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@pluralistic I was going to say that these are both great examples of what we in IT would call a "solution in search of a problem", but I see that you already used that term, way back in the linked "AI Hype" article from 2023.

@pluralistic and no lessons have been learned since the South Sea Bubble.

@pluralistic im going to add your catalog of Books and essays to a Pilibrary is there a way to do that easily like do you have a folder of all your c0 stuff on a torrent?

@pluralistic but the real synergy is when they get AIs promoting their own crypto coins so they can be self-funding.

@pluralistic which cryptobubble?

@pluralistic Got to admit this could have a few valid use cases, while crypto is complete bullshit. But yeah, for the most part it is a gigantic bubble.

@pluralistic well we better at least getting talking toasters that badger us once an hour to eat a piece of toast.

@Frigga @Pepperbike @pluralistic
Smoke me a kipper I'll be back for breakfast

@pluralistic To be fair. AI has found a use case: helping unstable people plan and execute terrifying suicides.
(Cyber-truck, poor character.ai youth).

That seems to be the productivity gain we can expect in the near to mid term. Long term, their "effective acceleration" of climate change means terrifying suicide of the whole species....

@pluralistic same as the "metaverse"/"internet 3.0" too

@pluralistic

The con going on here is even bigger than you describe.

The end game? The tech bros now have created a stock market bubble from cryoto and AI of epic proportions, and they've enlisted Trump to inflate it even further. When the bubble blows up they'll play "too big to fail" card and Trump and his enablers will demand that the Fed print money to clean up the mess. That way the taxpayers get fleeced. And the tech bros don't pay taxes.

That's the con.

@pluralistic@mamot.fr

Assuming the hype-cycle even lasts that long, do we potentially end up with a bunch of new nuclear power-plants and no users for that new generative-capacity (seems more likely the bubble pops, before then, and we end up with a bunch of partially-finished power-plant projects but no actual new capacity).

@pluralistic I didn't even realize this post is two years old, I can't believe nothing has changed.

@pluralistic

The one in which Cory Doctorow describes accidentally discovering erotocomplete (or is that spelled erautocomplete?)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

@pluralistic I saw this image earlier today on your Flickr account and it is weird and I love it.

@gabriel @pluralistic Forgot to add - excellent alt text too

@pluralistic Cory I missed this post last year... thanks for the quote.

the original post is this
https://blog.quintarelli.it/2019/11/lets-forget-the-term-ai-lets-call-them-systematic-approaches-to-learning-algorithms-and-machine-inferences-salami/

ciao!

ps. I'm a former mp and mainly a tech scientist/entrepreneur

@pluralistic

I disagree. AI has meaningful use cases and genuine interest from many people.

It does face challenges, such as producing reliable results, and raises concerns across various fields. However, I remain optimistic that we can address these issues and make an effective tool out of it.

Personally, I’m not a fan of how big tech corporations are pushing it, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

@pluralistic I had an acquaintance quit a good cybersecurity startup to… (checks notes) join an AI cryptocurrency s̵c̵a̵m̵startup.

I promptly un-Linked them. (LinkedOut?)

@pluralistic Not every user is indifferent/hostile. I pay for GPT and I think it brings value to my life. It can make mistakes, but my experience is that it gets noticeably better with every version.