Yea, this.

I’d say that whether it’s a big deal is up to what people expect and want. The issue I was citing is that Fedi drama often involves, IMO, a disconnect between what the Fedi offers and what people expect.

Fediverse drama! Even if there is a kernel of truth behind it, the drama around it is always dumber than it should be. IMO a symptom of people wanting control over things as consumers that they simply don’t and never will if they remain consumers. A bit of an insidious trap the Fedi lays for people.

Sighs … writes like a bad AI apocalypse sci fi.

Yea I hear. We’ll see I guess.

Personally, I’m seeing much more falling in line instincts than anything else and fear that any “shock” and reaction is confined to bubbles without any solid culture and infrastructure to break out into any sort of effective movement.

It’s about the trend and the motives of those with power.

Ten years ago everyone was very surprised that an AI managed to beat the best human at Go, a board game. I don’t think anyone really saw that coming. There’s evidence that some with insight didn’t see it coming at all.

At that time, no one was talking about the current state that we’re in now. So what happens in 2036. And the next generation?

Unless you presume that the human mind is special and impossible to duplicate in important ways, I think there’s a clear set of possibilities here that need to be taken seriously. Sci-fi has been for decades, because they’re that obvious frankly. That the current AI is being over-sold and promised by its backers is basically meaningless. That an AI can write convincingly, even if only for a few pages, and couldn’t do so 5-10 years ago. That’s huge.

I don’t entirely disagree. I’d add that whatever other options there are, they involve skills, values and perspectives that are unpracticed and atrophied in modern western culture (and likely globally) to the point that that is its own problem.

What strikes me about the present moment is that it feels like particularly bad timing.

I’m not so sure that technological developments follow a well defined path and like to think about what alternative timelines would look like, especially with humanity being better prepared for them.

For instance, I’ve figured for a long time that the internet was a few decades earlier than it should have been for our social and political development. Probably TV too.

AI just feels 100s of years too early. Like we’re only just getting to grips with post-capitalism and climate change as ideas let alone problems we can solve.

To be honest, this moment was always coming or is yet to come for anti-AI folks.

The real issue isn’t whether it’s good or bad. The reason it’s such a hot thing is because generally it’s good enough to get people interested. And that’s very unlikely to go away.

Too interested? Sure.

But machines that are better than people at something people value about themselves. That’s where we’re heading if we’re not there already.

Which unlocks a massive question: What kind of world do you want to live in and how much are you willing to do to maintain it? Just about everything else is no longer a given. Not our value or importance, not our position at the top of the food chain, not our democracy or wealth, or the continuous growth of capitalism, or even our continued existence.

We’re basically at the beginning of an AI apocalypse movie. You can’t presume that you know the ending. You have to figure out how you want it to end. And not just for you, but your children and grandchildren children. Cuz it’s all at stake now.

Yea, like the matrix, the Internet is now an intrinsically dangerous place where anyone is potentially some highly capable AI with potentially very malicious intent.

Yea, this “data at the edge” approach, not “on the wire” Is interesting to me and makes sense.

Basically regressing on the convenience/power of the internet because it just isn’t safe and easy anymore and for anything personal that isn’t a server -> many users, yoi basically ain’t gonna need it.

What does self hosting look like in a world full of malicious AI agents?

I’m thinking of this post/thread from Veronica explains, where she explains that her hosted services are accessible only locally because tbe security headache isn’t worth it: https://explains.social/@veronica/statuses/01KWJCGV27JVBHP21E2JNWDBFH

As someone who doesn’t self-host but could and would want to, the state of AI has basically scared me off.

I mean … is the singularity a good thing? I’ve never delved into whatever discourse there is around the idea, but it seems strange the way it’s treated as a necessary good. Fanatical even.

Almost like it’s the only way to continue to feel ecstatic about technology the more one uses and builds it. So anyone unable to let go of the “magic” feeling needs to cling to the dream of the singularity when they could, you know, “touch grass” and accept being human.

Thank you!!

I haven’t read the essay, just your extracts.

But I wanted to highlight the possibility of an “automation” (AI, autopilot, robots etc) that are capable of responding in the flexible ways we value about our own minds. Because it can lead to an even greater exile from our world, and personally I think its likelihood is being dangerously dismissed and ignored.

Before any AI apocalypse scenario materialises, one in which truly intelligent automation works well could very well occur. And it would leave little to no room for human participation. A plane that doesn’t even have a cockpit, if you will. A car without a steering wheel. A tech stack that is just alien to humans. Yes, “ideally” we’d be much freer from drudgery and able to pursue happier lives. But there’d be a trade off I think, and no longer being true members of our own society seems to me the start of it.

Thanks again for the essay!

Yea.

Frankly, it may be the core of my anti-AI stance (in the short term) - that it will inevitably make technology inhospitable to humans, uninhabitable and incomprehensible too.

I read a few reactions from security types on the barrage of security issues that came out from AI firms, earlier this year. And the overall sentiment was to lean into using AI more to keep up with AI security discoveries. To go faster and faster and ride the AI more and more.

Which completely amounts to turning our tech over to AI and resigning as “supervisors” who won’t be able to navigate and understand the tech on their own anymore, not because of a lack of skills as many talk about, but simply because they didn’t build it and the process that did build it didn’t do it with humans in mind. Which then becomes a downward spiral with a positive feedback loop leading a mass of technology that just doesn’t need humans any more or is at least uninhabitable for us.

It wasn’t long ago that people lamented not being able to repair their own cars, and computers too. Old fashioned maybe, but I suspect it’s a value system worth evaluating rather seriously.

(edited because my original reply was uselessly mean)

Wow … nice to see!

I’m pretty sure a major problem with AI is that people don’t know how to talk about the actual problem.

It’s mega-corps replacing people while “stealing” their intellectual output. It’s a reshaping of the “social contract”. It’s those making bank quickly pushing the whole world in a direction that may just be a really bad idea (like we’re no longer in control of our own world/lives at all).

It poses the question: is all tech progress good or is it sometimes “bad” such that we actually want to design our own fate and sometimes just be comfortable with what we have and what we are?

Does this whole post-industrial revolution world need techno-hype to be happy? Or can we collectively just touch grass and settle a bit more.

More “Software brain” BS. Sure, many/most people are unthinkingly consumeristic. But it’s been a weird few decades for the tech industry where a lot of its ideas have been taken up as “the inevitable future”. There’s no guarantee that that relationship between the population and the industry holds, and the industry sure is full of people that have only lived in that bubble in time.

Cue the pirates of the Caribbean scene/ where captain Barbosa tells you you’re “in one”

You best start believing dystopian sci-fi stories, you’re in one

My hot take is that mainstream software technology hasn’t worked out how to be useful enough to be good in education and is now currupyrd by get rich quick start up mentalities, when really it needs the kind of open ended research that created the PC in the 60s & 70s.

Generally speaking, in a Bret Victor kind of way, enhancing human thinking behaviours and practices just feels like a purpose that has been left behind, probably since web and big data took over.

What do you think has changed in a year?

My take would be that many average office workers are pretty accepting of being told what to do, and are being told to use AI, and that the technology is more or less sticking the landing, at least enough to get used.