moshun

What makes you think they’d restrict this to logged in accounts? Not so long ago, Meta got caught building “ghost” social media profiles for people who didn’t have accounts on their platforms. They essentially constructed a “missing puzzle piece” based on people this person knew who did have profiles in publicly available information. Building a psychosocial profile on a user who has not set up an account yet using AI would be trivial.

Easy solve! Have Scout hammer the page every two minutes and send you an email, text and Amber Alert when it’s back up! Welcome to Hell ™

Not the person you asked, but my nephews and mentees (all under 18), very plainly see it as the destruction of their own future careers (regardless of field), assimilation of everything meaningful humans have ever created into a copy machine , massive privacy violations, wrecking the environment and generally run by some of the biggest sociopaths in human history. When looking at it practically over the last few years, I think a lot of younger folk don’t see any upsides.

I’m very pro-AI myself, but think the kids are quite right in their perspective, and that the tech companies designing and pushing this tech are in for a bad time when this wave finally comes crashing down on them.

They’re probably concerned about political blowback once civilian centers and infrastructure starts getting leveled.

Unwavering allegiance to the current head of state seems to be the only technical qualification required for one party in the US. Being thoroughly mentally unfit or profoundly incapable of functioning in the role you’re being paid for seems to be a little consequence now.

Which leads us to a FEMA director in charge of disaster response for the country believing that he was “teleported” not to the moon or some cool spaceship. But to a goddamn Waffle House (against his will).

I think you’re dramatically overestimating how many sane adults would want to mod a top 100 Subreddit for free. It’s a job that generally only attracts the very dedicated, the very bored and/or those who’ve figured out how to monetize it.

Gen AI is not known for diversity of thought.

I don’t know if you’re joking, but that’s pretty clearly exactly what they’re going to do. Take a look at the new terms of service. They released this morning, this whole app has just been weaponized against political and dissidents.

Agree with a lot that you’re saying here but with a rather large asterisk (*). I think that ecosystems like YT are useless to the wider web and collective tech stack unless those innovations become open (which Alphabet has a vested interest in preventing).

If YT shut down tomorrow morning, we’d see in a heartbeat why considering them a net benefit in their current form is folly. It is inherently transitory if one group controls it.

The OP article is correct about the problem, but is proposing throwing mugs of coffee on a forest fire.

Given the rapidly diminishing quality of discourse on the open internet the last decade or so, I understand.

I recently restricted comments on my blog or 15 years to existing subscribers only. It took me a while to accept that after removing the random spam, then the racist, misogynist, homophobic, and other lowlife commenters, I was left with 10-15% of discussions worth reading.

Pretty sad state of affairs, and it’s clear it’s degrading faster every day.

A few years ago I gave a keynote speech at Amazon’s annual design conference called Post Truth Design. This was a year before ChatGPT launched and generative AI blew up. And I was talking about exactly this kind of situation where hyperrealistic, but fake, media and content will supersede and conflict with reality. Most importantly, loads of research tells us that when presented with objective truth versus comfortable or even more entertaining fictions, lies will always win. Because of this, there is a deep humanistic responsibility on us to both find ways to deal with this new future, and actively work against these psychological tendencies to believe comfortable or entertaining lies. Unsurprisingly, things didn’t get simpler in the intervening years since then, but I feel very strongly believe we can and will find a balance. Even if it takes a lot of bodies to pay for it.

A couple of American politicians were executed in their homes a few months ago and one of the two presidential candidates was nearly JFKd in front of hundreds of cameras last year. A few years ago, a mob stormed the capital and erected a gallows to hang the sitting vice president if they could lay hands on him.

That’s violent enough even if you don’t consider the fact that de facto martial law is about to descend on major cities all over the country in the next few weeks. I’m doubtful that Greeks were anywhere near as volatile or violent as Americans are today.

Technology does not exist separately from society and culture, and in the last few decades has arguably made a lot of the world and society worse. I’m all for using the biggest lever I have to address harmful behaviors from corporations. Withhold your wallet, stay off their platforms and make your reasons known.

I’m not sure what about that you’re upset with.

DOGE has responded by saying those are rookie numbers.

This is Elon Musk‘s MO: announce a feature that would be groundbreaking for the industry well before you have any real understanding of whether it can be built in the first place. A lot of old classmates are at SpaceX now and have told many horror stories of this happening across their projects.

While the foundational principle holds true, Facebook has proven that anonymity is not a required component of this equation.

A quick glance at the front row of the inauguration seems to imply they are in fact a monolith. Not to mention how many corporations immediately bent the knee for this administration before even being asked.

They won’t, on both counts.

Hot | Not Hot Dog

But then you’re required to archive the discussions for the public to access. That’s much worse for these people than foreign agents (and journalists apparently) listening in and taking notes.

This has got to be one of the most compromised administrations in US history and we’re not even outta the 2nd month. I can only imagine the memes and high fives going around in intelligence agencies around the world this week.

Couldn’t be massive cost-cutting efforts in corporations preparing for a future with a skeleton crew of humans maintaining an ocean of thinking machines, could it? Add in an impending recession (or depression if you like), and you’ve got a recipe not to hire many inexperienced workers no matter what their educational background.

I’m old enough to remember the same type of argument playing out when corporate executives sent US jobs overseas in the 80s and blamed the workers then too.

At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if they were using free Android phones they won in a raffle set up by foreign intelligence agents

I’m not sure if what you’re proposing as a libel thesis actually is. Keep in mind the Heritage Foundation wrote the literal playbook (Project 2025) that the Trump admin is clearly following. In P2025 they clearly call out the intent to dismantle the U.S. government, remove safeguards and checks against presidential power and replace career public servants with Trump loyalists by the 10s of thousands.

That’s not some liberal talking point. That’s straight from conservatives. Feel free to see how far along they are in implementing P2025 here:

https://www.project2025.observer/

Another fresh angle to loot the treasury and exploit suckers for profit.

It’s fascinating to see arguments like this pop up from time to time when the wealthiest consistently move to consolidate power, control/manipulate information to enrich themselves, and now in the U.S., openly steer the government to feed bottomless greed.

It’s simply not possible to reach anything close to a single billion without unbelievable exploitation of lower classes and it scales as you get richer. Saying “they got there by evil” seems completely reasonable by any moral standard not written by sociopaths.

Angling for a good old fashioned pardon.

Agreed. This is nothing to worry about unless you have the ability to predict probable future events.

This take is sad to read. Having had the unfortunate experience of dealing with more than one loved struggling with a break from reality, I can say you’re probably way off. A lot of things we assign to personality traits or character flaws like this issue, are genuinely part of the mental health disorder. They typically aren’t present when the individual is at their baseline or “normal” state of mind, only appearing when the disorder is in full swing and untreated.

There are 300M people here and Trump won by ~200K. You can safely say that some are fine with this administrations behavior, but many are not and starting to actively protest and resist. Both are true simultaneously.