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AI is not your friend

gerrymcgovern.com

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Re: AI is not your friend

#111

Post by eertami »

autoexec wrote: post #78
eertami wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Hit me and do what though? Advertising is likely far more successful at manipulating you than you realize. When it comes to purchases it will show you only a narrow subset of what's avilable to you. Amazon does this already when it shows you the same products over and over again then starts showing unrelated products or stops showing new results entirely. Product advertising is bad enough, but it's not just about t…

> AI will also shape your opinions and your political views.

When will it do this exactly? Will we be watching AI generated movies and listening to AI generated music that is altering our politics? I don't see the avenues you see for AI to lie to me, perhaps someone who uses social media, or reads news websites, or opens spam emails might find themselves vulnerable - but I think you can live a good life without ever exposing yourself to or caring about this kind of nonsense.

I should point out I don't use Amazon, nor would I use any retailers website to inform myself about available products when I need to buy something.

Re: AI is not your friend

#112

Post by eesmith »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #103
eesmith wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Doesn't it? It's the same codebase as Chrome, and not in the sense that they used to be . They still are. Changes to one go into the other. And that code is open source, so anybody who doesn't like what Google is doing with it can create a fork, just like with any other open source project. Arguing that it isn't because the most popular distribution has some proprietary bits in it is like arguing that it isn't becaus…

As you wrote, it is not the same code base. It "has some proprietary bits."

People have forked it. Is ungoogled Chromium the same codebase as Chrome? What about the Vanadium? Brave? Edge? Opera?

Darwin is (or "was" as it no longer really exists) not macOS either, even though changes in macOS went into Darwin.

Re: AI is not your friend

#113

Post by autoexec »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #104
tivert wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

> The market can't fix this. That's a fantasy. Competitive markets would fix this immediately. The main problem is that some markets are concentrated enough for suppliers to collude, and people keep telling themselves that there is nothing they can do because they've been conditioned by the sort of arguments you're repeating into being submissive and compliant. > The manufactures all have an incentive to do this And…

> Competitive markets would fix this immediately...And the customers all have an incentive to choose the one that doesn't, putting any manufacturer willing to respect the customer at a competitive advantage.

No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power. If you sell a product and people are willing to pay X for it then you can make X (minus your costs), but if you can also collect and sell your customer's data you will make even more money on top of what you would have otherwise. Nobody is going to leave all of that money on the table.

Exploiting your customers also gives you power over them. You can remotely disable features your customers already paid for and force them to pay you over and over and over again to get them back. You can ensure that your product is only used in ways you approve of. You can change/censor your product at any time after it's sold. You can force customers to keep paying for the rest of their lives for a product they used to be able to get with a single payment of a set amount.

No company is going to give up all the extra money and power to "outcompete" their rivals. You can see that for yourself. Where are all the companies giving consumers what we want? If there's really an endless fortune to be made selling smart TVs that don't push ads or spy on users why aren't you personally working on doing just that already? It's guaranteed to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams when you drive every other TV company on Earth out of business right? Why hasn't someone done that already? Sometimes it will always be more profitable and advantageous for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want. I hope you're right someone does decide to make a massive fortune selling high quality smart TVs that don't exploit the customer, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one.

Re: AI is not your friend

#114

Post by autoexec »

eertami wrote: post #111
autoexec wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hit me and do what though? Advertising is likely far more successful at manipulating you than you realize. When it comes to purchases it will show you only a narrow subset of what's avilable to you. Amazon does this already when it shows you the same products over and over again then starts showing unrelated products or stops showing new results entirely. Product advertising is bad enough, but it's not just about t…

> AI will also shape your opinions and your political views. When will it do this exactly? Will we be watching AI generated movies and listening to AI generated music that is altering our politics? I don't see the avenues you see for AI to lie to me, perhaps someone who uses social media, or reads news websites, or opens spam emails might find themselves vulnerable - but I think you can live a good life without ever…

> Will we be watching AI generated movies and listening to AI generated music that is altering our politics?

I suspect we increasingly will (and in some cases already are). As you say, anyone using social media will find bots shilling ideology of one kind or another and usually with ads on top of the astroturfing. It's only going to harder to sell who is a person or an AI pretending.

Anywhere you see an advertisement is an opportunity to manipulate you. Compared to most people I see very few ads myself, but I sure can't escape all of them. Limiting our exposure to ads is the best defense we have against them, but increasingly they part of the content we want. Ads are being inserted into more and more places in our lives. AI will be too.

Re: AI is not your friend

#115

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eesmith wrote: post #112
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it? It's the same codebase as Chrome, and not in the sense that they used to be . They still are. Changes to one go into the other. And that code is open source, so anybody who doesn't like what Google is doing with it can create a fork, just like with any other open source project. Arguing that it isn't because the most popular distribution has some proprietary bits in it is like arguing that it isn't becaus…

As you wrote, it is not the same code base. It "has some proprietary bits." People have forked it. Is ungoogled Chromium the same codebase as Chrome? What about the Vanadium? Brave? Edge? Opera? Darwin is (or "was" as it no longer really exists) not macOS either, even though changes in macOS went into Darwin.

The relevant distinction is, is it different enough to have to care? If Chrome suddenly adopts some offensive behavior, how much trouble is it to use Chromium instead? And it's easy.

Whereas if you want to use Darwin instead of macOS, it will be missing some things you're immediately going to notice, like the macOS GUI.

Re: AI is not your friend

#116

Post by AnthonyMouse »

autoexec wrote: post #113
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market can't fix this. That's a fantasy. Competitive markets would fix this immediately. The main problem is that some markets are concentrated enough for suppliers to collude, and people keep telling themselves that there is nothing they can do because they've been conditioned by the sort of arguments you're repeating into being submissive and compliant. > The manufactures all have an incentive to do this And…

> Competitive markets would fix this immediately...And the customers all have an incentive to choose the one that doesn't, putting any manufacturer willing to respect the customer at a competitive advantage. No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power. If you sell a product and people are willing to pay X for it then you can make X (minus your costs), but if…

> No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power.

If your company had 3% of the market and not screwing your customers would get you 10% of the market, you're now not only making more than three times as much revenue, you have that many more units to spread your fixed costs over.

That doesn't work when you have 40% of the market and not screwing your customers would get you 47% of the market, because the value of screwing your customers can easily be more than 20% but less than 300%. Which is why the screwing happens in uncompetitive markets but not competitive ones.

> Exploiting your customers also gives you power over them. You can remotely disable features your customers already paid for and force them to pay you over and over and over again to get them back. You can ensure that your product is only used in ways you approve of. You can change/censor your product at any time after it's sold. You can force customers to keep paying for the rest of their lives for a product they used to be able to get with a single payment of a set amount.

All of which customers hate.

Notice how "smart TVs" don't do most of these things. You buy the TV once and it keeps operating indefinitely. Why don't the most popular TVs require you to rent them for a monthly fee? Why isn't the monthly fee $1000/month? Because customers would buy from a competitor instead.

> If there's really an endless fortune to be made selling smart TVs that don't push ads or spy on users why aren't you personally working on doing just that already?

The spyware is already optional. Plenty of popular TVs work fine if you connect your own input to the HDMI port and never connect the TV to the internet. You can't get a competitive advantage just by offering the same feature unless the incumbents stop offering that feature, which they haven't, presumably because they know it would cost them sales.

Re: AI is not your friend

#117

Post by eesmith »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #115
eesmith wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you wrote, it is not the same code base. It "has some proprietary bits." People have forked it. Is ungoogled Chromium the same codebase as Chrome? What about the Vanadium? Brave? Edge? Opera? Darwin is (or "was" as it no longer really exists) not macOS either, even though changes in macOS went into Darwin.

The relevant distinction is, is it different enough to have to care? If Chrome suddenly adopts some offensive behavior, how much trouble is it to use Chromium instead? And it's easy. Whereas if you want to use Darwin instead of macOS, it will be missing some things you're immediately going to notice, like the macOS GUI.

No, it is not.

For those who want to avoid Google altogether, switching to Chromium does not solve those issues. From https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/open_source_unbranded...

"there are 50 or so Google services that have been integrated in the Chromium code base."

"The services are free but have commercial value by providing data that can be used to inform advertising and marketing algorithms, or in some cases, such as Google Pay, have more obvious benefit to the provider."

Re: AI is not your friend

#118

Post by autoexec »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #116
autoexec wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Competitive markets would fix this immediately...And the customers all have an incentive to choose the one that doesn't, putting any manufacturer willing to respect the customer at a competitive advantage. No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power. If you sell a product and people are willing to pay X for it then you can make X (minus your costs), but if…

> No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power. If your company had 3% of the market and not screwing your customers would get you 10% of the market, you're now not only making more than three times as much revenue, you have that many more units to spread your fixed costs over. That doesn't work when you have 40% of the market and not screwing your customers…

> Notice how "smart TVs" don't do most of these things. You buy the TV once and it keeps operating indefinitely.

I haven't yet seen a TV company remotely brick their devices, or start demanding microtransactions for basic features but people are still paying for their TVs over and over and over again. You can't "buy the TV once" and be done, you're forced to give up your personal data and that never goes away and will be used against you. The company has a continuous revenue stream using and selling your data and it never ends. Every day you use the product you're paying.

> The spyware is already optional. Plenty of popular TVs work fine if you connect your own input to the HDMI port and never connect the TV to the internet.

Some TVs do allow you to keep them offline. Others will do everything they can to get online no matter what you do including actively scanning for open wifi networks and connecting to any it finds automatically.

Connecting input to the HDMI port isn't enough to save US though because TVs are pushing ads over that video too. If your TV overlays ads when the volume changes no matter what you're viewing it won't matter if you're playing a game or a DVD or streaming video from another device. As non-smart TVs get harder to find and ad pushing and data collection become more aggressive I hope someone does step forward to offer a real alternative that doesn't do those things. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I do though.

Re: AI is not your friend

#119

Post by AnthonyMouse »

eesmith wrote: post #117
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant distinction is, is it different enough to have to care? If Chrome suddenly adopts some offensive behavior, how much trouble is it to use Chromium instead? And it's easy. Whereas if you want to use Darwin instead of macOS, it will be missing some things you're immediately going to notice, like the macOS GUI.

No, it is not. For those who want to avoid Google altogether, switching to Chromium does not solve those issues. From https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/09/open_source_unbranded... "there are 50 or so Google services that have been integrated in the Chromium code base." "The services are free but have commercial value by providing data that can be used to inform advertising and marketing algorithms, or in some cases…

> switching to Chromium does not solve those issues.

But it allows them to be solved. Then if you don't like Google services, you can remove them, as some have done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungoogled-chromium

Re: AI is not your friend

#120

Post by AnthonyMouse »

autoexec wrote: post #118
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No company wants that "advantage" because that would make them less money and give them much less power. If your company had 3% of the market and not screwing your customers would get you 10% of the market, you're now not only making more than three times as much revenue, you have that many more units to spread your fixed costs over. That doesn't work when you have 40% of the market and not screwing your customers…

> Notice how "smart TVs" don't do most of these things. You buy the TV once and it keeps operating indefinitely. I haven't yet seen a TV company remotely brick their devices, or start demanding microtransactions for basic features but people are still paying for their TVs over and over and over again. You can't "buy the TV once" and be done, you're forced to give up your personal data and that never goes away and wil…

> You can't "buy the TV once" and be done, you're forced to give up your personal data and that never goes away and will be used against you.

How is it forcing you to do this if you never connect it to the internet?

> Some TVs do allow you to keep them offline. Others will do everything they can to get online no matter what you do including actively scanning for open wifi networks and connecting to any it finds automatically.

The obvious solution would be to buy the first kind, but even for the second, you can snip the antenna or use it somewhere there aren't any open Wi-Fi networks it can use.

> If your TV overlays ads when the volume changes no matter what you're viewing it won't matter if you're playing a game or a DVD or streaming video from another device.

How is it going to get any ads to show you without an internet connection?

> As non-smart TVs get harder to find and ad pushing and data collection become more aggressive I hope someone does step forward to offer a real alternative that doesn't do those things.

The device you're looking for is marketed as a "monitor" instead of a "TV" even though it's exactly the same thing.

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