This illusion is what made the current AI hype possible in the first place, and it is now causing humanity to take steps backward rather than moving forward. Yet AI technology could be used fairly and very effectively if it weren’t marketed exactly as it is: as a machine that supposedly enables everyone to do things they don’t have the slightest clue about.
This is what has made social media so profitable, and it’s also the reason why LLMs aren’t being used the way they should be, but are instead being sold as artificial intelligence to idiots who don’t have the slightest clue about the subject -not about what it takes or how long it takes to write a book, paint a picture, write a scientific article, code a secure application, or whatever.
The profit motive has turned the internet into the opposite of what it should have been, and AI technology has consequently ended up as an instrument of power in the hands of a small number of people who are incredibly narrow-minded but, unfortunately, also incredibly powerful due to their boundless greed.
It is the general public that bears the brunt of this boundless greed.
If things continue this way and we look just a few decades into the future, this is exactly what will spell the end of humanity, since profit is always prioritized over the common good.
You’re wrapped around the axle on how things should be and you should stop that for your own mental health. There’s no such thing as should have been, there may be a what you’d prefer, or a what would have been better for more people, but there are no predetermined outcomes, no should haves.
I saw the internet being born, and I have watched it grow, but I didn’t make it, just like you didn’t. Money made it, but early on hadn’t figured out how to make money back out of it, but they were going to and now they have. That’s it.
LLMs are only different because they sucked from the beginning while the internet was kinda cool and genuinely new, but it was never ours. LLMs are now being shoved down our throats, fed on all we freely put into the internet, regurgitating back our own thoughts and works, creating absolutely nothing. Could they be a super useful tool doing highly specialized shit? Well yeah, and they probably will some day, but for now they churn out modern capital’s favorite product, cheap trash and capital is bound and determined to make that profitable.
We were really never part of the equation as anything other than rocks to squeeze blood from and what we want doesn’t matter to the ones squeezing.
Yes, unfortunately that’s absolutely true. What really bothers me is that centralization is inherent to the nature of the internet, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Unfortunately, however, billionaires have recognized this and have now created yet another advancement in the form of LLMs, which allows them to tighten their stranglehold even further.
I am convinced that the global resurgence of fascism is a direct consequence of this.
But yes, that’s unfortunately how it is: The internet has turned from a hopeful utopia into a dystopia that now makes even the bleak visions of the future by Orwell, Huxley, and others seem almost harmless by comparison.
The saddest part of it all is that it didn’t have to be this way if people were just a little less self-centered. After all, no one is forcing anyone to shop on Amazon or use Twitter, but millions upon millions of people do it anyway, thereby enabling what one might almost call a new—this time, however, global—monarchy of the absurdly rich; even nations are not able to defend its citizens against this centralized power.
But of course you’re absolutely right: we should probably just make the most of the freedoms we still have and use them while they still exist.
We’re still close enough to on schedule to catch Heinlein’s reign of corporations. I believe that left the Earth in pretty bad shape for a while.
I don’t relate to everything you said, but I will absolutely agree that one of the really annoying things about the AI industry is how they’ve convinced so many people the tools can do anything.
I’m a graphic designer, and I’ve been asked by clients to use AI gen in some projects. By far the most irritating part of this is the client requests. They believed the hype and now want the most insanely specific and complicated images out of it, despite specific details being the thing AI is the fucking worst at. I have to do so much post production work to get them something close to what they want out of these slop machines.
It takes so much time that it’s not even bad money, but the process is so unfun that I dread it every time.
I mean the internet and even less ai has nothing to do with this, you’re told in school and by most supporting parents, that you can be anything you want if you put your mind to it.
It’s obviously bullshit, but this supercedes Ai, let alone the Internet by a long time.
It’s not really any surprise or anything new people have been saying “fake it 'til you make it” for as long as I can remember, there will always be charlatans and frauds. I think the problem is the acceptance of it as a means to make money, competence seems to have fallen by the wayside as long as you can make a profit doing it. People used to chase snake oil salesmen out of town now they are inviting them into their homes every day.
As a musician, I do agree with you though, it has created the illusion that you should be able to do anything. When in fact anything takes a lot of time and patience and practice to be any good, you don’t see that online, there is an illusion online that everyone is talented and competent on social media when we’re all just dummies trying to get by and impress each other. Hard work doesn’t seem to be appreciated or admired, just the end product.
The idea that you can do anything you set your mind to can be an incredibly useful motivator. It still requires meaningful action to accomplish your goals, but it can help people be more willing to expand their own potential.
What’s harmful is the idea that asking an AI to do something for you has any relation to you actually doing that thing.
Sure, absolutely, you have to believe in yourself but you have to put in the work too, there are a lot of temptations to take shortcuts but I promise you the art will suffer. I guess it all depends on your end goal, now there are artists and people who want to make money from art and it seems like the later group is now bigger which is a shame.
On the contrary, everything is better than ever!
Internet connections are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever. Second-hand junk is available for free or very cheap. It is common to keep a computer in your pocket, one which is faster and has more memory than seriously power-hungry and expensive equipment of yesteryear.
Yes, there are more bastards around, but you needn’t listen to them. Use the economy of scale that the thundering herds bring, then ignore them. Self-host private spaces for friends. Contribute to open source.
Use AI to learn. Instead of wasting energy to generate silly junk, use them to debug and fix bugs in open-source software.
Life is good.
Things aren’t better than they were last year.
Maybe not better, but not much worse either. Fuel got more expensive when Americans started their dumb war against Iran (the people of which I feel sorry for), but on the flip side, Russian war efforts seem to be getting weaker.
Besides, none of this matters at all to our discussion of tech getting worse, or not.
discussion of tech getting worse, or not.
We literally invented a new word to describe how tech is getting worse: enshittification.
