UlyssesT [he/him] @ UlyssesT @hexbear.net

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3

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1,694

Joined

4 yr. ago

The wording of this question has a very narrow permitted window for an answer, but I'll say fuck "influencers" anyway. Entire concept should be rolled back like 20 years. Disc jockeys and similar precursors weren't quite so prone to being narcissistic kiddie creepers that were famous for being famous.

The cruelty truly is the point.

Bosnia can have 12 miles of coastline. As a treat.

"Communism doesn't work," says the enlightened centrists that conjure up an ephemeral version of capitalism that, like some exotic atom far down on the periodic table of elements, becomes "cronyism" almost instantly after it begins to exist.

"NOOOOOOOOOO LESS BLOODSUCKING GHOULS"

In this new era, it’s dangerous to get too rich. Stories abound of the state launching investigations against this business figure or that financier. The pressure is drying up venture capital funds, scaring the young away from lucrative professions such as investment banking. The number of millionaires leaving China has been rising and peaked last year at 15,000 — dwarfing the exodus from any other nation.

The private sector is in retreat.

I already said my part in the other reply I just gave and it also answers most of this post.

I will emphasize my first post in this thread: yes, LLMs are tools, and tools can be useful. I'd rather not give any inevitabilist arguments to the tool as if it requires special laissez-faire privileges that we don't grant to, say, internal combustion engines or nuclear power.

If it wasn't LLMs then it would just be something else.

Again, I'm not down with inevitabilism arguments. May as well say the Joad's house was going to get torn down somehow too.

If one believes nothing can or even should be done about destructive excesses of capitalism, where's the leftism part even begin?

There's nothing uniquely bad about AI

There actually is considering the jobs and consequent material conditions affected by it that were otherwise unaffected before its use. Just saying it's all the same sounds like downright drilposting.

The thing we need to be focusing on is how we structure our society to ensure that we're not using technology in ways that's harmful to us.

No shit. Same deal with CFCs, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and leaded gasoline. Saying "do nothing, it's inevitable and no different than anything before and it can't be helped" yet also "restructure society" is downright paradoxical to me here.

One more thing: you may want to look at the numbers for just how vastly extensive and wasteful current "AI" usage is among tech companies and how much more they intend to expand its use, whether people ask for it or not, pretty much everywhere.

If you haven't heard of the Jevons Paradox, it also helps explain why increasingly efficient gasoline engines haven't actually reduced overall carbon waste because more and more of those more efficient gasoline engines were used all the while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

In this case, I think we are going to see such improvements because there's a direct benefit to companies operating LLMs to save costs.

I'm not so sure, not when a lot of venture capital money often rides on grandiose promises to dazzle investors (including vague promises of nuclear fusion payback from a startup in four years in Microsoft's case)

There's no putting toothpaste back in the tube at this point.

Considering the already present socioeconomic consequences of this unregulated technology, from career/reputation threatening deepfaking to further working class precarity, saying "nothing can be done" in response to such harm sounds like tech inevitabilism to me. Should the same be argued about the worsening surveillance state (which is also being boosted with this technology)? Would it have been worthwhile to say nothing could be done about, say, CFCs, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, or leaded gasoline? Saying "this product is doing bad things but oh well it's already invented" is tiresome fatalism to me.

That's an important question if one doesn't want to be seen as the lesser of the two weevils.

Lots of efficiency improvements are possible for lots of tools but they often don't happen on a sufficiently large scale because of capitalism. It's why we have "just another lane, bro" stroads instead of viable mass transit across most of Burgerland, for example.

I highly doubt bazinga-Americans, from ruling class billionaires to their stans and glazers, are that interested in efficiency when they feverishly demand ascended techno-gods to emerge from sufficiently large treat printer databases. One such glazer is even in this thread, right now.

Why isn't Florida submerged here? Sheer boomer spite?

EDIT: Yes I know Arizona isn't shown to be directly affected by the map but let me have this.

I should have expected this outcome in this thread:

The treat printers are tools. Tools can be useful.

Tools can also be horrid when wielded (or stanned) by tools.

Keep in mind the staggering energy costs and carbon waste involved with the widespread use of this tool. When tools expect, even demand the tool to be used everywhere at an increasing rate, they're being especially horrid tools.