People of influence and authority could not care less whether AI or any other tech is liked or popular. They care about whether the tech will bring them power and money.
That's it. Power and money. Sycophants can always be bought.
It's not that I fear a dystopian future, a cyberpunk shit fest would be cooler than where we are headed. What I fear and see happening is a lame future. All of today's tech is stupid, works like shit, and for the most part is crappier and rage inducing compared to its analog predecessors. Windows sucks, apple stuff sucks, the internet is barely usable compared to even a decade ago, audio quality sucks, movies are CGI cartoons, everything isn't scary, it's just damn lame.
“The users feel used.” says it all. I am so tired of being frustrated by technology that tries to get me to do what it wants instead of what I want. I don’t want a “newsfeed” that pretends to be tailored for me, I want news: direct, straight, factual news. Bring back the teletype: facts, events, real occurrences.
Why can’t the “tech bros” see this? Lord Acton explained: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Once again, a small number of owners with sharply delineated and asserted property rights —this time the A.I. elite — are extracting value from owners with weaker property rights — artists and consumers with no control over their data — then synthesizing it into new value, and selling it. I guarantee no one is using proprietary LLMs without strict controls, and paying in some way. And (almost) none of them are being developed to be given away for free. A meat grinder is being assembled. What goes in is taken without permission, what comes out is sold and resold, lining the pockets of tech bros with adolescent power fantasies. (Whatever Sam Altman’s skill set is, he is absolutely NOT qualified to render judgment on humanity and decide how society should evolve.)
News, media, art, and many other fields are going to be steamrolled. Standing in the way of this is not Luddism. We are not opting for the internal combustion engine over horse-drawn carriages. This is something totally different.
And Ted is right to remind tech leaders that they can’t just get away with this vampirism. There are more of us than them. Cynicism rules until people discover their power.
This maybe the “basket of deplorables” moment for Big Tech when the everyday people who fill their days with providing food and shelter and fun for their families realize en masse what the Titans really think of them and get so effing pissed off that they drop everything they are doing and go scorched earth on the vapid clueless bimbos who believe they know what’s best for us.
Tech companies are taking cues from private equity: sell everything not bolted to the floor, force existing customers to pay more for less, shed workers so those that remain have to do more with less, and don't spend anything on improvements... grind it all down to the last penny, dump everything, and head on to the next quick fix leaving a trail of chaos and broken dreams behind.
I know this might be a little out in the weeds, but I’d be grateful to hear your thoughts on some of the philosophical underpinnings of current tech culture. Especially “longtermerism” and “transhumanism.”
It feels like the moral universe these folks are operating in is fundamentally different than most of ours. Moments like the one you describe at SXSW look like the clash starting to get real.
It’s not a coincidence that culture declines as these values define the technologies we live by more and more. I like some of the tech. But I’m on team human.
Its less about "fears of runaway AI" and more that we're all expected to embrace this technology that, at the same time, we're being told, will replace us in our careers. Tech bros are actually smiling at us while telling us we won't have a way to make income. Particularly in the creative professions. AI seems intent on replacing artists, animators, singers, musicians, actors, not to mention the whole production industry. These are jobs that people enjoy doing. Why take them away? It just seems like another idea - like derivatives or the republican party - by a bunch of psychopaths intent on making the world a worse place.
Thanks to the last 15 years of Silicon Valley driven "disruption", one could argue that the future depicted in 80s and 90s CyberPunk is already here.
But without all the cool cyberware and implants. All we got was video-phones with flat-screens and a society where only a handful of powerful mega-corporations fight for dominance in a polluted hellscape where almost all non-human life has already been wiped out.
We have become distrustful not just of Tech, but of Leaders, because the default Model for Human Leadership is now Narcissism. In true Narcissists fashion, they make us feel good at first, only to later abuse us. Our every action and word is viewed only through lens of offense and corruption while we are harrassed by these Narcissists to 'think of others'... others meaning them , and only them -
and their Tech will do no less. Tech will serve only those who program it. If Narcissists are in Power, all things will serve them...
Thank you! I feel like that’s a very accurate description of my disdain of technology. I started out in the software industry in the mid 90s and it was mind blowing. Now, it’s mind destroying.
My thoughts exactly Ted. What we have seen of AI so far displays very little Intelligence and whole lot of artificiality.
Moving aside the awful ethics of how large learning models have been 'trained' on the work of artists for the sole purposes of making more money for the bros in silicon Valley and beyond, I'd like to offer this
thought:
40,000 years ago when the first modern humans migrated to europe they endured some of the harshest survival conditions imaginable.
At some point they looked up to the heavens and began to dream of things beyond their understanding. In the act of conceiving, thinking and creating art such as the magnificent animals on the cave walls of Chavet, or the Ice age lion man carved from a single piece of mammoth Ivory, these incrediblec acts of creation MUST have expanded their minds and played a very significant part in the development of human intelligence.
Fast forward 40,000 years and the rise of AI has the potential to send us all (in some cases willingly!) back to the same caves we escaped from.. but this time the dream is more of a nightmare.
We need more booing.
People of influence and authority could not care less whether AI or any other tech is liked or popular. They care about whether the tech will bring them power and money.
That's it. Power and money. Sycophants can always be bought.
It's not that I fear a dystopian future, a cyberpunk shit fest would be cooler than where we are headed. What I fear and see happening is a lame future. All of today's tech is stupid, works like shit, and for the most part is crappier and rage inducing compared to its analog predecessors. Windows sucks, apple stuff sucks, the internet is barely usable compared to even a decade ago, audio quality sucks, movies are CGI cartoons, everything isn't scary, it's just damn lame.
“The users feel used.” says it all. I am so tired of being frustrated by technology that tries to get me to do what it wants instead of what I want. I don’t want a “newsfeed” that pretends to be tailored for me, I want news: direct, straight, factual news. Bring back the teletype: facts, events, real occurrences.
Why can’t the “tech bros” see this? Lord Acton explained: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I doubt there’s ever been a moment in my lifetime where the rift between the managerial class and the workers has ever been larger
Ted is spot on.
Once again, a small number of owners with sharply delineated and asserted property rights —this time the A.I. elite — are extracting value from owners with weaker property rights — artists and consumers with no control over their data — then synthesizing it into new value, and selling it. I guarantee no one is using proprietary LLMs without strict controls, and paying in some way. And (almost) none of them are being developed to be given away for free. A meat grinder is being assembled. What goes in is taken without permission, what comes out is sold and resold, lining the pockets of tech bros with adolescent power fantasies. (Whatever Sam Altman’s skill set is, he is absolutely NOT qualified to render judgment on humanity and decide how society should evolve.)
News, media, art, and many other fields are going to be steamrolled. Standing in the way of this is not Luddism. We are not opting for the internal combustion engine over horse-drawn carriages. This is something totally different.
And Ted is right to remind tech leaders that they can’t just get away with this vampirism. There are more of us than them. Cynicism rules until people discover their power.
It is the enshittification of the Internet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification.
This maybe the “basket of deplorables” moment for Big Tech when the everyday people who fill their days with providing food and shelter and fun for their families realize en masse what the Titans really think of them and get so effing pissed off that they drop everything they are doing and go scorched earth on the vapid clueless bimbos who believe they know what’s best for us.
Tech companies are taking cues from private equity: sell everything not bolted to the floor, force existing customers to pay more for less, shed workers so those that remain have to do more with less, and don't spend anything on improvements... grind it all down to the last penny, dump everything, and head on to the next quick fix leaving a trail of chaos and broken dreams behind.
I know this might be a little out in the weeds, but I’d be grateful to hear your thoughts on some of the philosophical underpinnings of current tech culture. Especially “longtermerism” and “transhumanism.”
It feels like the moral universe these folks are operating in is fundamentally different than most of ours. Moments like the one you describe at SXSW look like the clash starting to get real.
It’s not a coincidence that culture declines as these values define the technologies we live by more and more. I like some of the tech. But I’m on team human.
...a.i. art is boring...
Its less about "fears of runaway AI" and more that we're all expected to embrace this technology that, at the same time, we're being told, will replace us in our careers. Tech bros are actually smiling at us while telling us we won't have a way to make income. Particularly in the creative professions. AI seems intent on replacing artists, animators, singers, musicians, actors, not to mention the whole production industry. These are jobs that people enjoy doing. Why take them away? It just seems like another idea - like derivatives or the republican party - by a bunch of psychopaths intent on making the world a worse place.
Thanks to the last 15 years of Silicon Valley driven "disruption", one could argue that the future depicted in 80s and 90s CyberPunk is already here.
But without all the cool cyberware and implants. All we got was video-phones with flat-screens and a society where only a handful of powerful mega-corporations fight for dominance in a polluted hellscape where almost all non-human life has already been wiped out.
We have become distrustful not just of Tech, but of Leaders, because the default Model for Human Leadership is now Narcissism. In true Narcissists fashion, they make us feel good at first, only to later abuse us. Our every action and word is viewed only through lens of offense and corruption while we are harrassed by these Narcissists to 'think of others'... others meaning them , and only them -
and their Tech will do no less. Tech will serve only those who program it. If Narcissists are in Power, all things will serve them...
depose Narcissists.
Thank you! I feel like that’s a very accurate description of my disdain of technology. I started out in the software industry in the mid 90s and it was mind blowing. Now, it’s mind destroying.
My thoughts exactly Ted. What we have seen of AI so far displays very little Intelligence and whole lot of artificiality.
Moving aside the awful ethics of how large learning models have been 'trained' on the work of artists for the sole purposes of making more money for the bros in silicon Valley and beyond, I'd like to offer this
thought:
40,000 years ago when the first modern humans migrated to europe they endured some of the harshest survival conditions imaginable.
At some point they looked up to the heavens and began to dream of things beyond their understanding. In the act of conceiving, thinking and creating art such as the magnificent animals on the cave walls of Chavet, or the Ice age lion man carved from a single piece of mammoth Ivory, these incrediblec acts of creation MUST have expanded their minds and played a very significant part in the development of human intelligence.
Fast forward 40,000 years and the rise of AI has the potential to send us all (in some cases willingly!) back to the same caves we escaped from.. but this time the dream is more of a nightmare.