GreenBeard

I don't know how to make any clearer, if you want a future country it is all our job to make sure kids are safe. The parents may be primarily responsible for protecting them, but if your company is a threat to children, and you're not taking steps to mitigate that, you need to be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.

I'm also concerned about the powers that be trying to force AI to do things it can't actually accomplish in spite of the fact that human labour is objectively the only real option. It doesn't matter that it can't actually do the job, it matters that they spent money on it and will keep hammering at it until reality catches up with them and hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people get hurt when the world burns because they won't stop chasing sunk costs. The hubris at the top of a lot of companies is thick enough to cause real suffering for a lot of people.

To be fair, the US has never won a war without either Britain, France, or both working with them. Americans are very good at causing a lot of destruction, but they have no idea how to stabilize or rebuild. Even when they can effectively beat the enemy weapons, all they know how to do is leave a chaotic mess in their wake, and whatever warlord is left with enough firepower to dominate the rest takes control eventually. They may take an objective, but they can't hold it long term, because that's not their job, that's for private contractors, who are always grifters who take the money and leave things worse than they found it.

Roman legions spent more time building highways than fighting for a lot of the Empire. States build infrastructure. Markets build around it. The US is ideologically incapable of recognizing this fact that has been true since time immemorial.

That's not a gun. That's an autonomous killing device. The only gun that ever killed people of its own free will was the STEN gun. If you make something that kills without human intent, that's not a gun anymore.

If I make a gun that actively chooses to kill people, I didn't build a gun and that whole argument falls apart. I'd hold everyone from the CEO to the janitor accountable.

Yeah, even a well built agent is pretty resource intensive. Your hybrid idea makes more sense. People underestimate just how resource intensive AI is. Anyone who has built their own AI rig can tell you it is NOT a lightweight process that can conveniently sit in a browser plugin without being its own annoying obstacle.

What do we do? We're doing it. We're asking questions, we're building communities IRL and in digital paces outside the bounds of the major corps. We use poison pills to make corpos that embrace these systems pay dearly. We give grace to those who sincerely pull back and we move on.

Cocaine exists and it can be a major boost to productivity. But we don't have to use it. We don't have to live with its downsides slowly killing us and robbing us of our humanity.

No. I refuse. We may die, but I refuse to surrender. Where there is life, there is hope, and we're not dead yet.

Yes. He doesn't want to admit, he's gone as far down this path as he responsibly can. He doesn't want to transition to the "producer" role, where he becomes a resource for a new generation that's seeking a future away from the old platforms.

It's a bit like the oil man who knows his work enabled so much good, unable to also admit his product has a dark side, and it's time for us all to move on from it. That times changed and a new world is struggling to be born.

I disagree about "edutainment" in a qualified way. We still need communicators and domain experts sharing their knowledge, and there's still a great deal of knowledge to share, but I don't think it's on YouTube (or TikTok). People talking out of turn on matters so far outside their expertise and experience they're effectively neophytes, and just as vulnerable to Dunning-Kruger impulses certainly doesn't help. I don't think that AI or better algorithms are going to save them either, that's a good way to end up lost in a psychotic hallucination. I don't know what it will look like yet but it isn't going to come from the tech giants. Unless Wikipedia wants to take a crack at it, they might be the only ones that could pull it off.

No. This is a line we cannot cross and if it destroys us, so be it. I'm not against AI, or automation. But not these tools. Not these companies. Not these models. The question is death or death. So we learn to live without, or we die. There is no synthesis possible with this paradigm.

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.

No, what you need is something that can facilitate coordination and communication between many moving parts, inspire confidence in the team, create stability, and sell a vision to generate investment, and those functions do not necessarily all need to be one person. You do not "need" a leader, you want a leader because it's easier to conceptualize a relationship with a figurehead. Much like the rump English monarchy, the executive is a vestigial appendage and an artifact of of an aristocratic era of patronage. Locking in a coherent direction does not require a "decider", there are other ways to achieve that. By designing companies to minimize personal liability and accountability, they have also designed themselves out of a useful role.