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Google Declaring War on the Web

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Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#351

Post by perilunar »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #340
newaccountman2 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I have seen/heard this a lot lately, but all the Ikea furniture I have ever had has been great. Among others, had a chair that was good for like 11 years lol

I think this is actually a counter-example of what you think it is. Chairs should last generations. A chair lasting 11 years is not exemplary. A chair falling apart after a few years should be the exception, and a bad thing at that. Again, Vimes Theory: rich folks inherit furniture that their grandparents bought, and maybe need to get it re-upholstered once in their lifetime. Poor folks have to pay for new furniture…

My parents bought some really nice modern furniture when they married in the early 1960s. 5 houses and 60 years later (and a few re-upholsterings), it still looks and works as beautifully as ever. My brother will probably inherit it in a few years, then his kids; it will likely get another 60 years at least.

One of my friends has a kitchen table her great grandmother owned.

Neither of us (or our parents) are rich, but good, well made furniture used to be an investment. Now most furniture is disposable.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#353

Post by perilunar »

barnabee wrote: post #69
analogpixel wrote: post #29

I feel like AI has gotten to the point where the message is: If you want to make something (art/code/music/writing) you can do it for your own enjoyment, but you aren't allowed to make money from it anymore; only the large corporations can make money from content. If you do release something creative, it'll just be fed back into the machine to be copied over and over.

Needs to be inverted. Tax excess tech profits that derive from the efforts of others and use the proceeds to fund living artists. Vaguely analogous to levies on blank cassettes that went to offset piracy. Give the money directly to actual artists, not labels/publishers, though.

Don't tax profits (or incomes) at all. Tax land and resource use instead. And treat the knowledge that was used to train the AIs as one of those resources.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#354

Post by AnthonyMouse »

lelanthran wrote: post #345
pembrook wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using. Do you know their names?

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#355

Post by lelanthran »

acdha wrote: post #267
nunez wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost certain there is biblical-level astroturfing happening to make camp (1) much bigger than it really is. Otherwise, Schmidt wouldn't have drowned in a sea of boos at his commencement speech at UA.

I think there’s also a lot of people who haven’t quite realized what side they’re on. A ton of techies confused better than average pay with being part of the upper class and didn’t realize that the average CEO/VC views us roughly the same as the janitors except more expensive and less reliable. If you’re currently working at a stable tech job, it’s easy to focus on the cool things you can do and ignore how hungry th…

> I think there’s also a lot of people who haven’t quite realized what side they’re on. A ton of techies confused better than average pay with being part of the upper class and didn’t realize that the average CEO/VC views us roughly the same as the janitors except more expensive and less reliable.

For all those coders who claim "coding is the smallest part of s/ware dev", they're in for a rude awakening when they realise that while it may have been a small part, it was the part that lead to high salaries.

After all, anyone who wanted to be a business analyst (i.e. spec a solution and hand it off to someone else for coding) could have had that job ages ago, but they didn't because it pays so poorly (even more poorly when all coders are moving into that role too).

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#356

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nunez wrote: post #199
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'm almost certain there is biblical-level astroturfing happening to make camp (1) much bigger than it really is. Otherwise, Schmidt wouldn't have drowned in a sea of boos at his commencement speech at UA.

> Otherwise, Schmidt wouldn't have drowned in a sea of boos at his commencement speech at UA.

That's assuming both that the audience there was a representative sample of the general population and that ~50% of an audience can't generate a sea of boos. The second one in particular is certainly wrong.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#357

Post by lelanthran »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #354
lelanthran wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using. Do you know their names?

> Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using.

The person growing the food I get or the plumber installing a toilet never asked for attribution because it wasn't relevant to their pay.

> Do you know their names?

As a matter of fact, for things that require attribution, I do know their names. You do too!

Like the author of this blog post - his name is right there on the site.

Now, you may say "But I'm fine with laundering attribution", but that is no different from claiming that trademark law should be effectively nullified because you don't wear trademarked clothing.

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#358

Post by 28304283409234 »

bitwize wrote: post #297
marcus_holmes wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an interesting exception. The really rich people that I know of drive 10-year-old beaten-up Land Rovers, though. I think there's a nouveau-riche slice of folks who buy "luxury" cars thinking that they confer status. There are brands like this in every industry, that adopt all the pointers of "luxury" except actual quality.

There was a study sometime back that suggested most American millionaires live in homes of modest or at least unostentatious size and drive used cars of American make. These days it'd probably be of Japanese make, as Toyotas and Nissans are relatively cheap and last forever. Having a lot of money and showing the world that you have a lot of money are completely different goals. You'll be flat broke if you join an MLM…

> Toyotas and Nissans

You seem to have misspelled "Honda". ;-)

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#359

Post by varalaakshay »

WD-42 wrote: post #94
DeusExMachina wrote: post #27

I don't understand the endgame here. Websites let Google crawl their content in exchange of traffic. If Google cuts that out completely, what incentive do websites have to not block the Google crawlers? I understand that Google is feeling an existential threat from other AI products that provide answers directly. But they must also understand their symbiotic relationship with the web.

What I really don't understand is where the next generation of training material will come from. If websites stop being published and/or crawled, how will the machine continue to be fed.

[flagged]

Re: Google Declaring War on the Web

#360

Post by AnthonyMouse »

lelanthran wrote: post #357
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using. Do you know their names?

> Isn't that what organizations do in general? A person grows your food and installed the plumbing in your house and wrote a component of the web browser you're using. The person growing the food I get or the plumber installing a toilet never asked for attribution because it wasn't relevant to their pay. > Do you know their names? As a matter of fact, for things that require attribution, I do know their names. You do…

> The person growing the food I get or the plumber installing a toilet never asked for attribution because it wasn't relevant to their pay.

But it is though. If they do a good job then you could have customers wanting the same one again. You go to the grocery store and there is just a bin full of undifferentiated produce. Some days they're juicier than others. They came from different farms. But they don't even tell you when they switch from one to another, so how is a farmer who is doing a better job supposed to get more business or command higher prices?

> As a matter of fact, for things that require attribution, I do know their names. You do too!

Blogs include the author's name because they want to, not because they're required to. There are plenty of organizational ones that are published only in the name of the organization.

The thing that allows attribution to happen is the absence of a middle man. When you go to the farm shop at the farm itself then you get told the name of the family whose farm it is, but not when you go to Walmart. When you hire someone to build a walkway you see their face and learn their name; when the government hires them to build a sidewalk on your behalf they become a faceless abstraction.

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