News updates on the development and ramifications of AI. Obvious header joke is obvious.
Used Copilot at work today as a starter for a thing I want to produce and, no shit, got a word-for-word regurgitation of an article from a firm that sells the thing I want to produce. I laughed so hard.
I also read the title of this thread tonight as The AI Threat.
Prederick wrote:More from today's Garbage Day newsletter -
Both The Atlantic and Vox announced this week that they’ve signed licensing deals with OpenAI. An official statement from Vox described the deal as an agreement that “recognizes the value of our work and intellectual property, while opening it up to new audiences and better informing the public.”
Meanwhile, The Washington Post has launched some weird AI summary widget at the top of their articles. Ah, yes, instead of reading a story that was, at least, in theory, written to be read and enjoyed by human beings, wouldn’t it be much easier to click on a link that takes you to paywalled story, pay the money to access it, and then click on a button called “summarize” to read three bullet points a machine generated for you?
Look, we all know this is a dead end. It’s so obvious that this is going to be disastrous mess that we don’t even need to waste the space arguing it. Plus, according to a study released by The Reuters Institute this week, most people are only use generative-AI services about once or twice a month. Only about 7% of American responders said that they’re using ChatGPT on a daily basis. So publishers can’t even make the argument that they’re “meeting readers where they are,” like they did with Facebook 15 years ago.
But even funnier, as Big Technology’s Alex Kantrowitz noticed, according to Vox’s press release about the partnership, ChatGPT’s growth has possibly been completely flat for almost a year and a half. Speaking of flat…
Unsurprisingly the actual writers at Vox were blindsided by this announcement and the union is less then thrilled in that very polite way they have to be:
I have the feeling that the Atlantic and Vox deals are an ex posto facto way for OpenAI to prevent themselves being sued.
Like they've already strip mined their content, now they have permission to have done so.
Hilarious that Vox bosses didn't think to engage with the union first. Clearly their first rodeo working with a union!
I'm imagining the conference call where the GPT deal is about to be approved:
"What stakeholdering did we do on this?"
"Huh?"
"This deals with content created by our journalists who are unionized. Did we talk to the union?"
"Uh..."
Execs thinking through a decision? Hah! Not likely.
I don't think they didn't think to, I think they don't care and feel like they can steamroll them.
It would not be the first time, it will not be the last.
Remap Radio has a good discussion about the Vox deal and broader implications of AI getting into everything.
tldr
Their read is that the execs who make these decisions believe everything is so f*cked that they are going to take short term deals like this to squeeze something out just before total collapse.
Also an insight that the execs who make these decisions seem to resent their dependence on creative and analytical subordinates, so are seeking to replace those people and cement their own value.
Also an insight that the execs who make these decisions seem to resent their dependence on creative and analytical subordinates, so are seeking to replace those people and cement their own value.
This is excruciatingly clear across so many fields.
MrDeVil909 wrote:Also an insight that the execs who make these decisions seem to resent their dependence on creative and analytical subordinates, so are seeking to replace those people and cement their own value.
This is excruciatingly clear across so many fields.
Yup as someone I watch said. Doesn't matter if ai art is worse then human made art. Doesn't matter if it's more expensive. Cutting out the people involved gives the execs more power. And that's everything.
A company without customers has no power.
That's why you form a monopoly first, then lock in your users, then your business customers, then you ensh*tify.
That's why you form a monopoly first, then lock in your users, then your business customers, then you ensh*tify.
That's why you form a monopoly first, then lock in your users, then your business customers, then you ensh*tify.
A customer without a job has no money to spend on your monopoly.
Mixolyde wrote:That's why you form a monopoly first, then lock in your users, then your business customers, then you ensh*tify.
A customer without a job has no money to spend on your monopoly.
That’s when you sell everything to private equity and let them strip it for parts.
A former coworker who is a big time libertarian and bitcoin believer once was complete flummoxed when I told him the end goal of capitalism is to automate and/or robotizes everything so as to not have any or very little human capital. Note that it wasn’t that aspect that was the issue it was me asking him and then what do you do with all the people who aren’t working?
A former coworker who is a big time libertarian and bitcoin believer once was complete flummoxed when I told him the end goal of capitalism is to automate and/or robotizes everything so as to not have any or very little human capital. Note that it wasn’t that aspect that was the issue it was me asking him and then what do you do with all the people who aren’t working?
"I'll be dead by then and it'll be someone else's problem."
Every capitalist. Ever.
kazar wrote:Mixolyde wrote:That's why you form a monopoly first, then lock in your users, then your business customers, then you ensh*tify.
A customer without a job has no money to spend on your monopoly.
That’s when you sell everything to private equity and let them strip it for parts.
A former coworker who is a big time libertarian and bitcoin believer once was complete flummoxed when I told him the end goal of capitalism is to automate and/or robotizes everything so as to not have any or very little human capital. Note that it wasn’t that aspect that was the issue it was me asking him and then what do you do with all the people who aren’t working?
That is when capitalism turns into socialism. Once you have enough tech where everyone has food, shelter and heath care with no need of human effort, you end up with a moneyless system. it is kind of how the Star Trek system evolved.
TheGameguru wrote:A former coworker who is a big time libertarian and bitcoin believer once was complete flummoxed when I told him the end goal of capitalism is to automate and/or robotizes everything so as to not have any or very little human capital. Note that it wasn’t that aspect that was the issue it was me asking him and then what do you do with all the people who aren’t working?
That is when capitalism turns into socialism. Once you have enough tech where everyone has food, shelter and heath care with no need of human effort, you end up with a moneyless system. it is kind of how the Star Trek system evolved.
"We're definitely in the Star Trek timeline and not the Time Machine timeline." -- Future Morlock
In the Star Trek timeline, capitalism doesn't turn into socialism. Capitalism *destroys* the world, and Vulcan helps the survivors build a socialist society. So we can technically still be on the Star Trek timeline, just not the good part of it. Capitalism never turns into socialism, it only turns into worse and worse versions of capitalism.
The tech bros will never be the Vulcans.
The Vulcans overcame their own turmoil before becoming the advanced race that humanity meets. Trek utopia apparently only comes after a dark age.
Vulcan's oppressed humanity, not elevated it. This was mentioned many times on ST:ENT. Capitalism kind of destroyed the world, but the history in ST is vague on the details. WWIII was rooted in the eugenics wars where genetically engineered humans felt themselves to be superior to the rest of humanity and wanted to rule them. The reasons for eugenics was certainly rooted in capitalism but capitalism wasn't the reason for the war.
But it wasn't until after humans invented warp travel and were able to use antimatter to create an abundance of energy that things turned around. The Vulcan's are credited to making the world form a world government leading to world wide peace, but it was the technology that removed scarcity which allowed a moneyless society to exist.
I haven't read this book, so I can't comment on it in detail, but going over the wikipedia article on it, Trekonomics, it looks like it is trying to describe my point. As we develop technologies including robotics and AI, we will move away from scarcity being a problem and then money would hold no value. So those big time ultra rich executives will suddenly find themselves with piles and piles of money that nobody will want or use anymore. So the capitalist society will chase these technologies with dollar signs in their eyes only to lead us to a point where we give up money and capitalism fizzles out.
This is an optimistic view, it could go many other ways, such as the complete destruction of all life on the planet, but sometimes we need a bit of optimism.
WWIII was rooted in the eugenics wars where genetically engineered humans felt themselves to be superior to the rest of humanity and wanted to rule them.
That's pretty much describes every Longtermism techbro out there. None of them are interested in removing scarcity, they want to artificially increase it.
The very nature of capitalism means that you have to create scarcity even if it’s artificial. There is no scenario where something can happen to negate that. Capitalism will move towards collusion to protect scarcity and profit.
Also, government currencies will always have value as long as they force you to pay taxes in that currency. Otherwise, how else would a government provision itself and acquire labor? Even if there were no scarcity of food and energy, how would you get people to work jobs for the government without paying them in a currency that you taxed back.
At Computex, NVIDIA is jumping ahead and announcing every upcoming AI silicon that they've got a codename for, as if they're worried AI announcements won't be as impactful a year from now.
What you’re seeing in this screenshot is me searching Google for info on resizing instances of Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud SQL databases, and the Google search AI is presenting me with links to a different cloud hosting provider’s service of the same name.
Then at the bottom in the real search results, you see Google’s Cloud SQL link (albeit the MySQL link, bleh)
My original search had more detail than just “cloud sql resize”, so I simplified the search to see if it was just a weird edge case I was hitting, but this simpler search still had the AI returning Brightbox links.
(Searching for only “cloud sql” gives you a page without AI results, elevating the Google link to the top spot)
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