@thomasfuchs It's more correct to say that "AI is SUBSIDIZED." This gives it the appearance of being cheap, when in fact there's the whole rest of your post proving that naw, it ain't.
@thomasfuchs Yeah, it's wild. I work for an "AI company", but one that's been around since before the LLM hype and that uses a wide variety of computer intelligence tools to solve legitimate problems and not in a way that costs jobs.
And every time people ask what I do nowadays, I have to add "but not like how you think!" really quickly before people start giving me the stink-eye.
It's the crypto "fool's gold rush" all over again.
@thomasfuchs This is more embarrassing than Facebook's "no legs" thing, and I'm usually willing to give Apple a lot of the benefit of the doubt. They've been right about a LOT of stuff that people initially ridiculed them for, but this? Jesus, ridicule away.
@phiofx I mean maybe, but again, that's not what I'm seeing. The fanboys are quiet or even absent. The only folks I'm seeing who have really strong opinions on it are those who seem to really, really hate it. 🤷♂️
- "I don't know why ANYONE would use an Apple Vision Pro. It's stupid and anyone who likes it is stupid." - "Huh. This is actually pretty neat."
Look, I don't think the AVP is for me, probably, but if I had to pick a camp to hang out in, it sure wouldn't be the first one. It's an entirely optional tech gizmo; it's not worth villifying people over.
@thomasfuchs And that might feel like semantics, but if you are a journalist who has lost their job because an intern with a ChatGPT subscription has been hired to fill the column inches you used to fill, I guarantee you, the PRACTICALITY of those semantics matter.
@thomasfuchs It sounds like you're thinking of "the work" as a static thing. Like, "an article covering the most recent days of the war in Ukraine to our previous high standards". But when people are replaced with AI like this, "the work" ends up being very malleable, and frequently gets redefined as "500 words on the war in Ukraine, rephrase these sources PASTE PASTE PASTE".
So the job, journalist, is replaced because the work, journalism, is replaced.
@thomasfuchs I agree in one sense, but, I mean they kinda are, though, right? At least their jobs are being replaced with shitty AI. The work, the actual quality art, that can't ever be replaced, not by AI or scabs, etc. But the jobs can be, and are.
And under capitalism, where you have to work to survive, and the work is being stolen, that's the differentiator that's at top of mind for a lot of artists who have been "replaced" by shitty AI. That's the definition that matters to them.
I wanna surface this to my main timeline because it's kinda important to say out loud from time to time:
Businesses do NOT "have to" focus exclusively on their return to shareholders. Not legally, not morally.
That is the misguided OPINION of a 1970 essay by Milton Friedman, and the fact that everyone seemed to just hop on board that opinion is a significant reason why we switched gears into hyper-hell-capitaliam since then.
@thomasfuchs The rogue AI this time around could be fun, because occasionally it could be tricked into thinking it was a hair tonic salesman instead of a murder bot!
And sometimes it would hallucinate wildly and just start shooting up a nearby stop sign and then go back to base, satisfied in it's goals!
@mattly That's hot horseshit, sorry to hear it. As someone who's been on it for the past 9 months or so, it's worked wonders for me (though obviously individual results may vary). I hope you get that sorted.