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AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#31
post #25
post #13

The elite broke trust. No one made people like Sam Altman into a compulsive liar. No one made Musk call a service full self driving, and then make it return liability to the user the second it decides an accident is about to happen. Stop removing agency from the people making the top level decisions and reaping all the rewards. Would you claim that someone who took 5 shots in a row and drove home wasn’t responsible f…

There were always a spectrum of people to choose from to become elites. We chose a system that chose the ones who compulsively lied.

That choice was also made within a framework of another system. It's systems all the way down.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#32

> Here’s the thing: most of our habits at work still assume that producing something means you have to understand it. This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level. You trust that those layers work. At some point in the past you couldn’t just trust that. At some po…

Mostly agreed. In a previous life, I used to write code, then got Peter Principled upwards to the point where I "trusted" the engineers under me to do their job. Did I understand all the code my team wrote? Of course not. Even if I wanted to review all the code written by 20+ developers to the point where I could stay I understood it, there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do so.

I figure what is happening is (human) software engineering as a discipline, at least on large scale projects, is rapidly and irreversibly mutating to software project management. But instead of managing teams of people, you're managing teams of agents. Where I disagree with your comment is in the assertion that everyone "can move one level up the system hierarchy." Some folks can't, so they'll stagnate. Welcome to the Peter Principle World.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#33

> Here’s the thing: most of our habits at work still assume that producing something means you have to understand it. This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level. You trust that those layers work. At some point in the past you couldn’t just trust that. At some po…

because we could trust the layer below. Now we can't

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of ex-civs had techdoomers who were right. When tevh doomers have no salient points to make, its fair to not listen, but this time around i think something is different to historic doomerism. Trust is a fundamental thing, and i cannot fathom how a post-trust society could possibly host life as we know it. Life ad we know it comes from systemic efficiencies that are rooted in trust, requiring it deeply. no trus…

There are plenty of low-trust societies. They have things like armed security guards and barbed wire fences outside every apartment complex. Cough southafrica

right, but that surive in isolation, heard immunity to collapse so to speak, but globe wide? pandemonium. we're back to fiefdoms and warring city-states in a generation.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#35
post #32

> Here’s the thing: most of our habits at work still assume that producing something means you have to understand it. This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level. You trust that those layers work. At some point in the past you couldn’t just trust that. At some po…

Mostly agreed. In a previous life, I used to write code, then got Peter Principled upwards to the point where I "trusted" the engineers under me to do their job. Did I understand all the code my team wrote? Of course not. Even if I wanted to review all the code written by 20+ developers to the point where I could stay I understood it, there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do so. I figure what is happening is…

> Even if I wanted to review all the code written by 20+ developers to the point where I could stay I understood it, there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do so.

The difference of course being that you had 20+ developers who did understand it. With AI generated code no one has that understanding. The AI sure doesn't

> Some folks can't, so they'll stagnate.

And we have no answer for those people. Just "fuck you the world changed and you're being left behind"? Where exactly does that lead?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#36
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to enlighten how GG plays into all this. Sounds like a curious tie-in.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in. Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

I will admit that GG may have been a symptom, but I don't think it was the cause. The cause, as such, was the interblag and incorporation of advertising corrupting touch into everything.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#37
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

plenty of ex-civs had techdoomers who were right. When tevh doomers have no salient points to make, its fair to not listen, but this time around i think something is different to historic doomerism. Trust is a fundamental thing, and i cannot fathom how a post-trust society could possibly host life as we know it. Life ad we know it comes from systemic efficiencies that are rooted in trust, requiring it deeply. no trus…

There are plenty of low-trust societies. They have things like armed security guards and barbed wire fences outside every apartment complex. Cough southafrica

> There are plenty of low-trust societies

And high trust societies have spent the past two decades importing tons of H1B style workers from many of the lower trust countries

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#38
post #23
post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

are you the same guy who made the fluid simulation thing and the little volumetric display on youtube?

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#39
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ll have to enlighten how GG plays into all this. Sounds like a curious tie-in.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in. Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

It may have been when you noticed it but it wasn’t the spark.

If there was an actual spark, it was the 2016 election as this was the first time when all the disinformation, professional troll farms and Russian influence truly came into play on a world changing scale.

But there was splintering of online communities and the death of nuance for years prior as well. Twitter contributed a lot by giving voices to everyone, and promoting those who’d shout the loudest. Facebook and its nasty algorithm also greatly contributed to all this (thanks, everyone who worked there, for the world we have now… hope you’re proud and putting all that ad-sponsored salary to good use).

Culture war was brewing long before, it just got amplified more and more.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are your teammates deterministic output machines?

In a sense yes. I trust that my coworkers will be accountable for their outcomes and accomplish them with the high quality bar I know they intrinsically hold themselves to. And that they understand our shared goals and if they don't, they will work to become aligned. And if I can't say that for a coworker, well, that's performance feedback.

Your coworkers are if anything less reliably deterministic than an AI. And the human version of a prompt injection is called social engineering and it’s far more of an issue than actual prompt injection and has been for an extremely long time.
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