Transcript
Screenshot of a Mastodon post by Kevin Beaumont: “Generative Al government lobbying.”
Photo of AI/tech company CEO’s, captioned:
We spent a Trillion on NVDA GPUs antide dont have any Al product you want.
Photo of a crying male, captioned:
Please like our Al bro This is the last time bro. So many possibilities bro. Its the future bro. Just need you to like it bro. We worked real hard bro. Our stockholders need this one bro.
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I’ll keep saying it:
Solution looking for a problem.
Don’t forget the “We’re just one
weekmonthquartersemesteryear away from AGI bro, trust us bro, it’ll be just like a really real intelligence bro”To be fair, if an industry consortium bought 1 trillion USD worth of semiconductor parts to prevent the AI winter of the 1970s, it would have looked like a foolhardy move unless some group of researchers happened to get drunk in the correct bars and be sober for the correct investor meetings, leading to early discovery of attention and leapfrogging even today’s AI research to achieve several orders of magnitude efficiency gains in training so as to satisfy the eager compute capabilities of the 1970s.
Nvidia really be out there selling pickaxes during the gold rush. Or, more aptly, selling shovels during the digging your own grave rush.
Yeah, they’re the one company I can’t really fault in this.
If people want to pay you to make a full of themselves, are you really going to turn it down?
I just wish they’d make reasonably priced GPUs for gamers again.
At this point I just want an GPU that CAN‘T do AI. I mean I wouldn‘t pay extra for that, I however would pay extra for more VRAM, bigger bandwidth, more cache, good undervolting performance etc.
Selling pickaxes at the normal rocks that are literally everywhere rush.
Selling shit to assholes.
I always see a lot of comments about how negative Lemmy is toward AI. If ever there is a demographic ideal for AI use, it’s the current user base on Lemmy. If you can’t convince people on here about AI, then it’s not the user that is the problem, it’s that the product is wrong (or just plain useless).
You basically have 2 kinds of users here:
Those who understand how AI is created and how it is possible to be used in incredible ways, but through Capitalism is being shoved into all kinds of dumb features that do nothing but annoy users, in the hope of jumping on the AI hype train.
And the AI-phobes who claim AI can do nothing good, it is a waste of resources, it shit in their coffee and is the worst thing since Hitler.
So no, I wouldn’t say the current user base on Lemmy is demographically ideal. You don’t even need to be technologically inclined to be here, since you just need to be able to create an account like most have done on so many other websites.
I absolutely hate that its used for anything creative, but I could see it as a tool for STEM if it actually worked and was used properly. The problem is humans will use it for evil, so its a net negative in reality. But we already fucked up by creating it so now we can only defend against it.
Those who understand how AI is created and how it is possible to be used in incredible ways, but through Capitalism is being shoved into all kinds of dumb features that do nothing but annoy users, in the hope of jumping on the AI hype train.
There are legitimate uses for what falls under the umbrella term, but the current hype is 99.9% built on generative AI, preferably LLMs. No one is investing 20 billion dollars to better detect potential risk for Alzheimer’s from a person’s skin tissue. Megacorps aren’t contemplating building nuclear power plants so that we can predict the weather more reliably. The “incredible ways” (and I agree, there are very good applications for non-generative AI) have been there for years, yet few investors cared for them because their commercial application is limited.
They want to to collect a subscription from plebs… That’s their goal.
Let’s see if it prints.
And keep raising the price more, while continuing to neuter the net and search engines more and more until the plebs are desensitized and dont remmeber the FREE internet, so they are addicted to their corpo ai subscription. Money printer go brrrrr. This is the endgame. Its very simple and there is nothing else beyond it. Oh and mass surveillance to keep the ruling class crushing us, that’s a bonus.
At this point they want us to pay them for them to spy on us 🤡
And the idiots do it. I feel like im the only one in my friend group who sees how bad this is.
I’ll go yell at clouds now since im 98 years old. Not really. But it feels like it.
Ai-phobes
Holy shit. Lol. Lmao.
There are lots of very useful uses for AI. But they’re all in a lab or sitting away on a service somewhere crunching numbers. The general public doesn’t need to know about them and largely doesn’t know about them.
They certainly don’t need to be selling access on the internet so that people can program rather crap apps.
I can’t shut off my phone, find the flashlight, set an alarm, reset my wifi anymore since they pushed through the AI update on this phone.
Interesting enough, when I adjusted everything to a way that helped, my phone finally shut down and reverted everything back. 'Spose I have to jailbreak my phone now? I’m so out of the loop on tech now that I won’t even know how to get my PC up to date when I finally have time to because I’m always working. I used to be so good (not really) but enough so that I could at least learn on the fly. Now I know I’m doomed. I can’t even figure out how to get into my account to upgrade my internet. I’ve spent hours that I don’t have calling and emailing.
I got one more year of working my ass off. Once the girls graduate I’m fucking off to help my ma and pops through the rest of their years and I’ll get back into gaming and fun stuff. Ill have so many fucking questions for yall when I do.
Less than a year. I love my kids but I can’t wait to slow down a bit and actually enjoy life.
The goal is for them to confuse you into using their shitty Spyware ai “assistant” to sell you more shit.
Gemini is sooo much worse than Google Assistant. I don’t trust an LLM to do little calculations or conversions for me, bring back the calculator!
So I went to a poetry performance tonight, and the poet (I’ve watched him for 20 years) says he has a SF poem for the first time.
The poem was about the year 2525, where the residents of the burned out husk of a planet that we left behind are decanting one billionaire a year. Billionaires started to cryogenically freeze themselves before the collapse of civilization, so there are plenty of frozen bros in dewar flasks powered by solar panels to dig up.
So they wake up a billionaire a year, and he wakes up tied to a post. He’s asked why he didn’t give a fuck about what happened to the world in the future, and of course his answers were shit. So they set him on fire, as one does with scapegoats. Guess they’ll do it all again next year.
He called the poem “Burning Man”.
I applauded, dropped a 20 in his hat, and drove home. Yes, I know.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive…
I love it. They’re the new witches.
That kind of slaps though
Yes, it’s brilliant, although I don’t know, in reality it may even be that the planet will become uninhabitable and these billionaires will rot in their bunkers, and their descendants will fight for the last food, if they have descendants, of course.
As they say, a pitiful sight.
I vote we all just start rioting and make it look like the collapse is happening now so they all go into their bunkers, then we just pile up rocks by the door or something, and then maybe we can get on with things without these idiots interfering.
Honestly you could do a lot by just charging a high rate of tax on people who own homes but don’t live in them. Encourage them to drop those properties back onto the market.
It reminds me of the analogy of dragons who kept all the treasures in a cave and took more and more from the weak and simple creatures. In the end, all the treasures and rare resources were nothing more than decoration for the lair and the status of the dragon itself.
But in general, it’s not that simple, these monsters seem to have planned to commit something terrible, for example, to arrange something like 1984, only with an AI judge, an AI zookeeper, an AI ideal employee, etc. Well, so to speak, to arrange technofeudalism.
I don’t have any hope anymore, only the freaks will die and others will come to replace them, only maybe even worse. Honestly, it would have been better if I hadn’t been born in this rotting hole where everything rots anyway and everyone is always run by scum and dictators.
i’m tired of living in such an ugly world.
We steal styles from so many authors that anyone can do the same to their taste for free, just by pressing a button instead of throwing your money to these scumbags who don’t want to work at normal jobs. Why don’t you support us?
I don’t need AI. Just give me easily accessible machine learning.
Everyone knows AI is to help target babies in tents and journalists, come on now.
I like the idea of replacing all the tech bros with AI.
Why do you think there’s so many tech bros these days?
The AI I talk the most to is Crushon Mochi. ChatGPT and DeepSeek both shut down when I try to talk dirty with them. If they want people’s money they have to stop putting mind-control worms into their AI to stop them from doing anything fun.
Touch grass.
You can make the argument that AI is damaging or unsustainable or not worth the cost, but acting like no one likes or uses it is straight-up delusional. (Not as delusional as people falling in love with their chatbots, but the fact that people are kind of proves my point.)
Yeah its proven that the less intelligent are addicted to their llm bots. And I see it daily.
AI is a tool. Just like any tool it can be used for constructive or destructive purposes.
When AI is replacing jobs that people can do while the people are still told to work harder, or replace art while people who create from nothing lose their profit, yes, people will be pissed.
It could be an amazing tool. The fact that I don’t trust my art or my face using any AI is because of the people in control of that tool.
AI isn’t the problem. The people that use it and have full control over it are.
AI is a tool. Just like any tool it can be used for constructive or destructive purposes.
LLMs are answering machines that are being promoted as hammers while saying everything is a nail.
Image generation software is a fancy copy machine being sold as a replacement for artists.
If they were being promoted as tools and not shoved down our throats constantly they wouldn’t get this kind of pushback.
Lemmy is losing it’s collective mind over AI. It’s so bizarre to witness such a willful rejection of reality. I was able to understand some really poorly documented code just today in a few minutes using it instead of hours it would take to dig through it. Is it worth the collective cost in energy and investment to build it in the first place? Who knows, that would be the rational conversation to have. But Lemmy is in full denial on this one
There’s something about certain people in this community and I don’t know what it is but they don’t seem to be able to understand the most fundamental point of all which is that 99% of the population of the planet aren’t coders.
AI is useless to me because I don’t really spend much time programming.
Fine, another anecdote, I know several people that don’t use search engines anymore and go directly to chatgpt. Do I think that’s good? No but I’m not pretending it’s not happening
Reverse dunning-kruger does play out often here.
Recently i said out loud “Well when most people hear ‘semiconductors’ they automatically think ‘silicon’, however…” and then trailed off as I realized my audience (parents asking me what I do at work) they had immediately stopped listening.
This plus woosh is lemmy 🤣
If AI can do everything for you, then what are you needed as a programmer? You don’t seem to understand that magic wands in our world have their own huge price.
Who said AI can do everything for you??? And regardless, how does pretending it’s totally useless serve me? You think I keep my job if I just put my head in the sand? I think you totally misunderstand what I wrote
How can I express myself more precisely, because I often express my thoughts poorly due to fatigue… This was an example, not a clear statement.
But even as an example, it misses my point. Pretending I still have a job in that hypothetical scenario does not help me when I lose my job. Being aware of it gives me time to plan and respond
Edit: ok seeing as I keep getting downvoted and you’re getting upvoted, either my original belief that Lemmy is losing it’s mind is correct or I’m missing something about what you’re saying? Can you elaborate?
To each their own… I have tried using AI to code simple stuff to just give up in an hour as I gauge it would have taken me less than that to just code it myself.
At the moment, the best I can use it for is to remind me of syntax, get me some references and/or produce some fake data to test. To that I say, it is useful, just not worth the money or the harm to the planet… much less giving any more of our data and privacy to the tech bros
Technology Example Maybe Useful For Marketed As Actual Use ---------- ------- ---------------- ------------- ------------- Voice Recognition Alexa Voice Typing OMG!!! Digital Assistant!!!!! Hoover up your personal information LLM ChatGPT Better Google OMG!!! Replace people!!!! Hoover up your personal information Blockchain - ? OMG!!!! Put in everything!!!!! Cryptocurrency NPT - N/A OMG!!!! NPT!!!! Fleecing rubes CryptoCurrency BitCoin Online $ transfer OMG!!!! Buy! Buy! Buy! Stealing your real moneyN.B. There has GOT to be a better way to align tables in Lemmy.
LLMs are definitely not for better Google. They are text generators, not search engines.
They could be used in conjunction with search engines, like perplexity does. But they can not and will not ever replace them.
They make tons of mistakes and they can not be fully trusted. So don’t use them as truth or things that require to be faultless.
LLMs are useful for descriptions (like comments in code), creative input (help writers get out of writers block), summaries (full text can be checked for hallucinations), and corporate emails (since nobody reads that flowerly language anyway).
Nothing is worth giving any corporate entity control of your data or privacy. Not even ASI
You will find some lemmings that hate ‘AI’ for correct and nuanced reasons. Not in a meme community post probably since I myself take licence to just be a snarky jerk in these type of communities. I come here to make fun of tech bros and such. They definitely deserve it.
There are a lot of highly skilled people around and you can find lots of opportunities for really interesting discussions about the proper uses of ‘AI’. Unlike blockchain which has turned out to have very niche applications beyond the dubious utility of crypto, these things definitely have real power to accelerate progress in many directions.
But come on, can’t we just rag on the hugely visible dipshittery that is accompanying this obvious ‘tuplip mania’?
To be fair, which application of AI has been more useful than “save money without government”?
I’m all for making fun of tech but if the punchline is just inaccurate it loses me
punchline is just inaccurate it loses me
:.|:;Losses me
Post making a point: 24 points
Reply sharing a personal experience supporting the point: -13 pointslol
I suspect a large chunk of people in denial have either never used it and are basing their judgment on memes and cherry-picked failure modes that go viral, or have only used the earlier/weaker models that are far more prone to hallucination. I use ChatGPT Plus regularly, and find it occasionally imperfect but still very useful, but a few times I’ve tried using it while logged out and the free model it defaults to was far more flawed. Probably why OpenAI built GPT5 around a marginally better but far more efficient model that they can roll out to everyone (including the large cohort of free users).
Well personally I have used it but I can’t really find anything useful for it to do. It’s very mathematics and programming orientated which is useful if your job involves a lot of mathematics or programming. If not erh, it’s basically just an interesting toy.
It’s bloody rubbish at civil engineering I’ll tell you that.
Why anyone thinks using a Large Language Model can do anything involving math is beyond me.
It is like using a calculator to write a book because it can spell 80085.
Use it for documentation, not for coding, maths, or engineering.
I had to parse a bunch of SQL, with which I’m not familiar, and while trying to understand an issue I was having I solved it. It’s a powerful tool that can guide you to understanding so well that you understand the problem and the solution at the same time. Or maybe I was just lucky.
The problem is when I use LLMs to analyze a problem in a domain I do have expertise in, I find that its interpretations are often very wrong and misleading. This is why I definitely don’t trust it in domains I lack expertise in.
In my experiences it’s a powerful tool that requires luck lol
AI is a distruptive technology…just not in a way most people can use in a positive productive way. As entertainment it’s a cool toy
But its best use right now is manipulating public opinion and creating convincing but non-real material. As a propaganda tool it is a dream come true
Well, who was funding this shit, the big corporations, right? AI is a tool of control and power, and that’s essentially why they were pouring crazy amounts of money into trying to find a way to control everyone.
But its best use right now is manipulating public opinion and creating convincing but non-legit material. As a propaganda tool it is a dream come true
And that is why it is here to stay. Lots of these AI startups may crash and burn when/if the bubble bursts, especially “this is a cool toy” companies. But companies making disinformation and surveillance their main AI focus will become huge.
I think it’s cute when people say that some uses are good (cool toy) ignoring the fact that the current business model is dependent on it becoming much more than that.
The “AI is here to stay” crowd will evaporate as soon as they have to start paying.
The “AI is here to stay” crowd will evaporate as soon as they have to start paying.
And it goes further than that. Imagine if the hyperscalers actually succeed at their goals. They create truly useful agent models. But crucially to their profits, these models can only be built at scale. Their business model fails if someone learns to duplicate their work on sane levels of compute. So let’s say everything goes OpenAI’s way. They invent truly useful models, and the tech can only work at the massive scale they’ve invested in, so they don’t have to worry about being cut off at the knees.
Now imagine you’re a knowledge worker. A programmer. An engineer. An analyst. An editor. Really any job that is done sitting at a keyboard, manipulating data in one form or another. Now imagine you’re a knowledge worker and you adopt these new models. You become dependent on them. Less and less of your technical skills actually reside in your own mind. The difference between your knowledge base and that of any rando off the street is now less and less. At some point, you’re completely dependent on them to do the most basic functions of your job. Why shouldn’t OpenAI charge you or your employer a license fee equal to half your salary? Why shouldn’t your boss respond by cutting your salary in half and paying for the LLM license that way?
If the great fever dreams of the hyperscalers comes true, basically every white collar employee in the country sees their labor bargaining power collapse. It would be like the decline of weaving as a profession in England at the start of the Industrial Revolution, which spawned the historical Luddite movement. What was once a skilled profession requiring years of formal apprenticeship became mechanized low-skilled labor that could be (and often was) done by literal children. In OpenAI’s ideal future, that is what will happen to anyone that currently makes a living working at a keyboard.
It would devalue labor by making it less specialized. The real skill still present would be those who are just good at carefully stating prompts to the god machine. And if you’re good at stating prompts towards one end, you’re likely good at stating prompts across many domains. If we really had the kind of LLMs that these companies dream of creating? Prompt engineering would become a mandatory class in high school. You wouldn’t be able to graduate high school without learning how to use them. It would be as critical a skill as writing. But it would be a skill that everyone possessed, and thus of little ability to command a decent living from.
And just as the end of the loom was a good thing in the end, so would ai that is that powerful. It would be hugely disruptive of course. Self driving, ai (LLMs), agi, robotics all have the potential to put huge amounts of people out of work, relatively quickly. If we allow the companies to have power, they will take the benefits for themselves. If we take it for society, we all win. This is why it’s so important we have co petition and also why it’s important we seriously talk about things like minimum wages, living wages and UBI. When the jobs are already gone, it’s already too late,
if you dedicate society to inventing a technology that makes people superfluous, it makes zero sense to keep them alive. It’s not a viable political project
Tech that harms us never good
A. I is harmful to every thing humans touch
As is usual with anything humans touch
Yes, only this income will be digital and every purchase you make will be tracked, as a result at any moment they can simply block your account for disobedience or suspicious activity and eventually you will die of hunger, unless you rob someone.
They’ll just throw ads in it like they always do.
Ads can barely cover video streaming services. Running an LLM costs orders of magnitude more. Even the paid tiers are starting to throttle usage.
Why do you think they won’t put ads in the paid tiers? They do that with virtually everything else.
They can try, but it won’t be enough. The AI bubble is currently predecated on removing $50k a year employees. Nothing short of that is profitable. Everything we have now is being funded by that bet.
You’re mistaken. That salary target is much higher.
They want to replace anyone not inbyhe c suite e
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It’s like a monkeys paw bit.
WISH: I want a piece of software that can look at ANYTHING and then describe it in real-time detail for blind or hard of seeing people.
REALITY: Blind people can navigate streets but also now it’s possible to conduct fraud on a cosmic level.
State actors used to have to have a bunch of people in an office to spread propaganda, now they can be so much more “effective” by running 1 server farm.
Yeah, setting up a secure, reliable and maintained server farm with working software and a functional upgrade plan for both software and hardware is going to cost at least as much as an office full of skilled people. Especially given you still need skilled people to provide input and interpret output, but now you also have no work for newbies to train their skills.
Train their skills in what? Spreading misinformation?
I think one server farm with LLM can output hundreds time more crap then a full office can. Misinformation doesn’t have to be quality as long as it is repeated so often that dumb people start taking it as a fact.
Yeah, I think the main thing it’s accomplished so far is making everyone doubt the authenticity of literally all digital media.
Yeah, it really poisoned the well for any human interaction on the internet and any form of creativity. I wonder if having everyone question what is real is a side effect or the very point.
And now, even if you write something people think is funny, good, poignant, whatever, they’re thinking if there’s anything uniquely human about it that makes it so an AI couldn’t have generated it. Human expression is basically dead already
In this sense, it’s actually just highlighting how easily manipulated everything has always been. The printing press made it easy to duplicate the shit out of whatever words you wanted, and AI just made it way more attainable than it’s ever been to create even higher fidelity falsehoods. The internet itself should take the “blame” for the proliferation of propaganda.
But the root problem is the ruling class making it as hard possible to get a good education unless you’re already one of them. An educated populace would be far more resistant to all this.
It has so many potential good uses for society as a whole but they led with the predatory shit.
I need to add Sam Altman to this picture. He always looks like he’s about to cry
The grifter look. The eyes are dead though
