What OpenAI and similar companies want to achieve is for us to literally let them think for us with their AI, for them to “think” the ideas for us, reason for us, make the decisions for us, and be the creative and intellectual engine of humanity. “For world domination?”, no, just for profit.
They want to make us dependent on their services so they can then charge us a fortune for their regurgitated ideas. Cuz at this moment the only way to make insane amounts of profit is to take away form us all that we want and need. Our labor, our attention, our reasoning, Everything.
"Welcome, My son.
Welcome to The Machine
What did you dream?
It’s alright,
We Told You What To Dream"
I used chatgpt only for a month after it’s release. Then never used it
That’s the way 👏
Someone pointed out that capitalism loves subscriptions and rentals. They can sell you a widget, sure, but then they only get money once. If they can rent you a widget, then they get money forever.
AI is a path for rent skills to people. You don’t need to learn to write python or learn Spanish. Just pay for LLM access. Rent the skill.
It is extremely dystopian.
Unfortunately, most people don’t care about much of anything. You could tell them, with undeniable proof, that every AI search kills a puppy, and most people would be like “well puppies die anyway and I always use Google, so…”
That would be the case if corporations owned all the LLMs. However, it is possible to run open weights LLMs locally on your one hardware.
It’s possible to buy music, too, but most people rent it from spotify. Most people aren’t going to do the comparably hard thing of setting up their own LLM.
And even if they did run their own well tuned, ethical, LLM to write letters for them, that still leaves us with the problem of “people aren’t developing core skills like writing”
Here’s a fun question: Do you own the music you buy on a CD? Or is the CD just the license to listen to music that belongs legally to someone else?
Depends on what you mean by “own”.
Buying the CD has a key difference from Spotify in that no one can (typically) take the cd away from you. Music disappears from Spotify all the time. You can also (typically) copy it to other storage. And, most relevant to the topic of rent vs buy, you just pay for it once and you’re done. No subscription, no ads. That stuff is important to me.
You can’t usually take music you got from a CD and put it in your movie, for example, but that’s a whole conversation about fair use and copyright.
I understand completely but your argument is more medium based than ownership based, that was my only real point.
Rent the Skill for sure. If this is the skill you are expected to be an expert or at least experienced you would avoid it as much as possible to avoid being dependent.
This has been happening LONG before AI. AI is just the newest version of it
It’s also not the first or only 21st century technology that is or was waaaaaaaaay overhyped.
First it was the Blockchain
Then it was the Cloud
Now it’s Artificial Stupidity.
Dunno, “the cloud” is still a thing. It’s basically normal operation to use cloud servers from Amazon or Microsoft or whatever. Everyone is using Google’s Cloud to store their private photos and emails and appointments and contacts.
And with Google’s integration of AI into search and phones, Microsoft’s integration of AI into Windows and just the sheer volume of porn you can produce, AI is also here to stay, whether we like it or not. Not to mention the legitimate uses in science.
And it’s not like AI is getting any worse. We can do stuff with it that was simply unthinkable merely ten years ago. Give it another ten years and it will be almost perfect.
That’s why the reference to the 1975 Pink Floyd song “Welcome to the Machine”.
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I’m a moderate user for code. LLMs are not smart, they’re pattern machines. Anyone who cedes critical thinking to them without due diligence, gets what they deserve, and likely didn’t really have much in the way of critical thought in the first place.
These companies are all trying to figure out how to monetize their latest juked benchmark stat and create something with actual value equivalent to the billions in investment they’ve thrown into processing. The industry is awash in startups dong the same thing 90000 ways. Human lust for money and power is the most nefarious thing about it all.
Yes. That is the Theil model for social engineering. To do it via suggestion in AI.
Bot responses so trends are assumed where there are none. Movements even.
Suggest one answer or idea over another with ChatBots.
No longer do you have to search through enshittified Google, just tap the AI at the top to find the answer for you.
But why did the AI choose that answer, for you?
I have never used AI lol. Why do people fear monger AI like it’s some thing you are forced to use.
And nvm. I’ll make my Alexa speaker fart sometimes or ask it about the weather. But I’ve never used chatgpt, I ignore the Google AI description nonsense. You literally don’t need AI like everyone keeps saying.
Many people are being forced to use it though — this is where much of the ire is coming from. These people are likely in the minority though. Something that’s much more concerning though is the use of AI that affects us, but we don’t get a say: doctors being made to use generative AI transcription tools (which perform worse than established audio transcription software that doesn’t use AI). The people pushing doctors to use AI are doing it to wring more productivity out of them — more patients in less time. This means that even if a patient doesn’t end up with AI hallucinations in their medical records, their experience seeing their doctor will likely be worse.
Cases like this are becoming less niche as time progresses, despite mounting research showing the harms of these technologies when they’re applied in this way. Increasingly we are being put into situations where AI tools aren’t something to be used by us (which is something you can often opt out of), but things to be used on us. We don’t find out until something goes wrong, and when it does, regular people can struggle to challenge the situation (the example coming to mind here is false positives in facial recognition systems being used by the police. It is leading to more innocent people being wrongfully arrested)
Good to know, pal! I’ve never used the AI either, never relied on it and never will, never asked it anything…
But my mother has. And my sister. And my sister’s friend. And my sister’s friend’s daughter. My coworkers use AI. My friends use AI. Some of my favorite content creators use AI. I’ve seen a lot more people talk about how they use AI to do mundane things that wouldn’t take them 2 minutes to think about, communiques for the neighborhood meeting, student speeches, Mourning messages…
I’ve read endless news stories of companies laying off 70% of their workforce to replace them with AI. I’ve seen endless articles talking about how people use AI as a therapist, as a replacement for friends and partners, as a replacement for human relationships…
I’ve seen hundreds of morons belittling the work of talented artists saying that “Why are you wasting your time with that? AI makes you something better in less than a minute”…
So, yes. neither you nor I make use of AI, we are not part of the circus. But everyone around us is. And that, whether we want it or not, splashes on us.
Anytime you use YouTube, you’re using AI. Anytime you use a web browser that gives you ‘search suggestions’, you’re using AI. Those are just two very simple examples. You’re sorely mistaken if you think AI isn’t being forced upon you every single day.
We don’t, but that isn’t stopping anyone from shoving it down our throats. I.e Google and Facebook, for starters.
