Meta and Mark Zuckerberg must not be allowed to shape the next era of humanity

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/04/mark-zuckerberg-meta-facebook-ai-future-accountability

by rntn • 2 years ago

40 30 2 years ago

theguardian.com

huytersd5• 2 years ago

Better the zuck than Elon.

fsflover4• 2 years ago

Why?

huytersd5• 2 years ago

I’m a single issue “voter”. All I care about is racist ideology and Elon has plenty.

moritzwarhier• 2 years ago

Why do you see the comment section on this article as a vote between the two?

Two wrongs don't make one right. The article/comment provides plenty of facts about Meta worthy of discussion, no?

diamondfist25• 2 years ago

Way better Elon than zuck

mpalmer• 2 years ago

Yeah...in the same way a self driving Tesla driving toward a cliff edge is better than a determined human. It's more likely to mess up and avert disaster, but it's pointing in the same direction.

_xg3b• 2 years ago

Well, it's not like I side with tech bros.

But tech bros seem to be the only ones that have an actual vision of the future.

MBA bros, Finance Bros, Academic Bros & Politics bros seem to have a very elitist static plan for the future. They seldom welcome nor foster any "disruption".

There is a misconception that scientific/academic community is a group for fostering new idea & allowing them to develop.

But what I learned was that scientific Communities are very conformist and often hostile to new ideas that wander far away from the grain. Almost every scientist I have studied has gone through a passage of ridicule.

Most recently, Katalin Kariko one whose work was instrumental in developing one of the COVID vaccines (mRNA). Listen to her short story here https://josephnoelwalker.com/147-katalin-kariko/ ( she also has published a biography you can read).

Anyways my concern is that alot of people complaining today are really spinless. It's fashionable to go after 'soft targets' like tech bros.

And be almost quite when it comes to people that are doing very serious blatant evil. We forget about XXX who uses NSO's software P*** to literary dismember innocent an innocent journalist with a bow saw.

But some how people don't complain about that. Our problem seems to be some guy that runs an app that allows people to watch twerk videos. And the bow saw entities are simply doing "cybersecurity"? And no one ever mentions or even knows the CEOs of companies that makes drones which bomb apartments occupied with innocent civilians?

Towaway692• 2 years ago

One difference between academics and tech bros is their motivation. Tech bros tend to be motivated by profit even if that happens in the long term, academics tend to be motivated by discovery and improving existing ideas.

This might well have changed in a publish or die focused academic world but it used to be different.

odiroot2• 2 years ago

Why only focus on Zuckerberg? There're more important players in the game.

But I guess that's to be expected from Guardian.

iancmceachern2• 2 years ago

Who would you list?

odiroot2• 2 years ago

On the AI side, OpenAI, naturally. On the social networking side, obviously, Twitter.

bdcravens• 2 years ago

Jobs and Gates shaped the current era. If not Zuck (or Musk, or whoever), it'll be someone. We rely too much on "big ideas" to return to a time free of those influences.

ncr1002• 2 years ago

Shaping through the offering of technologies, bridging our focus to a new reality from where we have currently settled.

Who is more trustworthy?

EduardoBautista• 2 years ago

The company’s platforms have been used to fuel the spread of terrorism and violent extremism, mass violence and online harassment.

Why don't people criticize ISPs for spreading these through their infrastructure? Or criticize Apple and Google for allowing people to use their products to achieve similar goals?

I really want to see congress grill the CEOs of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. "What do you mean HTTPS? So you don't know? Unbelievable..."

justinsaccount• 2 years ago

Infrastructure does not have an algorithm or "recommendations" that decide what you see.

It's the same reason people don't criticize the power company for allowing people to use their products.

Towaway692• 2 years ago

If an person with a weapon drives down a road to inflict evil, should the company who made the road be responsible? The company that made the car? Or the company that made the weapon?

ISPs are too generalised to be responsible for what goes over their wires. If they were, then they would face all sorts of legal problems, everything from spam emails to Phishing to ransomware attacks. Not to mention CC and identity theft.

ncr1002• 2 years ago

Maybe yes.

Gun manufacturers are being sued, some successfully, https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/15/us/sandy-hook-shooting-settle... for marketing's role in certain wrongful deaths.

goethes_kind• 2 years ago

The way I read this article it's an old guard of elite trying to warn you about the new guard of elite. The Guardian is bitter that real news does now flow through mainstream publications like theirs anymore, and they and their ilk are relegated to publishing sponsored opinion pieces. And then they accuse Facebook of the same, but at least on Facebook you can still find a variety of different sponsored opinions instead of just one.

At the end of the day, it's almost tautological that you wouldn't want to have any elite at all determining the future, because they won't have your best interests in mind. Duh! But I don't think that is possible, at least not with the current maturity of our social institutions. And as max_ said, these "tech bros" are the only ones with a vision and building something.

pbiggar• 2 years ago

Another area not discussed in the article is Meta's (especially on IG) suppression of Palestinian content. They're not alone in this of the social media companies, but they are the most aggressive.

This means that Meta, and realistically one person, Mark Zuckerberg, is able to have massive impact on even the conversations people are having.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-face...

Zababa• 2 years ago

What about all the good things Facebook has done for us? Why don't we ever see articles about that?

ViktorRay• 2 years ago

This is a pretty terrible article.

It talks about a lot of the bad things that Meta has done.

But it offers zero meaningful substantive ideas of how Meta and Mark Zuckerberg “must not be allowed” to do with AI.

Honestly the whole thing seems like a stream of consciousness rage post. The kind you would see on random tech forums back in the day when those still existed.

Also isn’t Meta and Mark planning to open source a lot of their AI work? Is the author saying that open source ai shouldn’t be allowed? Is the author saying anything at all?

Hmmm

NotGMan• 2 years ago

The Guardian must not be allowed to shape the next era of humanity

denverllc• 2 years ago

The company’s platforms have been used to fuel the spread of terrorism and violent extremism, mass violence and online harassment. Meta’s core products – Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp – enable human trafficking, drug trafficking and the illegal wildlife trade, along with the proliferation of child sexual abuse material and child exploitation. People use Meta’s social media and messaging platforms to spread propaganda, disinformation and information warfare, undermining the integrity of our information ecosystems and elections around the world.

I count about 14 claims in this paragraph alone and no context, argument, or justification for why it’s true.

This article seems to be a gish gallop: make claim after claim of how Facebook is the cause of all the world’s ills with little justification until the last paragraph, where you conclude by saying that Zuckerberg shouldn’t be able to do something that nobody was suggesting they do.

Meta and Mark Zuckerberg must not be allowed to shape the next era of humanity

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