Fuck AI

Alternate frontend

I was reading Casey Newton’s latest newsletter last night and got the feeling he had almost landed on a very big point.

Every time I feel like progress in artificial intelligence is beginning to slow, a week like this one hits — and suddenly, it's all I can do to keep up.

He goes on to discuss OpenAI’s announcement this week that the company is acquiring Jony Ive’s one-year-old startup, IO, for $6.5 billion in stock. OpenAI has just signaled that it is going to start making hardware, and has recruited the world’s most famous hardware designer to lead the effort.

But there’s another way to interpret that opening line. OpenAI runs an incredibly effective comms operation. They are engaged in a communications campaign. And the purpose of the campaign is that whenever it starts to feel like progress in AI is slowing down, there needs to be another announcement or product demo that makes it feel like the future is fast-arriving.

Or, put another way, the reason OpenAI just spent $6.5 billion in stock to bring Jony Ive on board was that it was beginning to feel like progress in AI was slowing down, and they had to keep priming the pump.

For OpenAI to stay in operation and keep building the next generation of its product line, it needs constant infusions of investor cash. It needs the big money. Sovereign wealth fund money. Softbank money. And that means it has to feel like the future.

The result is that everything becomes speculative finance. Sam Altman HAS to keep stoking the futurity vibes. That’s a material necessity, whether you’re an OpenAI critic or a booster. He needs the money spigot to keep flowing, which means maintaining investor confidence, which means keeping up the cadence of exciting-sounding news.

Maybe with enough money, time, and talent, OpenAI manages to build the next generation of computing. Or maybe OpenAI is a hype-bubble that eventually collapses like a dying star. Either way, the necessary precondition is that the company maintains the aura of futurity until it either gets there or runs out of public confidence — Fake it till ya make it, but as a trillion-dollar business plan.

It’s a rotten game. We have been playing it for far too long. The stakes have gotten way out of hand.

The least we can do is name it for what it is.

I could give a summary of the game and shit on AI. Surely people will like that.

But no. I'm going to go much deeper than just that.

My distaste of AI it's not just because the misinformation it generated, or its displacement of real talent, or its environmental impact...

...it's more personal.

I was at a really low point when the AI chatbot craze began and I ended up getting addicted during a few months. I managed to crawl out of that hell and decided to make this as a warning to the 3 people that would actually play it.

Bullet hell boss rush where you draw runes instead of shooting.

Collage art aesthetics and bizarre lore inspired by analog horror, Neon Genesis Evangelion and the folklore of Costa Rica and Galicia.

A merciless satire of GenAI showing what would happen if it stole and shat out mockeries of real objects instead of just data.

A look at the lies tech CEOs vomit on the masses to rot their brains with their bullshit generators.

This is Sayonara Sigil Sentry

Oh and it's free.

I think a lot of people out there are fundamentally misunderstanding the reasoning behind the big tech companies (and their investors) pushing AI into everything. We want to believe that it's just tech bros trying to woo idiot investor cash into their systems — and it is that, a little bit anyway — but the big players: Microsoft, Google, Meta, and even Visa know exactly what they're doing and it's not good news for the rest of us.

Anyway, I wrote this a few days ago to break down the problem as I see it. I'm hoping it proves helpful.

Source (Bluesky)

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/fuckcars@lemmy.world/t/2201156

In case you were worried about the roads being too safe, you can rest easily knowing that Teslas will be rolling out with unsupervised "Full Self Driving" in a couple days.

It doesn't seem to be going great, even in supervised mode. This one couldn't safely drive down a simple, perfectly straight road in broad daylight :( Veered off the road for no good reason. Glad nobody got badly hurt.

We analyze the onboard camera footage, and try to figure out what went wrong. Turns out, a lot. We also talk through how camera-only autonomous cars work, Tesla's upcoming autonomous taxi rollout, and how AI hallucinations figure into everything.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/38466699

The judge’s order will allow the wrongful death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is among the latest constitutional tests of artificial intelligence.

The suit was filed by a mother from Florida, Megan Garcia, who alleges that her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer III fell victim to a Character . AI chatbot that pulled him into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide.

Meetali Jain of the Tech Justice Law Project, one of the attorneys for Garcia, said the judge’s order sends a message that Silicon Valley “needs to stop and think and impose guardrails before it launches products to market.”

New analysis by MIT Technology Review reveals AI's rapidly growing energy demands, with data centers expected to triple their share of US electricity consumption from 4.4% to 12% by 2028. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projections, AI alone could soon consume electricity equivalent to 22% of all US households annually, driven primarily by inference operations that represent 80-90% of AI's computing power.

State regulators last year greenlit new gas- and diesel-fired turbines to meet spiking energy demand that Georgia Power said comes mostly from data centers. Now, the utility is asking to keep coal plants open longer than planned for the same reason. Electric co-ops, too, including Meta’s power supplier, are planning to add non-renewable resources to power data centers and other large power users. 

These utilities are still adding solar and other renewables. But the influx of fossil fuels, mostly to serve data centers, is a major shift that could have serious consequences for climate change.

Morans.

The episode is quite good I also intend to read the book, if someone has read it, what are your thoughts?

Source (Via Xcancel)

A pretty daily thought for me now is "there's no point to this, AI can do it in 1 second, and no one cares" when thinking about doing anything art or programming related. Pretty much anything we do that is on a computer is totally useless now, and companies will probably be firing us all in 10 years or less if you aren't a manual laborer.

The worst part is, I could be tricked by AI even now. The thought of hearing a song i like, and then finding that it's AI, makes me physically sick. But 99% of the population wont care one bit.

I pretty much try to ignore it all, and I figure I'll shut off the internet and enjoy my collection of physical art that I know was made by humans. It just really sucks that we are going down this path and it's going to utterly destroy us. And no one seems to realize how bad it's going to get.

Alternate frontend.

Microsoft famously brought its Copilot AI to the Edge browser in Windows. Now Google is doing the same with Chrome. In a list of announcements that spanned dozens of pages, Google allocated just a single line to the announcement: "Gemini is coming to Chrome, so you can ask questions while browsing the web." Google later clarified what Gemini on Chrome can do: "This first version allows you to easily ask Gemini to clarify complex information on any webpage you're reading or summarize information," the company said in a blog post. "In the future, Gemini will be able to work across multiple tabs and navigate websites on your behalf."

Other examples of what Gemini can do involves coming up with personal quizzes based on material in the Web page, or altering what the page suggests, like a recipe. In the future, Google plans to allow Gemini in Chrome to work on multiple tabs, navigate within Web sites, and automate tasks. Google said that you'll be able to either talk or type commands to Gemini. To access it, you can use the Alt+G shortcut in Windows. [...] You'll see Gemini appear in Chrome as early as this week, Google executives said -- on May 21, a representative clarified. However, you'll need to be a Gemini subscriber to take advantage of its features, a requirement that Microsoft does not apply with Copilot for Edge. Otherwise, Google will let those who participate in the Google Chrome Beta, Dev, and Canary programs test it out.

Two visions for social media’s future pit real connections against AI friends.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/769656

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250515190754/https://ppaolo.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-move-in-tech-right-now