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AI is not your friend

gerrymcgovern.com

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Re: AI is not your friend

#91

Post by eesmith »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71
amlib wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to push FOSS software into peoples lives for many decades now and they still mostly opt for stuff from the big tech. It is very likely that the same will happen again with AI unfortunately.

The most popular web browsers are open source. Android is open source and the extent that it isn't is the extent that they're running into anti-trust claims. A sizable chunk of the population uses ad blockers. "People don't care" is at best defeatism and at worst explicit propaganda designed to discourage people from making the attempt. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It works more often when you try than w…

The most popular web browsers use open source, but none of Chrome, Edge, or Safari are open source web browsers. They are proprietary freeware.

Re: AI is not your friend

#92

Post by qrobit »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71
amlib wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been trying to push FOSS software into peoples lives for many decades now and they still mostly opt for stuff from the big tech. It is very likely that the same will happen again with AI unfortunately.

The most popular web browsers are open source. Android is open source and the extent that it isn't is the extent that they're running into anti-trust claims. A sizable chunk of the population uses ad blockers. "People don't care" is at best defeatism and at worst explicit propaganda designed to discourage people from making the attempt. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It works more often when you try than w…

While android base is open source(and I appreciate google for that), no major phone vendor uses exclusively open source components. They always adds own proprietary apps and services also most of the time google's. IMO no better than an iphone.

Re: AI is not your friend

#93

Post by tivert »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #55
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…

The premise here is that the AI is operating at the behest of someone else. Now suppose that it's open source and runs on your own device. "It will learn when your ADHD medication typically starts wearing off and you're more prone to act impulsively" and then avoid presenting you with purchasing decisions at those times etc. It will digest both ad-laden blogspam and human psych research papers so it can present the i…

> The premise here is that the AI is operating at the behest of someone else.

> Now suppose that it's open source and runs on your own device.

Not gonna happen. The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own. My TV's OS show me ads, not because I wanted them, but because the manufacturer wants to make more money. There are no open source TVs.

As soon as any consumer device gets an internet connection, it starts working against its users (for a recent example, see cars, which are increasingly "connected" and allow the manufactures to sell driving data to 3rd parties for embarrassingly small amounts of money).

Re: AI is not your friend

#94

Post by AnthonyMouse »

autoexec wrote: post #83
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every piece of technology on offer today seems to work for someone else. You can buy a commodity PC and install Debian on it. Some people do. > Even as the hardware requirements to run AI locally go down, we'll never compete with companies like facebook, google, and microsoft in terms of the size of the datasets they have to train with. Most of these datasets are public. > Worse I think we're starting to see effort…

> You can buy a commodity PC and install Debian on it. But your motherboard will still be full of chips that are closed and proprietary and some of them will have their own OS with network/wireless access that you'll have no control over. You'll just have to trust that the Intel Management Engine backdoor and radio chipsets you have no access to aren't taking advantage of you. > Most of these datasets are public. Mos…

> You'll just have to trust that the Intel Management Engine backdoor and radio chipsets you have no access to aren't taking advantage of you.

And that's dumb and we should fix it, but there is no evidence that they are actually doing this. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that e.g. John Deere or Apple is doing this.

> Good luck using the entire internet and your local library to train your own personal AI though.

Presumably you would use Common Crawl and Project Gutenberg etc.

> Microsoft has access to an incredible amount of non-public data including the emails of corporations using outlook and the files on people's hard drive. If they were to fully leverage their access to train AI you'd have a hard time keeping up.

Then they'd set their credibility on fire, lose their customers and get sued because their model would be capable of emitting all of their customers' confidential private information.

> Even if we had that kind of access to raw data, could we realistically process it?

Yes. Training is a fixed cost that can be amortized over everyone using the model. There are various methods of spreading the cost or funding the model:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39964361

> There are a lot of different versions of "AI is bad". One is "AI is bad when it's only controlled by corporations"

That one isn't really "AI is bad" at all, it's really "market concentration is bad" and has nothing to do with AI except insofar as AI is another thing that could be monopolized by robber barons.

> They're more likely to say that "AI is bad" because of terrorists and spammers and pedos or whatever other boogeymen they can summon up to scare the ignorant and provide some justification for keeping that power out of the public's hands.

These justifications are all horse manure and should be repeated only sarcastically in the tone of Helen Lovejoy.

AI is bad in the same way that electricity is bad. "Electricity could be used by pedos" is an argument so weak that the only thing it proves is that the person offering it is arguing in bad faith.

Re: AI is not your friend

#95

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tivert wrote: post #93
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise here is that the AI is operating at the behest of someone else. Now suppose that it's open source and runs on your own device. "It will learn when your ADHD medication typically starts wearing off and you're more prone to act impulsively" and then avoid presenting you with purchasing decisions at those times etc. It will digest both ad-laden blogspam and human psych research papers so it can present the i…

> The premise here is that the AI is operating at the behest of someone else. > Now suppose that it's open source and runs on your own device. Not gonna happen. The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own. My TV's OS show me ads, not because I wanted them, but because the manufacturer wants to make more money. There are no open source TVs. As soon as any consumer device gets an internet connec…

> The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own.

Markets are two-sided. Stop patronizing companies that abuse you. If you can't find a viable alternative, instead cause problems for them on purpose. Contact support and waste their time hearing your complaints. Buy the device from the retailer where they get the highest margins so you can leave a bad review, then return it and buy a used one instead. Figure out how to root it and publish your work.

Don't be afraid to behave adversarially towards your adversary.

> There are no open source TVs.

There are still dumb TVs that don't connect to the internet. These often cost more, because the adversarial advertising subsidizes the price of the "smart" TVs. But the "smart" TVs still have an HDMI port that you can plug whatever you want into, so the typical move is to buy the smart TV and then use an external device to display video and never connect the TV to the internet.

> As soon as any consumer device gets an internet connection, it starts working against its users

So don't give it an internet connection, and if it doesn't operate in that condition then return it. Don't be a doormat.

Re: AI is not your friend

#96

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eesmith wrote: post #91
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular web browsers are open source. Android is open source and the extent that it isn't is the extent that they're running into anti-trust claims. A sizable chunk of the population uses ad blockers. "People don't care" is at best defeatism and at worst explicit propaganda designed to discourage people from making the attempt. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It works more often when you try than w…

The most popular web browsers use open source, but none of Chrome, Edge, or Safari are open source web browsers. They are proprietary freeware.

The difference between Chrome and Chromium is that Chrome is marginally worse but largely identical. People mostly install Chrome instead of Chromium by accident because Google markets Chrome and they don't know that Chromium exists and the differences are things they don't strongly care about.

But if Chrome ever started doing something they don't like and actually care about, anyone could instantly switch to Chromium and the only difference they'd notice is that it's not doing the thing they don't like anymore.

Re: AI is not your friend

#97

Post by AnthonyMouse »

qrobit wrote: post #92
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular web browsers are open source. Android is open source and the extent that it isn't is the extent that they're running into anti-trust claims. A sizable chunk of the population uses ad blockers. "People don't care" is at best defeatism and at worst explicit propaganda designed to discourage people from making the attempt. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It works more often when you try than w…

While android base is open source(and I appreciate google for that), no major phone vendor uses exclusively open source components. They always adds own proprietary apps and services also most of the time google's. IMO no better than an iphone.

That's the anti-trust thing.

If Google still wanted to "don't be evil" they'd switch to a license that requires OEMs to allow the user to install custom Android forks on the device.

Re: AI is not your friend

#98

Post by eesmith »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #96
eesmith wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular web browsers use open source, but none of Chrome, Edge, or Safari are open source web browsers. They are proprietary freeware.

The difference between Chrome and Chromium is that Chrome is marginally worse but largely identical. People mostly install Chrome instead of Chromium by accident because Google markets Chrome and they don't know that Chromium exists and the differences are things they don't strongly care about. But if Chrome ever started doing something they don't like and actually care about, anyone could instantly switch to Chromiu…

Sure, but that statement, while true, does not make Chromium one of 'the most popular web browsers.'

Re: AI is not your friend

#100

Post by tivert »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #95
tivert wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The premise here is that the AI is operating at the behest of someone else. > Now suppose that it's open source and runs on your own device. Not gonna happen. The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own. My TV's OS show me ads, not because I wanted them, but because the manufacturer wants to make more money. There are no open source TVs. As soon as any consumer device gets an internet connec…

> The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own. Markets are two-sided. Stop patronizing companies that abuse you. If you can't find a viable alternative, instead cause problems for them on purpose. Contact support and waste their time hearing your complaints. Buy the device from the retailer where they get the highest margins so you can leave a bad review, then return it and buy a used one inst…

>> The trend is to have less and less control over the devices you own.

> Markets are two-sided. Stop patronizing companies that abuse you.

The market can't fix this. That's a fantasy.

The manufactures all have an incentive to do this, and a combination of asymmetric information and users being like frogs in a pot mean they'll suffer little to no blowback. The market converges on devices that turn against their users.

> If you can't find a viable alternative, instead cause problems for them on purpose. Contact support and waste their time hearing your complaints. Buy the device from the retailer where they get the highest margins so you can leave a bad review, then return it and buy a used one instead.

Those are totally impractical suggestions. The weirdos willing to tilt at windmills over this can have no noticeable effect.

> Figure out how to root it and publish your work.

Rooting a device takes a lot of work, if it's even possible at all. Volunteers just don't have the combination of skills and dedicated man-hours to make that a practical alternative across the consumer device space, except maybe in some unusual cases.

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