These developments have stoked concerns about the amount of money big tech companies have been investing in AI models and data centers, and raised alarm that the U.S. is not leading the sector as much as previously believed.
The sad reality is that the US could lead in this field (1), if we'd stop routinely putting narcissists and con artists in charge and showering them with praise even when they fail.
From https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/nvidia-falls-10percent-in-premarket-trading-as-chinas-deepseek-triggers-global-tech-sell-off.html
[#]AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #SnakeOil #hype #grift #MarketCapitalism
(1) Putting aside whether we should, which is an important question.
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@theluddite@assemblag.es Here's another one for the 💩 pile https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00182-6
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"No one supposes that a computer simulation of a storm will leave us all wet, or a computer simulation of a fire is likely to burn the house down. Why on earth would anyone in his right mind suppose a computer simulation of mental processes actually had mental processes?"
--John Searle
[#]AGI #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI
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I don't really have words: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/238
H.R.238 - To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can qualify as a practitioner eligible to prescribe drugs if authorized by the State involved and approved, cleared, or authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, and for other purposes.
Besides the fact that computer programs are incapable of doing this (1), attempting to make medical choices for a person based on "data" is the same category of wrong thinking as phrenology, a discredited pseudoscience. (2)
[#]AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #FDA
(1) See Joseph Weizenbaum, from 1976, Computer Power and Human Reason
(2) Phrenology isn't just about reading bumps on people's heads. It rests on the unjustifiable and destructive worldview that you can tell what matters about a person by taking external measurements, in this case about their intellect using only features of the skull. That works on machines like cars, but human beings are not machines.
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I blocked someone on #LinkedIn for the first time today. They seemed to think it was OK to insult people who had a different opinion about a certain notorious person's controversial arm gesture. I've blocked a few people on the fediverse recently for similar reasons, or for being so drunk on anti-DEI they were impervious to reason. I imagine we'll be seeing more of this.
I'm far from a civility advocate, and think we need to have challenging and uncomfortable conversations sometimes. But this knee-jerk culture war stuff is thought-terminating, which is the last thing we need right now.
[#]USPol
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One good reason to think that generative AI is about labor discipline: Larry Summers is on the OpenAI board ( https://fortune.com/2023/11/22/larry-summers-named-board-openai-sam-altman-return-ceo-ai/ ; note the threatening headline) . In his public speaking Larry Summers is the walking embodiment of austerity economics. He bangs the labor discipline drum at every opportunity. Just one well-known example from 2022: https://fortune.com/2022/06/21/larry-summers-calls-for-high-unemployment-to-curb-inflation/
5 years at 6% unemployment or 1 year at 10%: That’s what Larry Summers says we’ll need to defeat inflation
This is coded economist-speak for: we need to force a bunch of people who currently have jobs to be fired or laid off, and keep them in that state for 1-5 years, in order to achieve an economic goal. That is the essence of austerity economics and labor discipline.
Never mind that more honest economists have identified corporate markups as the primary driver of inflation, which immediately implies that forcing people out of work would worsen inflation, not reduce it. Summers knows this, or at least has access to this research. But he's an austerity ideologue.
So. Why is this person, who has no background in artificial intelligence, on the board of a company that claims to be building artificial general intelligence? In what universe does that make any sense? Well, it makes perfect sense in the universe where one of the goals for OpenAI's technology is enhanced labor discipline. Larry Summers has a track record and professional network for achieving exactly that; he'd know how to further that mission and knows the powerful people best-situated to help.
[#]AGI #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LaborDiscipline #Capitalism #labor #austrity
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If would be interesting to see the overlap between
(a) Sectors where unionization activity and other labor unrest has appeared; and
(b) Sectors where the AI maniacs are claiming AI will soon take over jobs
My suspicion is that one of the functions of generative AI is labor discipline: frighten workers so that they stop making demands of employers for fear of losing their jobs or benefits. Labor discipline is a well-documented strategy the powers that be have been using for at least a century for exactly this purpose. Clara Mattei's excellent book and articles on this subject, which I think make this case incontrovertibly.
I don't think it's coincidental that there is so much enthusiasm for generative AI among powerful state and corporate actors despite a corresponding dislike and fear of it among working class folks: that's a common pattern in labor disciplining policies and is how they function. I also don't think it's coincidental that the generative AI rhetoric, and the latest hype cycle, kicked off in the wake of COVID-related state interventions: as Mattei argues, austerity policies are consciously brought to bear on behalf of wealthy capitalists whenever the state is forced by circumstances to take actions benefiting workers. The recent historic rise in unionization activity was met with mass layoffs (read: labor discipline), a rise in interest rates (read: financial pain inflicted on the non-wealthy) and attempts to "cool off" the economy (read: force a bunch of people to become unemployed, another labor disciplining tool). I think generative AI is, in part, an attempt to squash hope and force workers to be docile again through fear and acquiescence, which again is a labor disciplining strategy Mattei has documented is consciously brought to bear by the powers that be.
Therefore it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that (a) is nearly identical to (b), or contained within it.
[#]AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #labor #LaborDiscipline #austerity
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"Fascism is the best mode of government for capitalism."
--Clara Mattei
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They're shoving this stuff in our faces the way they shove ads in our faces, against our wishes and with no clear benefit to us. We don't need to accept either, and both are quite dangerous.
Ads are part of the surveillance apparatus and also function to commodify everything while stripping people of self esteem. What's AI's draw for the powers that be, do you think?
[#]google #gemini #ai #GenAI #GenerativeAI #NoAI #uBlockOrigin #BlockTheAI
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Regarding the last boost (Google activating and opting people into Gemini AI features in gmail), I've found uBlock Origin does a good job hiding all the obnoxious AI boxs and nudges and icons. Install the extension, right click the offending element, and choose "Block element". The uBlock Origin user interface is pretty self explanatory as far as setting up new filters goes. There's a Preview button that lets you see if your new filter really is getting rid of the thing. You can click Pick to try selecting a slightly larger context to get rid of something.
[#]google #gemini #ai #NoAI #uBlockOrigin #BlockTheAI
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An interesting read regarding recent changes at the Washington Post.
I was reminded of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man yesterday. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
This results in a "one-dimensional" universe of thought and behavior, in which aptitude and ability for critical thought and oppositional behavior wither away.
[#]WashingtonPost #press #media #democracy
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@theluddite@assemblag.es
I love that you dropped Marcuse in this thread: https://old.lemmy.world/post/24331912
It has me thinking that yet another way to conceptualize generative AI is as a collection of self-service repressive sublimation machines. 404 Media has had some pretty good coverage of the depraved stuff people have been doing with generative AI. They have a special focus on nudify apps.
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Absolutely bizarre that a company publicly claiming to be on the verge of making one of the most remarkable advances in computer science in generations--artificial general intelligence--is adding bog standard features present in every calendaring app or productivity suite for decades. I'm reading this as an indication of where they are: trying to make what they currently have "sticky" to improve their DAU/MAU numbers because they don't anticipate their actual product, LLMs, will achieve that.
ChatGPT now lets you schedule reminders and recurring tasks: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/14/chatgpt-now-lets-you-schedule-reminders-and-recurring-tasks
[#]AGI #AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #GPT #ChatGPT #OpenAI #LLM
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Among other things, I think generative AI and the culture around it is establishing a permission structure that forgives being sloppy, especially when it comes to software development. It's not the only instance of that, but it's becoming widespread.
Ordinarily, we believe that at least some of the problems we solve with software are difficult, requiring thought, study, research, and care. Not all problems are this way, but some are, and people who write software encounter them. Generative AI provides the illusion that these problems no longer require care. We can sloppily describe the problem to ChatGPT, Copilot, or some similar tool, it spits out sloppy code, and we sloppily verify that the code does more or less what we want. Depending on the context we're in, that might be perceived as adequate, even if the code doesn't work. The permission structure allows us to be forgiven: it's not our fault that our generated code didn't work, that's just part of the job. In a different context/structure, we would be critiqued for choosing to use a subpar method for solving the problem.
[#]AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #tech #dev #SoftwareDevelopment #software
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An interesting cultural challenge is how to develop a science fiction that is not co-optable by the sort of person who thinks the torment nexus is a profitable business venture.
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One of these days I'm going to spend some quality time with Braess's paradox. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox :
Anyway, it's one of these situations where local optimizations lead to poorer-than-necessary global outcomes. I'm always interested in those (Nash vs. Pareto)
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How to delete your Facebook account and take your data with you
I can't vouch for this, and it's dated Aug 21, 2023. However, I've seen it reposted by Popular Science and I thought I'd share.
With Meta apparently deciding that AI-infused 4chan is their new social media model, it might be time to consider leaving the platform if that's a possibility for you.
[#]Meta #Facebook #Delete #SocialMedia #AISlop
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I left a virtual machine with a desktop environment running by mistake. Usually I pause them unless I'm actively using them, but this time I forgot one. All day I've been hearing notification sounds but have been unable, till now, to figure out what was causing them.
[#]linux #virtual #TheMatrix
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I'm not sure how I got to this point in my life without knowing about the at command, but now that I know about the at command I will be abusing the at command.
[#]Linux #CLI
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Brain scanning, HCI, and neural implants hyped as the "future of work", improving efficiency, and so on: resist all of it with every fiber of your being, because if we don't we won't have any beings left to speak of.
These technologies are none of those things. They are, instead, an attempt to enclose the psyche, one of the last large wellsprings of unexploited value left. See, for instance, https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-enclosure-of-the-human-psyche
Think through what that'd look like: in order to be paid a living wage--in other words, in order to live--you would be forced to surrender all your private thought to a corporation, and by extension one or more governments. At that point you'd cease to be an individual person: psychologically, private space is necessary to develop fully as a human being. You would instead become some sort of appendage, as independent of your company and government as your fingernail is from you. Is that really worth having cooler video games or whatever kind of cookies such tech might bring?
[#]tech #dev #FutureOfWork #HCI #NeuralInterfaces
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