Notices by tante (tante@tldr.nettime.org), page 8

Kris @isotopp goes into a very important issue here (in German):

Since "AI" has become the thing to do, no cloud platform is neutral anymore (they never fully were, try hosting warez there, but for your own content they mostly were): They all "need" (as in want) to use your work as training data for their neural networks - especially work that's not "on the web" to have some kind of competitive advantage. But that means that your tools no longer let you do what you want because they need to make sure what you do is suitable as training data (because nobody wants a news report saying "BIGCORP's AI creates another racism").

This is a significant shift in how cloud services, that many have relied on for the last years, position themselves and can be reliably used. But the answer isn't "host your own" for most because it's hard and expensive. But maybe we'll find solutions outside of big tech that isn't total shit while we weather the "AI" storm that is increasingly fucking up all hat's good about the web.

https://chaos.social/@isotopp/112166979147346964

(And if you still follow Aral Balkan, you probably don't want to follow me. Cause if you are OK with his antisemitism and Holocaust relativism I wonder where our common base could ever be)

Balkan trivialises the industrial eradication of Jews. That's relativising the Holocaust and Antisemitic.

That is quite a difference to criticism of the actions of the Israel government.

Quote:"Without an analysis of power, it is hard to understand inequality or much else in modern capitalism."

Good that finally some economists are waking up to see how much their simplistic models have ruined the world.

(Original title: Nobel laureate economist savages profession as clueless, unethical)

https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/03/12/nobel-laureate-economist-angus-deaton-capitalism-power/

The growing backlash against AI

While the crowd at sxsw2024 booing a sizzle reel of people either promising the beauty of the future "AI" will bring or claiming it to be "without alternative" is funny and went viral for all the right reasons, this event speaks to a deeper shift in perception. #ai #genAI #luddism

https://tante.cc/2024/03/18/5115/

At some point in the future I'll probably have to apply to a job somewhere and given what I read about application processes these days I'll probably never be hired again in my life.

(Like I am not even kidding: Given for what corporations look for my credentials are total bullshit.)

"this was an audience at one of the nation’s most prominent and influential tech conferences. For the buzziest tech of the moment to get shouted down at *SXSW* speaks volumes about the scale and nature of the animosity generative AI has amassed. The tech is seen, here, as exploitative by tastemakers and *by technologists*."

(Original title: The tide is turning against OpenAI)

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-tide-is-turning-against-openai

I increasingly find looking at "AI" generated images emotionally draining. It's like staring into the void.

"It turns out that generative AI companies don’t like it when you steal, sorry, scrape, images from them. Cue the world’s smallest violin."

In Moment of Unbelievable Irony, Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft

https://www.themarysue.com/midjourney-accuses-stability-ai-of-image-theft/

"On November 10, 2021, bitcoin peaked at $68,990. The price tipped over that for two minutes, from 15:04 to 15:05 UTC yesterday, March 5, 2024.

The price promptly dropped $2,000 straight away, and then another $8,000 by 20:00 UTC, as the bagholders tried desperately to cash out — while they could, as Coinbase had yet another inexplicable outage, coincidentally with all the other exchanges."

Come one kids, we know this by know. Bitcoin price is pumped with stable coins to pull in fresh money for the bagholders to cash out. We've been through this.

(Original title: Bitcoin hits a new all-time high! World reacts: “Wow, that thing’s still around?”)

https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2024/03/06/bitcoin-hits-a-new-all-time-high-world-reacts-wow-that-things-still-around/

Studies (not just the one referenced in this article) keep showing that after the initial hype the lack of trustworthiness of "AI" systems (and the companies building them) is leading to trust in these systems going down across the board.

This is a very healthy development, let's keep it going to bring technological development and "innovation" on a track that's no longer leading towards social, political and ecological destruction.

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/05/ai-trust-problem-edelman

#ai #trust

Data is never "raw" or "unprocessed" or "neutral" or "objective". The decision to record a thing (and not others), the structures and data formats it's pressed into, the granularity and frequency of collection are already a curation and interpretation of the world.

A data set with unclear collectors, without a declaration of the original purpose and goals is basically unusable responsibly.

Beim Deutschlandfunk Kultur habe ich in der Reihe "Wissen. Macht. Gerechtigkeit.", die von der Wikimedia Stiftung kuratiert wird mit Zara Rahman und Stefan Mey darüber diskutiert, wem das Internet eigentlich gehört, warum wir als Nutzer*innen eigentlich so selten eine echte Wahl haben und was man tun könnte, um das zu ändern.

https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/der-kampf-um-das-internet-dlf-kultur-43e3c393-100.html

The great thing about Elon Musk suing OpenAI is that whoever loses, it's gonna be great.

AI and Democracy

I wrote an essay about the tensions of "AI" and democracy because I don't believe their respective values and goals fully match.

https://tante.cc/2024/02/28/ai-and-democracy/

@mjg59 I'd argue that one of the reasons for open source is to facilitate learning, creating a mental model of the software, hardware if one wants to. It's not just about giving a tool but about being able to see how the toolmaker worked and thought. To be able to learn for oneself and just as importantly to be able to see implicit biases embedded in the structures of the software.

So that's a no.

@mjg59 The point is that this still obscures what's actually running/in the structures. From a purely legal standpoint it might but I think that we should go beyond pure legal perspectives

Holy shit, WordPress.com/Automattic is really trying to destroy all the goodwill it has built over years.

Selling user posts to "AI" companies is such a breach of trust and an insult. It negates any respect for user contribution that is the basis for a good and sustainable relationship.

https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/112004850884204466

Tesla's Fahrzeuge setzen die Autopolitik der letzten Dekaden nahezu nahtlos fort. Wir brauchen weniger Autos. Viel weniger und kleinere Autos.

(Original title: Tesla als Symbol: Elektro-SUV als Teil des Problems)

http://www.taz.de/Tesla-als-Symbol/!5990649/