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   Doug Belshaw (dajb@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Mar-2023 19:03:30 JST Doug Belshaw

   One of the reasons that a background in the Humanities is so important is that there are far too many uncritical and uninformed takes on tech.

   For example, with the latest hype around AI, it's OK to have a position where you neither think it's the best thing in the world, ever, *nor* think that we're all doomed.

   TBH my main medium-term concern for all this is that a lack of both technological and historical understanding means that politicians start outsourcing decision-making to algorithms.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Mar-2023 19:05:29 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @dajb That outsourcing has been in full swing for a long time, arguably, and if you take a wider view of AI as "algorithms" or even "explicit, 'objective' procedures and criteria" it's a major part of the neoliberal caretaker capitalist ideology, isn't it?

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Mar-2023 19:08:40 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @dajb I think it's pretty clear: Organize for a more democratic and socialist society, where human decision-making is centered, valued, and respected, and the diversity of nature, and of humans, is correctly identified as the territory, and models and idealizations as, at best, imperfect tools for better understanding.

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     Doug Belshaw (dajb@social.coop)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Mar-2023 19:08:41 JST Doug Belshaw

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @pettter Yeah, see my next post in the thread. I'm not sure what we can do to push against it, as I think we're soon going to be in a world of competing LLMs creating ever more solid 'bubbles' in which people construct their reality.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Mar-2023 19:11:18 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @dajb I am not at all worried about LLM. What 'there' there is, is simply automation of routine tasks, which is nothing new, it's just reaching a new set of workers. People and human labour is still deeply necessary for even the most basic of actually useful tasks, just like car factories still employ a hell of a lot of people 100ys after Ford.

     I _am_ worried about capital, and capitalism decaying into fascism rather than socialism.