@timbray My current summary of the trajectory of AI is that it is fantastic for the individual and terrible for society. No matter your goal, AI can help or at worst be useless. But when used by people carelessly or maliciously, it can cause huge harm, possibly outweighing the benefits to the individual. It sucks that neither can see the other side's argument.

@timbray when the bubble pops, the shitty people won't "melt away" they'll look for the next technically legal con, even if they have to work to fabricate it.

@timbray Yeah, I was planning a book on this topic, and quickly got derailed. Spent the last few days posting here about where my research went wrong. Wound up documenting over 4,000 years of this behavior.

@timbray I don't see any AI bubble pop in the next years. I only see more people struggeling keeping their prosperity, while trying not to be reduced to cheap work.

@timbray when someone comes with a "Extra-LLM version 2+" and calls it GenAI, what will actual AI be called?

@timbray problem is never the technology, it's always shitty people

@timbray 💯

@timbray It's not wrong that part of the problem discussing AI is shitty people... but on Mastodon there's a widespread anti-AI feeling that is driven by (not entirely unreasonable) fear of what it is going to do to them and their disposable income.

That causes them to lash out, shut their minds and for some of them, act like shitty people. The "clippy bubble" popping isn't going to help them or cause them to discuss reality rather than "AI is the Devil".

@timbray Spot on

@timbray AI as an extension and amplification of surveillance capitalism will not go away until people, en mass, decide that thinking for themselves and learning to use technology proficiently instead of taking the easy "free as in beer" path. Things will have to get much worse to convince the average Joe that the latest device in an Ad is something to avoid and learning how to install an open system on ones own device is the way to go.

@timbray at this point i think unless something from outside pops it, what will eventually happen is one of the major US players will suffer a distillation attack or one of these leaks at a time when they can not reasonably recover AND continue participating in the pump with the rest of the group - once that party leaves the spending race, whichever it may end up being, it seems like the monied side of all of it will start to unravel. one external thing i think could also lead to it popping is that they arent able to actually build any of these datacenters yet nor source the power for them which drags out their plans while chinese firms distill their models for cheap and move off nvidia silicon.

@timbray @rayckeith "next week would be ideal" … 💯

@timbray Can we do Thursday? I'm getting a tooth pulled Wednesday.

@timbray the UBI seems like the answer but curiously off the map of late

@timbray

5. ... Last year would be best.