Technology

I'm glad I dont know who he is and I will continue to not know him.

These days it seems like the internet is more pleasant the less influencers you know, and most aren't worth knowing any further about.

I think the past where people's awareness of public figures was much more distant was a healthier time. Like knowing the famous athlete or actor, but nothing further about their lives and not feeling like "you know them" because they called our your username or liked your comment and not being able to send them a direct message.

5 decade club reporting 🫡 and I'm tired too.

"If it bleeds, it leads." Drama leads to clicks, clicks lead to advertising, advertising = money. Same ol' story, its just super easy now with the internet.

For what he's trying to do, it's not even a horrible use-case. But as someone is a ready to go to the mat on fact checking, he's definitely not anywhere near arduous enough about it.

He's not treating it like aunt marge. You wouldn't make a tv show around finding out truth, then go ask your aunt Marge and not follow up on her answers.

AI for general information gives you approximate directions at best, maybe you got a wikipedia page and maybe you're reading 297 regurgitations of some asshole that didn't know what the fuck he was talking about on reddit who got reposted over and over.

But when I get fixated on something, I want the correct answer. I'd hate to learn the wrong answer and repeat it to someone - I've done that before and I hate it. That's why I avoid AI on principle. I want the right answer and AI won't give that to me about things I know about so I won't trust it on things I don't know about.

It must feel godlike to manifest your will simply by speaking it. I can understand why that would addict people. This is exactly why they are pushing it so hard - they know it has this effect, people will demand it, they will fight for it. They will give over their enterprise and their personal lives to it, the way a drug or gambling addict gives over everything they have to it.

With that kind of impact - especially early on, before people realize they’ve been taken - they can build enough momentum to corner all compute.

No longer can we gather or organize without our names attached, without our intent scanned and analyzed, our location tracked, or our wallets closed. We will have to drink our verification cans, and we will have to be nice to Trump, or else they will see what you wrote on your iPad Cloud or your Google Pixel Light and then they will debank you, like waking up from the Matrix. “Go woke and go broke” was always a premonition about control.

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better

I'm on your side, but replace AI or social media with "meth" in your argument and see how that logic works. (Becoming easily addicted to something vs. avoiding something [because using it would rapidly become addictive])

He seems fairly prone to ego stroking, which internet goers would typically label as narcissistic.

Kind of the target audience for the sycophant machine

This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don't hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn't understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.

I don't judge him for wrestling with it. I'm sad for him. I'm sad for a lot of us. We're all working in a system that's slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.

I don't think that we should lose hope, but the future can't look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn't be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.

Agreed, this is new technology for everybody, we're allowed growing pains.

Thanks for linking that. I wonder how long he's been using it for. I feel like I noticed at uptick lately in just how saccharine his writing and worldview was getting

Had to Google AMOC?

Oh right, it's the famous Gulf Stream we rely on and are all worried about of late. Am in Ireland...