This is not the future • Hacker News Board

Re: This is not the future

#301

Post by danaris » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #58

croes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Short form video as the medium, and algorithm that samples entire catalog (vs just followers) were inevitable. I doubt that. There is a reason the videos get longer again. So people could have ignored the short form from the beginning. And wasn’t the matching algorithm the teal killer feature that amazed people, not the length of the videos?

I've got a hypothesis that the reason short-form video like TikTok became dominant is because of the decline in reading instruction (eg. usage of whole-word instruction over phonics) that started in 1998-2000. The timing largely lines up: the rise of video content started around 2013, just as these kids were entering their teenage years. Media has significant economies of scale and network effects (i.e. it is much mo…

I think the timing is coincidental.

That was also roughly the time period where mobile phones and their networks started to become reliably able to stream video at scale. That seems like a more plausible proximate cause for the timing of the rise of TikTok.

Re: This is not the future

#302

Post by BloondAndDoom » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

wasteofelectron wrote: post #244

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #119

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being…

> I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. This is an extremely crude characterisation of what many people feel. Plenty of artists oppose copyright-ignoring generative AI and "get" it perfectly, even use it in art, but in ways th…

I hear you, that's not a problem of AI but a problem of copyright and other stuff. I suppose they'd enrage if an artist replicated their art too closely, rightly or wrongly. Isn't it flattery that your art is literally copied millions of times? I guess not when it doesn't pay you, which is a separate issue than AI in my opinion. Theoretically we can have worse that's only trained on public domain that'd have addressed that concern.

Just like you cannot put piracy into the bag in terms of movies, tv shows you cannot put AI into the bag it came from. Bottom line, this is happening (more like happened) now let's think about what that means and find a way forward.

Prime example is voice acting, I hear why voice actors are mad, if someone can steal your voice. But why not work on legal framework to sell your voice for royalties or whatever. I mean if we can get that lovely voice of yours without you spending your weeks, and still compensated fairly for it, I don't see how this is a problem. -and I know this is already happening, as it should.

Re: This is not the future

#303

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

hyperadvanced wrote: post #144

rmah wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement "Game theory is inevitable. Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives." implies that the "actors" are humans. But that's not what game theory assumes. Game theory just provides a mathematical framework to analyze outcomes of decisions when parts of the system have different goals. Game theory does not claim to predict human behavior (humans make mistakes,…

Yes, game theory is not a predictive model but an explanatory/general one. Additionally not everything is a game, as in statistics, not everything has a probability curve. They can be applied speculatively to great effect, but they are ultimately abstract models.

You can use it for either predictive or explanatory purposes. In the early ('00s) years of Google it was common to diagram out the incentives of all the market participants; this led to such innovations like the use of the second-price VCG auction [1] for ad sales that now make over a third of a trillion dollars per year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey%E2%80%93Clarke%E2%80%9...

Re: This is not the future

#304

Post by acessoproibido » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

chaseadam17 wrote: post #266

mat_b wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't the real levees though. The system we live in is. Yes, a few people will push back and try to change the momentum to a different direction but that's painful and we have enough going on each day that most people don't have time for that (let alone agree on the direction). Structural change is the only real way to guide the river.

How does structural change happen in a democracy?

Through a very complicated, long, and ardous process. Its mostly by design (at least in my country) so one bad actor (e.g. a failed painter) cant change the whole system instantly

Re: This is not the future

#305

Post by BloondAndDoom » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

Ritewut wrote: post #258

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #119

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously. However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being…

Tech artist here so I hit a middle ground. > I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously >But somehow if a person “influenced” by people, ideas, art in less efficient way almost we applaud that because what else, invent the wheel aga…

It's not corps only though, AI at this point include many open models, and we'll have more of it as we go if needed. Just like how the original hacker culture was born, we have the open source movements, AI will follow it.

When LLMs first gotten of, people were talking about how governments will control them, but anyone who knows the history of personal computing and hacker culture knew that's not the way things go in this world.

Do I enjoy corpos making money off of anyone's work, including obvious things like literally pirating books and training their models (Meta), absolutely not. However you are blaming the wrong thing in here, it's not technology's fault it's how governments are always corrupted and side with money instead of their people. We should be lashing out to them not each other, not the people who use AI and certainly not the people who innovate and build it.

Re: This is not the future

#306

Post by jrowen » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #182

jasode wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think cooperative game theory[1] better models the dynamics of the real world. If cooperative coalitions to resist undesirable abusive technology models the real world better, why is the world getting more ads? (E.g. One of the author's bullet points was, "Ads are not inevitable." ) Currently in the real world... - Ads frequency goes up : more ad interruptions in tv shows, native ads embedded in podcasts, sponsors…

I'll try and tackle this one. I think the world is getting more ads because Silicon Valley and it's Anxiety Economy are putting a thumb on the scale. For the entirety of the 2010's we had SaaS startups invading every space of software, for a healthy mix of better and worse, and all of them (and a number even today) are running the exact same playbook, boiled down to broad terms: burn investor money to build a massive…

> Billboards and other such ads, which were once commonplace are now solely the domain of ambulance chasing lawyers and car dealerships. TV ads are no better, production value has tanked, they look cheaper and shittier than ever, and the products are solely geared to the boomers because they're the only ones still watching broadcast TV.

This actually strikes me as a good thing. The more we can get big dumb ads out of meatspace and confine everything to devices, the better, in my opinion (though once they figure out targeted ads in public that could suck).

I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I get a lot more value out of targeted social media ads than I ever did billboards or TV commercials. They actually...show me niche things that are relevant to my interests, that I didn't know about. It's much closer to the underlying real value of advertising than the Coca-Cola billboard model is.

> A lot of younger folks I know don't even bother with an ad-blocker, not because they like them, but simply because they've been scrolling past ads since they were shitting in diapers. It's just the background wallpaper of the Internet to them, and that sounds (and is) dystopian...

Also this. It's not dystopian. It's genuinely a better experience than sitting through a single commercial break of a TV show in the 90s (of which I'm sure we all sat through thousands). They blend in. They are easily skippable, they don't dominate near as much of your attention. It's no worse than most of the other stuff competing for your attention. It doesn't seem that difficult to me to navigate a world with background ad radiation. But maybe I'm just a sucker.

Re: This is not the future

#307

Post by terminalshort » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #217

terminalshort wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who build, maintain, and own the datacenters. The people who work at and own the companies that make the hardware in the datacenters. The people who work to build new power plants to power the data centers. The truck drivers that transport all the supplies to build the data centers and power plants. These are all real people.

One thing I've noticed - artists view their own job as more valuable, more sacred, more important than virtually any other person's job. They canonize themselves, and then act all shocked and offended when the rest of the world doesn't share their belief. Obviously the existence of AI is valuable enough to pay the cost of offsetting a few artists' jobs, it's not even a question to us, but to artists it's shocking and…

I have noticed this, but it's not artists themselves. It's mostly coming from people who have zero artistic talent themselves, but really wish they did.

Re: This is not the future

#308

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

aanet wrote: post #297

alwa wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a recent example, Jon Haidt seems to have used this kind of tactic to pull off a coup with the whole kids/smartphones/social media thing [0]. Everybody knew social media tech was corrosive and soul-rotting, but nobody could move individually to stand up against its “inevitability.” Individual families felt like, if they took away or postponed their kids’ phones, their kid would be left out and ostracized—which was…

Great. Now let's do the same to AI slop, what many (including Haidt and co., Australia, etc) have done to lessen kids social media usage. FWIW, I gave up on FB/Twttr crap a while ago... Unfortunately, I'm still stuck with WhatsApp and LI (both big blights) for now. YMMV

AI slop is self-limiting. The new game-theoretic equilibrium is that nobody trusts anything they read online, at which point it will no longer be profitable to put AI slop out there because nobody will read it.

Unfortunately, it's going to destroy the Internet (and possibly society) in the process.

Re: This is not the future

#309

Post by cogogo » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #295

dj_gitmo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is definitely not inevitable is the monetization of human attention. It's only a matter of policy. Without it the incentives to make Tiktok would have been greatly reduced, if even economically possible at all. This is not a new thing. TV monetizes human attention. Tiktok is just an evolution of TV. And Tiktok comes from China which has a very different society. If short-form algo slop video can thrive in both…

The monetization of attention was a side effect of TV, not the primary purpose. TikTok and other current efforts have that monetization as their primary purpose. The profit-first-everything-else-never approach typical in late-stage capitalism was not inevitable. It is very possible to see the specific turns that led us to this point, and they did not have to happen .

Radio was already well monetized before TV came along. How was monetization a side-effect?

Re: This is not the future

#310

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

unformedelta wrote: post #75

nostrademons wrote: post #38

I think a more accurate and more useful framing is: Game theory is inevitable . Because game theory is just math, the study of how independent actors react to incentives. The specific examples called out here may or may not be inevitable. It's true that the future is unknowable, but it's also true that the future is made up of 8B+ independent actors and that they're going to react to incentives. It's also true that y…

Perhaps you don't intend this, but I intuit that you imply that Game theory's inevitability leads to the inevitability of many claims the author's claims aren't inevitable. To me, this inevitability only is guaranteed if we assume a framing of non-cooperative game theory with idealized self-interested actors. I think cooperative game theory[1] better models the dynamics of the real world. More important than thinking…

Both cooperative and non-cooperative games are relevant. Actually, I think that one of the most intriguing parts of game theory is understanding under what conditions a non-cooperative game becomes a cooperative one [1] [2].

The really simple finding is that when you have both repetition and reputation, cooperation arises naturally. Because now you've changed the payoff matrix; instead of playing a single game with the possibility of defection without consequences, defection now cuts you off from payoffs in the future. All you need is repeated interaction and the ability to remember when you've been screwed, or learn when your counterparty has screwed others.

This has been super relevant for career management, eg. you do much better in orgs where the management chain has been intact for years, because they have both the ability and the incentive to keep people loyal to them and ensure they cooperate with each other.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation