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AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

chrbutler.com

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Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#91

Post by jrochkind1 »

I'd like more people to talk about AI and surveillance. I think that is going to be one of it's biggest impacts on society(ies).

We are a decade or two in to having massive video coverage, such that you are probably on someone's camera much of your day in the world, and video feeds that are increasingly cloud hosted.

But nobody could possibly watch all that video. Even cameras specifically controlled by the police, it had already outstripped the ability to have humans monitoring it. At best you could refer to it when you had reason to think there'd be something on it, and even that was hugely expensive to human time.

Enter AI. "Find where Joe Schmoe was at 3:30pm yesterday and show me the video" "Give me a written summary of all the cars which crossed into the city from east to west yesterday afternoon." "Give me the names of everyone who entered the convenience store at 2323 Monument St last week." "Give me a written summary of Sue Brown's known activities in November."

The total surveillance society is coming.

I think it will be the biggest impact AI has on society in retrospect. I, for one, am not looking forward to it.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#92

Post by brailsafe »

m463 wrote: post #64
Dilettante_ wrote: post #26

My experience with AI in the design context tends to reflect what I think is generally true about AI in the workplace: the smaller the use case, the larger the gain. This might be the money quote, encapsulating the difference between people who say their work benefits from LLMs and those who don't. Expecting it to one-shot your entire module will leave you disappointed, using it for code completion, generating docume…

> frees you up from a lot of little trivial distractions. I think one huge issue in my life has been: getting started If AI helps with this, I think it is worth it . Even if getting started is incorrect, it sparks outrage and an "I'll fix this" momentum.

> If AI helps with this, I think it is worth it.

Worth what? I probably agree, the greenfield rote mechanical tasks of putting together something like a basic interface, somewhat thorough unit tests, or a basic state container that maps to a complicated typed endpoint are things I'd procrastinate on or would otherwise drain my energy before I get started.

But that real tangible value does need to have an agreeable *price* and *cost* depending on the context. For me, that price ceiling depends on how often and to what extent it's able to contribute to generating maximum overall value, but in terms of personal economic value (the proportion of my fixed time I'm spending on which work), if it's on an upward trend of practical utility, that means I'm actually increasing the proportion of dull tasks I'm spending my time on... potentially.

Kind of like how having a car makes it so comfortable and easy and ostensibly fast to get somewhere for an individual—theoretically freeing up time to do all kinds of other activities—that some people justify endless amounts of debt to acquire them, allowing the parameters of where they're willing to live to shift further and further to the point where nearly all of their free time, energy, and money is spent on driving, all of their kids depend on driving, and society accepts it as an unavoidable necessity; all the deaths, environmental damage, side-effects of decreased physical activity and increased stress along for the ride. Likewise how various chat platforms tried to make communication so friction-less that I actually now want to exchange messages with people far less than ever before, effectively a foot gun

Maybe America is once again demolishing its cities so they can plow through a freeway, and before we know it, every city will be Dallas, and every road will be like commuting between San Jose to anywhere else—metaphorically of course, but also literally in the case of infrastructure build— when will it be too late to realize that we should have just accepted the tiny bit of hardship of walking to the grocery store.

------

All of that might be a bit excessive lol, but I guess we'll find out

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#93

Post by judahmeek »

m463 wrote: post #64
Dilettante_ wrote: post #26

My experience with AI in the design context tends to reflect what I think is generally true about AI in the workplace: the smaller the use case, the larger the gain. This might be the money quote, encapsulating the difference between people who say their work benefits from LLMs and those who don't. Expecting it to one-shot your entire module will leave you disappointed, using it for code completion, generating docume…

> frees you up from a lot of little trivial distractions. I think one huge issue in my life has been: getting started If AI helps with this, I think it is worth it . Even if getting started is incorrect, it sparks outrage and an "I'll fix this" momentum.

If? Shouldn't you know by now whether AI does or doesn't help with that? ;D

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#94

Post by sfgvvxsfccdd »

oblio wrote: post #77
redorb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think chatGPT itself is an epic product, Cursor has insane growth and usage. I also think they are both over-hyped, have too much a valuation.

I agree with everyone else, where is the Microsoft Office competitor created by 2 geeks in a garage with Claude Code? Where is the Exchange replacement created by a company of 20 people? There are many really lucrative markets that need a fresh approach, and AI doesn't seem to have caused a huge explosion of new software created by upstarts. Or am I missing something? Where are the consumer facing software apps devel…

> Office…Exchange

The challenge in competing with these products is not code. The challenge competing in lucrative markets that need a fresh approach is also generally not code. So I’m not sure that is a good metric to evaluate LLMs for code generation.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#95

Post by akomtu »

w_for_wumbo wrote: post #59

This is what I wonder to, what is the end game? Advance technology so that we can have anything that we want, whenever we want it. Fly to distant galaxies. Increase the options available to us and our offspring. But ultimately, what will we gain from that? Is it to say that we did it or is it for the pleasure of the process? If it's for pleasure, then why have we made our processes so miserable for everyone involved?…

If things were left to their own devices, the end game would a civilization like stroggos: the remaining humans will choose to fuse with machines, as it would give them an advantage. The first tactical step will be to nudge people to give up more and more agency to AI companions. I doubt this future will materialise, though.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#97

Post by scottlamb »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #91

I'd like more people to talk about AI and surveillance. I think that is going to be one of it's biggest impacts on society(ies). We are a decade or two in to having massive video coverage, such that you are probably on someone's camera much of your day in the world, and video feeds that are increasingly cloud hosted. But nobody could possibly watch all that video. Even cameras specifically controlled by the police, i…

I think you're describing technology that has existed for 15+ years and is already pretty accurate. It's not even necessarily "AI"/ML. For example, I think OpenALPR (automated license plate recognition) is all "classical" computer vision. The most accurate facial/gait/etc. recognition is most likely ML-based with a state-of-the-art model, admittedly, and perhaps the threshold of accuracy for large-scale usefulness was only crossed recently.

The guard rails IMHO are not technological but who owns the cameras/video storage backend, when/if a warrant is needed, and the criteria for granting one.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#98

Post by alganet »

sfgvvxsfccdd wrote: post #94
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everyone else, where is the Microsoft Office competitor created by 2 geeks in a garage with Claude Code? Where is the Exchange replacement created by a company of 20 people? There are many really lucrative markets that need a fresh approach, and AI doesn't seem to have caused a huge explosion of new software created by upstarts. Or am I missing something? Where are the consumer facing software apps devel…

> Office…Exchange The challenge in competing with these products is not code. The challenge competing in lucrative markets that need a fresh approach is also generally not code. So I’m not sure that is a good metric to evaluate LLMs for code generation.

We had upstarts in the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s and the 2010s. Some game, some website, some social network, some mobile app that blew up. We had many. Not funded by billions.

So, where is that in the 2020s?

Yes, code is a detail (ideas too). It's a platform. It positions itself as the new thing. Does that platform allow upstarts? Or does it consolidate power?

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#99

Post by ambicapter »

verdverm wrote: post #34
ihaveajob wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you could share something about custom agents. I love Claude Code and I'm trying to get it into more places in my workflow, so ideas like that would probably be useful.

I've been using Google ADK to create custom agents (fantastic SDK). With subagents and A2A generally, you should be able to hook any of them into your preferred agentic interface

I’m struggling to see how somebody who’s looking for inspiration in using agents in their coding workflow would glean any value from this comment.

Re: AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

#100

Post by ambicapter »

m463 wrote: post #64
Dilettante_ wrote: post #26

My experience with AI in the design context tends to reflect what I think is generally true about AI in the workplace: the smaller the use case, the larger the gain. This might be the money quote, encapsulating the difference between people who say their work benefits from LLMs and those who don't. Expecting it to one-shot your entire module will leave you disappointed, using it for code completion, generating docume…

> frees you up from a lot of little trivial distractions. I think one huge issue in my life has been: getting started If AI helps with this, I think it is worth it . Even if getting started is incorrect, it sparks outrage and an "I'll fix this" momentum.

I think AI is “worth it” in that sense as long as it stays free :D
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