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Google Declaring War on the Web

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Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#341

Post by wolvesechoes »

JohnBooty wrote: post #198
marcus_holmes wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make my own furniture. I am absolutely not a carpenter. But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home. This is an analogy, obviously. Ikea has been innovative, and it does provide a useful service for people; if you just moved into a new pl…

Do you think that AI could actually free up time in your life in other areas, so that you could spend more time doing the things you love like making furniture? Or maybe help you directly in your furniture-making, by perhaps helping you to research things? Please don't misunderstand: my point is not "AI is good." It is problematic in many ways. My point is that I think the "AI versus actually doing cool human-crafted…

Direct consequence of industrial revolution was an INCREASE in workload. People worked MORE, not less. It required organization, protests, political pressure and even some bloodshed to get 8 hrs workday.

People that push for AI are not interested in making your life better.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#342

Post by danaris »

eikenberry wrote: post #144
soundworlds wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who simultaneously makes music professionally, and works in IT professionally, it has been really interesting watching GenAI unfold, and the diverging cultures around it. It is almost like the world is splitting into two "societies": 1. One that loves AI + Big Business + very fast Innovation and disruption 2. One that loves Artisanal work + Small Business + slower but more sustainable innovation I personal…

But big businesses suck at innovation so much that their primary form of innovation is through acquiring small businesses. But that is a big benefit for #2 as we need innovations to get to a sustainable system.

That's not at all a benefit for #2—when small businesses that are thriving and making Society #2 better get bought up by big businesses, they cease to be part of Society #2. In many cases, the innovative things they were doing simply disappear, as the big business that bought them didn't want to use it, they just wanted to kill it.

"Big business," in the sense it exists today, is itself a detriment to our society as a whole, and can only exist because of the utter destruction of antitrust that happened under Reagan. Without that, much more of our current society would look like #2, with or without LLMs.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#343

Post by TightFibre »

Google search just doesn't work for me any more. I am not sure if it's because I clean slate it with no personalisation, but I already feel my search engine has been removed from the web. Their AI snippets are quite wrong alot of the time and Vs Gemini have a totally different flavour. There's no cohesiveness at all.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#344

Post by petterroea »

To be fair, I made a few searches today and most of the results are AI generated "blogs". Getting real information is hard. I'd also give up on the Web if i was Google. It's just a shame their solution is just monopolizing further.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#345

Post by lelanthran »

pembrook wrote: post #317
Eyeland0 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And what does the money machine eat to shit it out? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity." -William S. Burroughs

Yes, the craft to mass production pipeline (democratization) is frustrating for the individual craftsman, as has been true for hundreds of years. AI is simply the assembly line for the digital realm. It takes the trendy products of the rich (custom software, McKinsey PowerPoint decks, etc) and mass produces them in the same style so everyone can afford to buy them at Walmart. For things where the exclusivity WAS the…

Your analogy, I feel, is inaccurate.

This isn't only mass-produced products replacing bespoke products, it's also the strip-mining of attribution.

A better analogy is if we were to abolish trademark protection completely; anyone can go create a Nike knockoff, complete with the branding, and sell them legally.

This is what the blog post under discussion is complaining about - your labour will be laundered through the machine, and presented to an end-user with the end-user having never heard of you.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#346

Post by AlecSchueler »

pembrook wrote: post #328
AlecSchueler wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hypocrisy is downright silly. > The 99% collective benefits from mass production at the expense of the 1% of artisans And in this case it's looking more like less than 1% benefiting at the expense of 85%? > I don’t see any of the AI protestors here exclusively wearing ... commissioning ... I would love to order more bespoke goods but mass production has driven most of the makers out of business and that ones th…

> it's looking more like less than 1% benefiting at the expense of 85%? Your model of the world is wrong. 85% (even 99%) of people do not create any art, software, music, etc. The vast majority of people are consumers of any given craft, and the 1% of the most passionate in a given field are creators, as has always been the case. It’s the same with people who create websites vs consume them. > mass production has dri…

> 85% of people do not create any art, software, music, etc.

Etc.? I think you're overlooking a very broad range of occupations. From people getting into politics by doing newspaper summaries for party offices to people editing newspapers.

And if you're really pushing that it's 99% benefiting while 1% lose out then where do the kids whose schools get bombed or the women harassed with deepfakes fit in? Do they still benefit because they don't have to go to the trouble of writing a song about their pain?

It's the same companies and the same technologies doing all these things.

Let's not even get into the inauguration gifts in the US etc...

> You’re pretending everyone was a rich aristocrat nobleman in the past

I'm not pretending anything and my world model isn't "wrong." I don't mind having this discussion but I would ask you to mind your manners.

> There was never a time when getting everything made bespoke was cheap.

In my lifetime my family had many things made to order; from clothes to furniture. And I grew up in one of the poorest parts of the country, a working class area. But that meant that everyone worked and everyone had trades. My grandfather made me toys from scrap wood at the shipyard, my uncle was a joiner who made us better quality tables than I can get now, another was a plumber who ensured everything ran smoothly in our pipes. My aunts knitted and sewed everything we wanted. When a new fashion came out like skinny jeans they would tighten the ones we had; at Halloween I only had to say what I wanted to dress up as and the costume would appear.

Now if I go to the same area everyone is surviving on state benefits, the skills are all automated away and everyone is sitting in the same gray houses with the same gray furniture. And everyone looks miserable.

But at least no one has to do any expressionist painting to let their emotions out, they can just prompt it now and enjoy more and more consumption.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#347

Post by verisimi »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #300
snapplebobapple wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its probably a situation where you cant choose what you actually want so you choose closest. For me that would be camp 1 but i hate big business because of all the obvious oligopoly market power abuse. Id go back to the 60s antitrust where they were breaking up regional gas station chains if i could because it was more correct than what we are doing. Most of the big guys on nasdaq and s&p need to be broken up imo

man... hacker news is making me sad here. The blatantly obvious stuff that leans left gets upvoted +5 and the blatantly obvious comment made by me directly before this one that leans right is -1. This place used to care more about the correct answer.

I think it was always about the left-leaning answers - while sharing right-leaning concerns, the consensus answer is always more legislation, closer administrative control.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#348

Post by TightFibre »

reactordev wrote: post #293
soundworlds wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who simultaneously makes music professionally, and works in IT professionally, it has been really interesting watching GenAI unfold, and the diverging cultures around it. It is almost like the world is splitting into two "societies": 1. One that loves AI + Big Business + very fast Innovation and disruption 2. One that loves Artisanal work + Small Business + slower but more sustainable innovation I personal…

I too am a musician and a, well, was a, tech person. I’m completely in the #2 camp. I enjoy AI music, AI art, but I enjoy originality more. That said, I also think there’s an element of bullshit in the room where an LLM will look like it’s doing something profound but ultimately isn’t, or doesn’t work, or has no actual proof. This “hallucination zone”. They can still do great things but they need a solid hand holding…

As an early web guy who gets off on tech and problem solving I have long hated the industry with a passion as I see it as a fundamental brain drain for society full of bullshit jobs and bullshit people. Including of course myself. I should welcome the automation and yet my heart feels ripped out as the emperor has been laid bare with 20 odd years going up in smoke as vultures pick at the corpses of the old guard.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#349

Post by nicbou »

Max-Ganz-II wrote: post #264

To stop this, I a month or two ago put most of my Amazon Redshift research web-site behind a basic auth username/password wall. It all remains free, but you need to email me for a username and password. If I put in time and effort to make content and OpenAI et al copy it and sell it through their LLM such that no one comes to me any more, then plainly it makes no sense for me to create that content; and then it would…

I have seen many recipe websites do the same recently. All the big sites require an account too now.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#350

Post by wolvesechoes »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #257
smoe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worry is that, at least among the artists I know, many kept themselves afloat early career by doing commercial freelance jobs like illustrations for local events or companies. Those kinds of jobs might largely vanish. On the other hand, with the internet inevitably becoming swamped by AI generated content, I can definitely see a de-digitalization of art moving into offline spaces. At least for independent work, yo…

I suppose with those same artists, at least for the smarter members of the group, might start using AI for basic commercial freelance jobs and just act as the human review, perhaps doing some final adjustments to the finished artwork. So instead of being paid a small amount of money for something that they spend hours on, they create 10 artworks in that same number of hours and earn 10x what they did previously.

> I suppose with those same artists, at least for the smarter members of the group, might start using AI for basic commercial freelance jobs and just act as the human review, perhaps doing some final adjustments to the finished artwork.

And how they create demand for this? AI "enthusiasts" are enthusiastic about it exactly because they feel they don't need to outsource things to meatbags.

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