #10
andybak wrote: post #6

How did this argument work when talking about locally run LLMs?

I think what he meant by AI is AI in services everywhere. I attended an AWS summit this week and 9 out of 10 of the almost 100 companies had AI written on the punchline of their stand. This is the AI the author meant, AI integrated into services that collect data and use that data to feed the AI to sell more stuff.

If anything thats a signal of where not to invest. Ai is a tool but not always the best tool, sometimes (most of the time potentially) simple linear regression or t test/wilcox will do. All done in a line of code in the standard library of R at least.

Re: AI is not your friend

#46

Post by VoodooJuJu »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #9

I swear that the displaced artist writer mafia is pulling all the stops to try and write low grade hit pieces and AI doomer narratives.

No one has been displaced. There's melodramatic doomers lamenting some ostensible future where AI displaces them, and there's tech-novice salt farmers collecting vials of these doomers' tears, but no serious displacement is happening.

Re: AI is not your friend

#47

Post by bitwize »

Animats wrote: post #30

Advertising is not your friend. Use ad blockers.

"Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots."

Obtaining ad-supported service while blocking ads is theft of service. Do not expect such theft to go unpunished.

Re: AI is not your friend

#48

Post by pksebben »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #40
NemoNobody wrote: post #19

Well obviously this is true. Doesn't change the fact that to participate in the world in just a few years you better pick one to interact with bc your not going to be doing too much "normal" stuff otherwise, like shop or write an article, or code a website, or go to work, or I think you get it. I don't think AI is my friend. I don't have to like it for it to be necessary. There is no stopping this. Pray tell, what el…

At the same time, some members of generations slightly older than us seem to be managing just fine, living the same analog patterns they’ve always lived, which still exist. I am not worried about the coming ai apocalypse to digital media because I am taking steps now to offshore myself from digital media. I hope one day to be an old man with a book or a newspaper under an arm, smiling inwardly.

easy to live just fine when you bought your house prior to 2008.

Just sayin'.

Re: AI is not your friend

#49

Post by pestaa »

wisty wrote: post #39
autoexec wrote: post #22

> Not to worry. If you’re fairly well educated, reasonably sensible, not prone to addictions, and in good mental health, you’re probably ok, for now. AI will learn to target you when you are at your most vulnerable. It will learn what hours you're usually feeling tired. Which nights you tend to get less sleep. It will learn when your ADHD medication typically starts wearing off and you're more prone to act impulsivel…

I've thought about trying to write a short story about an apocalypse in which Facebook or Youtube creates an AI that's so effective it traps the entire human race (including the creators) into doing nothing but engaging with the app, and doing the bare minimum to survive (and keep the servers running) since that's what it's told to optimise. But I'm not a great writer, and other stuff always comes up (those shorts ar…

This comment of yours reads like chapter one. Well done, I guess? Strangely hard to turn something into fiction what we're already going through.

Re: AI is not your friend

#50

Post by eertami »

autoexec wrote: post #22

> Not to worry. If you’re fairly well educated, reasonably sensible, not prone to addictions, and in good mental health, you’re probably ok, for now. AI will learn to target you when you are at your most vulnerable. It will learn what hours you're usually feeling tired. Which nights you tend to get less sleep. It will learn when your ADHD medication typically starts wearing off and you're more prone to act impulsivel…

> that's when AI will hit you

Hit me and do what though? That's the bit that loses me on these hypotheticals. I can't think of any time I've bought something that wasn't researched or didn't sit in a checkout basket for at least a week. And this is maybe only a few times a year, most months I don't buy anything except groceries. I don't trust AI but I'm unconvinced about how successful it could be at manipulation.

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