biammer
Careful with being blindly led by your own assumptions.
I actually disagree with your thesis here. I think if every comment was posted under a new account this site would improve its average veracity.
As it stands certain 'celebrity', or high karma, accounts are artificially bolstered by the network effect indifferent to the defensibility of their claims.
> simonw: It's better because now you can automate something tedious in your life with a computer without having to first climb a six month learning curve.
Completely ignores, or enthusiastically accepts and endorses, the consolidation of production, power, and wealth into a stark few (friends), and claims superiority and increased productivity without evidence?
This may be the most simonw comment I have ever seen.
I think its gross to distill military violence as defending 'assets [others] might want to annex'.
What US assets were being annexed when US AI was used to target Gazans?
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-ai-technology...
> Trump is extremely blunt about who he wants to oppress. So is Musk.
> our adversaries" is not blunt
These two thoughts seem at conflict.
What 'assets' were being protected from annexation here by this oppressive use of the tool? The chips?
Ahh, I see your objection now. That is my bad. I was using my language too loosely. Here I was using 'aquifer' to mean 'any source of drinking water', but that is certainly different from the intended meaning.
> And again, I don't disagree that they're a problem, it's just that the "water" part of the problem is so low down the list of things to worry about as to be a rounding error.
I'm skeptical of the rounding error argument, and weary of relying on the logical framework of 'low down the list' when list items' effects stack interdependently.
> give up beef, dairy, cotton, rice, almonds, soy, biofuels, mining, paper, steel, cement, residential lawns, soft drinks, car washing, and hospitals
In part due to this reason, as well as others, I have stopped directly supporting the industries for: beef, dairy, rice, almonds, soy, biofuels, residential lawns, soft drinks, car washing
> The capacity for AI to oppress you is in direct relation to its economic value.
I think this assumes a level of rationality in these systems, corporate interests and global markets, that I would push back on as being largely absent.
> The power hunger is in direct proportion to the demand.
Do you think this is entirely the case? I mean, I understand what you are saying, but I would draw stark lines between "company" demand versus "user" demand. I have found many times the 'AI' tools are being thrust into nearly everything regardless of user demand. Spinning its wheels to only ultimately cause frustration. [0]
> Is it what's emptying drinking water aquifers?
It appears this is a problem, and will only continue to be such. [1]
> The combined water usage of all data centers in Arizona. All of them. Together. Which is over 100 DCs. All of them combined use about double what Tesla was expecting from just the Brandenburg Gigafactory to use before Musk decided to burn his reputation with EV consumers and Europeans for political point scoring.
I am unsure if I am getting what your statements here are trying to say. Would you be able to restate this to be more explicit in what you are trying to communicate.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493506
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-ac...
I find it hard to believe there are people who know these companies stole the entire creative output of humanity and egregiously continually scrape the internet are, for some reason, ignoring the data you voluntarily give them.
> I know that breaks the "training the tools of the oppressor" narrative
"Narrative"? This is just reality. In their own words:
> The awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI – each with a $200M ceiling – will enable the Department to leverage the technology and talent of U.S. frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas. Establishing these partnerships will broaden DoD use of and experience in frontier AI capabilities and increase the ability of these companies to understand and address critical national security needs with the most advanced AI capabilities U.S. industry has to offer. The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries [0]
Is 'warfighting adversaries' some convoluted code for allowing Aurornis to 'see a 1337x in productivity'?
Or perhaps you are a wealthy westerner of a racial and sexual majority and as such have felt little by way of oppression by this tech?
In such a case I would encourage you to develop empathy, or at least sympathy.
> Using an LLM for inference .. does not train the LLM.
In their own words:
> One of the most useful and promising features of AI models is that they can improve over time. We continuously improve our models through research breakthroughs as well as exposure to real-world problems and data. When you share your content with us, it helps our models become more accurate and better at solving your specific problems and it also helps improve their general capabilities and safety. We do not use your content to market our services or create advertising profiles of you—we use it to make our models more helpful. ChatGPT, for instance, improves by further training on the conversations people have with it, unless you opt out.
[0] https://www.ai.mil/latest/news-press/pr-view/article/4242822...
[1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is...
Sure, but if those such as yourself actually cared about this then you'd stop claiming every release was a "genuine inflection point".
If I say every morning, "it is going to rain today", and I am told I am wrong for 100 days by a meteorologist, and then it finally does rain, should I say, "See, I was always right"? You know, Aesop wrote 'the boy who cried wolf' as a cautionary tale.
If at any point any of these releases were "genuine inflection points" it would be unnecessary to proselytize such. It would be self evident. Much like rain.
> measuring actual usefulness
"The oppressed need to acknowledge that their oppression is useful to their oppressors."
How is it useful to you that these companies are so valuation hungry that they are moving money into this technology in such a way that people are fearful it could cripple the entire global economy?
How is it useful to you that this tech is so power hungry that environmental externalities are being further accelerated while regular people's utility costs are raising to cover the increased demand(whether they use the tech to "code" or "manifest art")?
How is it useful to you that this tech is so compute hungry that they are seemingly ending the industry of personal compute to feed this tech's demand?
How is it useful to you that this tech is so water hungry that it is emptying drinking water acquifers?
How is it useful to you that this tech is being used to manufacture consent?
Ascribing the goals of "democratize code/art" onto these companies and their products is called delusion.
I am sure the 3 letter agency directors on these company boards are thrilled you think they left their lifelong careers solely to finally realize their dream to allow you to code and "manifest your artistic ideas".
Calling these the words of an oppressor rings of “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
But truly, what is your desire? What is your goal?
> in this comment thread
Do you want this thread, this site, to only agree with you?
To exclusively, and stubbornly, ignore externalities? To exclusively praise tech? To exclusively praise oligarchs? To whom, and what ends, would this benefit?
On the subject of oppression it may be beneficial for you to read up on Eco's Ur-Fascism.
Number 4, notably:
"4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason."
https://dn710109.ca.archive.org/0/items/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
It's exhausting.
If I am unable to convince you to stop meticulously training the tools of the oppressor (for a fee!) then I just ask you do so quietly.