The A.I. Bubble is Bursting with Ed Zitron

Big tech is betting tens of billions of dollars on AI being the next big thing, but what if it isn't? ChatGPT burns obscene amounts of cash daily with little return, Google's AI dispenses useless and sometimes dangerous advice, and a recent study showed that tech companies will soon run out of new training data to improve their AI models. If AI is really so costly, unreliable, and limited, what happens to the industry that has bet so big on it? This week, Adam talks with journalist and influential tech critic Ed Zitron of wheresyoured.at to discuss the impending burst of the AI bubble, the hubris of Silicon Valley, and how we suffer under big tech's "Rot Economy."
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[@sanderbjerknes4476]

"I want ai to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for ai to do art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." - Joanna Maciejewska

[@jarrettlittle485]

In do time. It just turns out that work like accounting and other seemingly complex digital work is easy compared to doing 100% automated 3d real world work. The tec is there already here today or currently being worked on to replace a vast majority of human task and labor. Only thing holding the tec back is more societal and economic then purely technological.

[@bluester7177]

​@@jarrettlittle485No it's not societal, is pretty much technological, they are being developed but it's expensive and not as easy as they thought.

[@Big_Dai]

Who?

[@BreakingGaia]

This shit is not there. I've been using the pro version of gpt and Gemini, both are dumb as fuck. My stupid ass often has to correct my AI. I've asked it to do laborious tasks for me like gathering data and it fails at basic tasks like creating an Excel or sheets doc full of the publicly available information it took 17 hours to complete and only had 3 rows filled in. I've asked it to edit my writing and it often just gives me what I wrote with one or two corrections when I know I've put in 10 errors. On art, I'm an actual artist. Me against this thing is like davinci against a cat. Not even on the same level - I'm college educated. I know how many fingers belong on a hand and I can spell words in order. And on top of all that, it's answers are often wrong, which is actually causing answers on Google and Bing to also be wrong. Like I have reached the point where I no longer even trust Google search because it has now answered wrong 3 times. I am slightly smarter than average. I am way more intelligent than my AI chatbots. I can perform all tasks better than my AI chatbots and faster, too.

[@jwdeepsky]

​@BreakingGaia good thing you're not a programmer

[@Kalepsis]

The reason social media sites don't work as social media sites is because they're not social media sites. They're ad delivery platforms.

[@lynxminx4]

Not even anymore- they're click generators. Most of the junk posts in my feeds aren't ads, they're posts crafted by AI to be interesting enough to drive a click- and that's all they are.

[@sonicwave779]

@@lynxminx4 Pages and pages of AI-generated posts plastered with AI-generated ads on the sides. Welcome to the future!

[@pickyourteethup]

So is Television and newspapers, always have been

[@whisperingsage89]

Half "the purpose of a system is what it does" and half "the purpose of a system becomes what keeps it going"

[@MeeraReads]

Eventually advertisers will not want to pay for ads if no one is seeing them. They addressed this in the video, no one minded a few ads when the platforms were good, and advertisers were happy to pay for ads that actual humans were seeing. The ad delivery service needs people to deliver the ads to, which means the ad delivery service has an interest in keeping the sites good enough that people want to stick around. Or at least that’s how it would work if these people didn’t suffer from delusion and brain rot

[@WWZenaDo]

"All things are justified for growth" is the motto of a cancerous tumor.

[@Zond3r]

Amen

[@anmolt3840051]

What I most worry about is the *ABSOLUTELY HUMONGOUS* amount of power that these companies and products consume for not really doing anything productive whatsoever

[@HalfWiseFennec]

Nvidia has the first step in solving this problem with the Blackwell chip, basically general computing will end and specialized computing will take place and the result will be a dramatic decrease in energy consumption. I encourage you to go look at the Blackwell product that Nivea has prototyped

[@HalfWiseFennec]

I would also say that it's disingenuous to say that they produce nothing. Consider what alpha fold is doing for us

[@anmolt3840051]

​@@HalfWiseFennec I have briefly taken a look at Blackwell. It's good to see that they are seriously considering, for example, low-bit-precision computing to tackle power requirements

[@anmolt3840051]

@@HalfWiseFennec My critique is mainly aimed at the mushrooming industry of GenAI startups ... ChatGPT and its many clones and variants

[@sarnaik]

You do realize Adam and all these comments are the same people from the 90s saying the internet is a nothing burger. History repeats itself.

[@lynnswayze]

"The rot economy" -- what an apt term for the enshittification we're experiencing across the board.

[@bonnerin0]

"enshittification" is such a great word

[@Alex_Off-Beat]

​@@bonnerin0It's perfectly cromulent

[@mattmaas5790]

Trump economy is another good word for it. It's accelerated when you legalize stock buybacks for companies with revenue that used to get invested. And slash corporate tax rates on top.

[@auraguard0212]

Funny, "rot economy" was a very good term, that Ed proceeded to butcher by explaining something completely different. He should have said "inflation economy" or "bubble economy". He did not explain enpoopification at all! He just tried and failed to explain WHY it's happening.

[@harperna3938]

@@auraguard0212 Ed's been making the rounds in the leftist podcast sphere recently and, having listened to his material on several different podcasts (including his own), he just doesn't seem to be able to provide much in the way of insightful commentary. It's a lot of indignation and a bunch of half-assed explanations to justify it, but not a lot of substance to back it up.

[@EpicPrawn]

"What if all of your emails could be in the room around you?" Me, who has worked at an extremely understaffed customer help center: please no

[@SahilP2648]

Customer service is gonna be 90-99% replaced over the next few years. It's almost there already. Realistic voices, company information based model fine tuning, fast inference time (groq and embed company ASICs) etc. this is gonna be common place if not already common place.

[@teko363]

@@SahilP2648 I wish I get a dollar everything someone say "AI is going to take over (insert industry) over the next few years"

[@willowdove6703]

@@SahilP2648I’m sure the AI will be GREAT at alleviating customer concerns and addressing complaints /s

[@jerkface38]

​@@SahilP2648nah, I'd hate that. I don't shop anywhere with AI kiosks. I want an actual human. It's bad enough I have to press 1 for English and if I had to deal with an AI chatbot for everything I'd just stary stealing at that point. Who's going to stop me, AI?

[@Osterbaum]

@@SahilP2648 we'll see

[@feefiifoofum]

As a software engineer this is the first time i feel happy that this AI trend is failing, no one wants it and it seems that corporations just continue to push it onto us , i get that AI will make certain things easy but its going to replace the last remnants of the human experience - what little we have left of it anyway.

[@charlottebennett2202]

Chat gpt is an excellent tool

[@theonesithtorulethemall]

What HUMAN EXPERIENCE you talking about???

[@1Know1tHurts]

Be ready, you are going to earn less, much less.

[@raphaelsname]

​@@theonesithtorulethemall The one where you Stare at a computer screen for 8+ hours while being in the vicinity of other humans who are doing the same. Isolation with company!

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

still interested in future of AI and robotics lets see if AI, robots and self driving car can be a reality in next decade fusion on the other hand is still far away breakthrough in battery tech with even current solar panel tech will destroy all fusion funding

[@PristinePerceptions]

AI is an incredible achievement. It takes an insane amount of effort from thousands of supposedly smart people to make computers bad at math.

[@EllieK]

That IS odd, isn't it? The part about AI being poor with math, be it arithmetic or calculus. I know it is true, as of a few months ago, when I checked myself and confirmed with other people.

[@PristinePerceptions]

​@@EllieK it makes sense if you understand what it is. GenAI (the textual form) is really autocompletion on steroids. It is phenomenonal at giving you a "response", but not necessarily an "answer". Because it isn't doing any math. What it will take, is another magnitude jump in capability. It needs to figure out the right combination of tools to answer any question, and GenAI will be only one of those tools. Not saying that this is impossible - maybe in 10 years we may see something like this, who knows - but ChatGPT, or any other GenAI tool, just isn't there yet. OpenAI and it's competitors should really stop the hype and focus on what they have achieved. Which isn't bad at all. But it's far from the panacea they're pretending it to be.

[@Coconut-219]

"supposedly smart"

[@ariloulei814]

My AI professor literally told me Artificial Intelligence is at best a projection of Computer Scientist goals and at worst a marketing term to fool people.

[@RAZR_Channel]

You're going to need to see beyond your teachers... I mean... Look at where he ended up...?

[@vitalyl1327]

@@ariloulei814 your professor is incompetent

[@johnathanfuller1423]

​@RAZR_Channel Ended up as a professor? Sounds good to me.

[@Bendylife]

This is true. I have had presentations from companies claiming they use AI when in reality it was people doing all the work.

[@riflebird4842]

Haha stupid teacher. This what many people said before chatgpt came out.

[@HollyJokerst]

None of this AI false hype surprises me. I live in a big tech city, and the attitude of "new technology is inherently good and worth using and we're not going to ask ourselves whether it actually improves our lives" is super prevalent

[@chrisjonesfilm]

Watching the AI billboards in San Francisco suddenly clutter the skyline, because they're so desperate to sell it, was everything (and a reason I left after living there my entire life.)

[@maniacos9620]

AI can be an useful tool like a search engine is and it can be a toy. But all that blabla about AGI is bs because the technology is not capable of doing anything like AGI, it's simply not possible with a prediction model. They are sophisticated search engines, not our next overlord.

[@VictoriaSobocki]

Ugh

[@TrainerAQ]

Reminds me of VR. Who wants to walk around with an expensive computer on their head any hoodlum can just steal and run away with. On paper it sounds good, but in real life practice it doesn't work. Life is GTA5

[@paigeherrin29]

@@maniacos9620exactly what I use it for. I can verbal vomit a whole mouthful of explaining what I’m searching for and bam! Very refined search that almost every time, it’s exactly what I was looking for. And it gives the “quote” hyperlink so you can just go right to the page.

[@leahwilson9152]

The best thing they could do with AI is automate away CEOs and give their paychecks to the workers

[@crossovermultiverse3882]

Agreed, also better management, more productivity, and more pay for workers who actually worked more than these CEOs

[@NigelUltra]

200 IQ point from a humanitarian perspective lol

[@123jakob1234]

AI sure is a lot better at risk assessment than CEOs anyway. Plus, AI doesn't have an ego.

[@mitch95722]

Being a 30yr in a large hardware tech company. There is no way VR meeting can be productive. It still often people are challenged by mute/headsets issues or NOT EVEN USING A HEADSET, just relying on the laptop microphone... Cmon. But their will be 20 minutes lost at the beginning of each meeting dealing with set up.

[@username7763]

It will make people avoid long meetings because having something strapped to your head is uncomfortable. By having shorter meetings, people are freed up to do actual work.

[@AmazingKevinWClark]

Yeah that was a true Dilbert moment where executives are like, "that's an amazing goal" and all the real tech people are like, "you want to do what??" 😅

[@bearwynn]

@@username7763 comfier headphones exists, people play games for hours and hours with them. the problem is IT departments purchasing the shittiest call centre headphones possible lmao

[@Jottagelado]

Last week my logitech mouse driver poped up anoucing their new ai stuff. what the fuck does my mouse drive need ai for, this is nft all over again, but worse

[@famfandango]

Reminds me of the time I played an NFT card game and had to confirm the transaction per turn. Talk about unnecessary.

[@SahilP2648]

Logitech is dogshit. I don't know why anyone buys their products.

[@GrimReaperNegi]

I think it is mainly a push to collect investors. Like vertical farming.

[@mitlandir5761]

Your mouse has to leverage the power of AI and also be on a blockchain!

[@maxprivate3805]

To spy on you?

[@Bringthapain]

My company announced they want to add AI to our job to make it “easier” yet I’m like “Can’t we just get an extra day off and keep our pay?” 😒

[@adampope5107]

Have fun. There are a couple of models crammed into our monitoring software that basically generate tickets with no useful, and possibly wrong, information in it and cause panic. It's made our jobs worse.

[@JonnyFootman-k5t]

I mean, AI is what would allow that without losing productivity

[@kotoroshinoto]

@@adampope5107 there are cases where ML is useful, but that kind of situation isn't one of them, at least not without a very well designed set of input heuristics curated to be relevant to imminent failures. Otherwise the artificial idiot is prone to false positives and false negatives.

[@adampope5107]

@@kotoroshinoto oh yeah definitely. It's just now an expensive buzzword and the victims have to justify the cost by cramming it into their products regardless of effectiveness.

[@Zomburai45]

@@JonnyFootman-k5t Except: that is not what is happening. What's happening is that companies are using the AI to increase productivity, then filling that workload with more work in an attempt to increase output, and when these generative AI systems (or, you know, not-actually-neural-net-just-automation-with-buzzwords-attached systems) fail, they'll still expect the increased output. At NO point do things ever get better for the workers.

[@BeepBoop-qt4eq]

Five years ago, I was pretty enthusiastic about developing computer tech. GPUs, CPUs I was excited to see the art people would create with them. Games, movies, interactive art. Instead we have vast warehouses of abused GPUs for Crypto and AI scams. I stopped buying tech. I go outside now, do other manual things and hobbies instead. No longer play games or watch movies.

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

video games of today are discount matrix in a way and the things i can do in games are nigh impossbile in real life driving shooting climbing fantasy power elden lord cowboy superheores vigilantes and so on outside is mostly hot with air pollution peple IRL sux ass in general i haven't found outside very interesting yet i hope i also get enlighten like you but chances RN are pretty slim

[@kateapple1]

YOURE A BOT THATS WHY 😂

[@Fishmorph]

The problem with the Large Language Model: it is *iterative* rather than *cumulative.* You throw in some data, crank through it, and it generates a black box that purports to understand language. If you tweak the data or the hyperparameters of your algorithm, it might get more or less good at its job. At *no point* can you say, “Okay, it can do ABC now. How do we get it to do D?” You can’t. You can’t *add on* additional features or functions because the model itself was calculated by computer and we humans cannot understand it. Or edit it. Or redact it.

[@blasphimus]

We can modify its parameters but it's always a statistical model that is only statistical that predicts the next word from given context. Reminder that it has read trillions upon trillions of books and media and yet told someone to put glue on pizza because it absorbed too many meme posts on reddit. Meanwhile Open AI will tell you this tech is smarter then an adult with a 4 year degree. My dog knows 'outside'. It doesn't know English. It doesn't have humans showing billion of pictures of 'outside'. It doesn't even understand what a door is but can figure out how to get outside. And yet we can communicate to some degree. LLMs are smart in their own way but they are far below any semi conscious animal.

[@Fishmorph]

@@blasphimus This is exactly correct. The limits of a statistical model are that there can never be a large enough corpus of data to include *all* possible uses within language; and it will *never* contain enough data so the model can deduce when there are lacunae - for instance, that “beware” is only ever found in imperative form. Since no examples exist that show “beware” in any other conjugation or mood, the model *cannot* understand that this omission is a feature of the language, not an oversight in the data.

[@bearwynn]

"AI" is actually function approximation. In the simplest form it's literally just random weights and biases in a matrix multiplication until we get something that's slightly better at what we are testing for, then we combine it with another combination and rinse and repeat until it improves. It's literally throwing shit at the wall hoping to get to a point where the probability of a mona lisa is higher than completely randomly throwing stuff, and we should be letting it no where near anything of importance.

[@GS-kj5pc]

Wow this comments and the replies are gold. My dad told me in the 80s they called these expert systems. Its just machine learning. It falls under the umbrella of AI. However, its not AI. The court system has the power to bring LLMs to their knees.

[@ChristianIce]

One factor to consider when we talk about bubbles. Not all investors are dumb, but the smart ones know when to put money in a bubble, and when to sell and run away. That makes it pop even stronger.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

Gives it an extra pop.

[@TheMissingxtension]

That is actually what makes it worse, its called pump and dump.

[@ChristianIce]

@@TheMissingxtension Oh, it has a technical term too? Good to know, thanks.

[@The12thOwl]

​@@ChristianIceIt's a term stolen from crypto but it's basically the same thing

[@lolfelixlol]

​@@The12thOwl the concept has been around since at least early 1900s and the term has been used since at least the 90s. (Can't be bothered to Google exact years)

[@robertbensch7748]

Adam purposefully wearing a shirt that messes up video compression to get the AI overlords off his track is genius.

[@brutalandy]

I'm not trying to be a weiner, but it's called Miore. It's a weird thing Cameras do when you have thin stirps like he's wearing. I know you're making a joke but maybe you'll find the answer intresting.

[@CanadianWolverine]

Wear more QR codes and “face / gait recognition” camouflage?

[@robertbensch7748]

​@@brutalandyI thought it's called Moiré, its a shutter effect you can also find in reality if you change your point of view in regards to two overlapping, similar raster cutouts in metal for example. But yes, I was trying to make a joke 😁

[@HeribertoEstolano]

@@robertbensch7748 You were sucessfully on you joke. I laughtet at least. You seeemed like you knew what you were talking about in the original comment while the other guy was explaining something that It was UTTER OBVIOUS that you already knew.

[@graysonllewellyn8734]

@@brutalandy No no! That's fascinating, thank you!

[@ItCameFromTheSkyBeLo]

The fact that this conversation basicqlly didnt include at all the blatant theft that is happening with "Training Data" is fucking wild.

[@RobertStoll]

The issue with these statistical cold reads are grand enough to cover all the issues would take a seminar.

[@ragalyiakos]

It's crazy that the rabbit hole with how shit this tech is goes SO DEEP that you can talk about it for over an hour, and still have other ways you didn't even mention in which this tech is shit.

[@nerdstrangler4804]

I used either bing or google to lookup the properties of some material. The AI automatically spit back a summary of the pros and cons. Under pros, It had "high temperature resistance" then under cons it had "cannot withstand high temperatures." A 5 year old could figure out that makes no sense. These things are dumb as doorknobs.

[@AmazingKevinWClark]

I imagine that what might be happening is that it's pulling from two different sources, for example the company website might say withstands high temperature, but an online reviewer might be saying it cannot withstand high temps.

[@sararobin9452]

​@@AmazingKevinWClarkthat is obviously the case, but if there was any resemblance of intelligence in there that goes beyond the capacity of a research engine, it would notice the fallacy.

[@mattgriffinreal]

Some of these tech companies are trying way too hard to make A.I. into a "thing." It's like... Stop trying to make "fetch" happen...

[@ffelegal]

Yes hahahahaha

[@pcenero]

AI as of now has more in common with procedural generation than sapient intelligence.

[@DoctorMandible]

It's been decades of this...

[@Thornspyre81]

Hahaha!

[@MadafakinRio]

It is a thing tho...

[@XxThePlaylistxX]

All of these companies announced MASSIVE layoffs at the same exact time they announced their MASSIVE investment into AI. Then they tell us it's because of economic slowdown, that we need to "upskill", that it's somehow everyone else's fault.

[@FallacyBites]

The tech industry fired literally hundreds of thousands of highly qualified software developers---a skill that requires years of training AND a brain that can look at the world in a specific and uncommon sort of way, and tech companies are saying Upskilling is required??? I call Bull$#!+ That's like telling elite mountaineers they're just not working hard enough at climbing. My theory?: this is 100% a repeat of the 'white collar recession' of the early '90s. A large swathe of offices would fire a bunch of necessary people, leaving the survivors to do the work of 3 people---so a lot of necessary work was unfinished or done badly. In the short term, stocks went up. After a while, they'd hire 1 person, so everywhere was still understaffed. That new hire was desperate, so they accepted less money. The overall wages go down, and the middle class shrinks some more. That's what's happening now in Tech.

[@Teting7484f]

People on cs subreddits tell you this, it not just companies.

[@sarbe6625]

You know what, if AI is the means through which sillycon valley companies commit collective suicide, I'm in support of AI.

[@mudpuddle7527]

one of the biggest defense internet billonaire bootlickers present for the ultra powerful corporation and billionaire is that they "create job"

[@reedriter2]

There is a causal relationship, but not what you think. Companies looking to invest in AI are trying to cut expenses to free up capital for that investment. That's one big cause of the tech layoffs. Another is that they just plain overhired.

[@goodrobotsai]

I work in Tech and everything you have said is Spot on. AI has existed for a long time before these Tech Bros in Silicon Valley decided to latch onto it. What I want to know is who is going to 'Bailout' these idiots when the stock market crashes? Because it will when everyone catches up to their grift.

[@Vesta_the_Lesser]

When people like Sam Altman talk about “the future of AI” they are not thinking about making a good product that benefits people. They are only thinking about making money off of that product. It’s such toxic hyper focus on the future and refusal to live in the present that it’s mind blowing.

[@adampope5107]

They're capitalists. There is only one goal and that's to own everything. It is not to improve anything unless it's a way to shift the relative balance of power towards them and away from us so in the end, it ends up being bad anyway.

[@mossboss5695]

They want to build god and then make it work every single customer service job simultaneously as if that's a recipe for something good.

[@mattmaas5790]

I disagree. I think they are happy to do whatever our representatives in congress demand of them, like he said in his senate hearing.

[@USGrant21st]

When Sam Altman was asked how he was going to make money, he answered he had no clue.

[@01107345]

cmon. You're talking about the people who helped build it and released it, albeit admittedly by working on the shoulders of giants. They also released Plus for $20/month. That's nothing. They didn't have to do that. It's possible that they didn't release it at a price that was optimal for profits.

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

silicon valley is so infuriating imagine someone running an ice cream truck and just handing out free ice cream all the time. well, of course that ice cream truck is going to be the most popular one ever but how do you cover your costs? how do you make any money? the silicon valley answer to this is, 'we'll just use VC money and constantly operate at a loss. we have no plan beyond that' and that would be kind of funny except in the analogy you drive all of the other ice cream trucks out of business before your own unsustainable plan collapses and now nobody can get ice cream anymore they're being allowed to cheat the system, doing damage to actual businesses forced to run within the margins of a budget, and then being called visionary geniuses because... they run companies at a loss and release products that only seem good for a while because those products are vastly underpriced

[@mattmaas5790]

Do you also know how they sell token access through their API for applications that integrate openai and claude?

[@Pirata_Vermelho]

It's Uber model and Ifood(Basil). The take the market fist, with a LOT of loss. Then they bring the cost at normal again, but this time they own everything. The ice cream will be the same price, but know it's only one brand. Welcome to capitalism.

[@Ornithopter470]

​@@Pirata_Vermelhoexcept that it's not really the capitalist model that's broken here. It's specifically the VC based tech companies being able to get away with shit because they claim it's different from traditional business.

[@Pirata_Vermelho]

@@Ornithopter470 tell me, these "real capitalism" is with us in the room?

[@Ornithopter470]

@@Pirata_Vermelho not what I said at all. In a sane universe, Uber and doordash both would have probably gone bankrupt long before they became household names. The lack of a realistic map leading to profitability for these companies should have been a serious warning sign. But, VC money.

[@b.w.6919]

Funny enough, listening to this is making me think of the modern AAA games industry: over-promise an idea, under deliver as a product, urge that it will get better with time, then monetize every step of the way.

[@A1stardan]

Abandon midway, repeat

[@johnnymatias3027]

Abandon at the exact moment where the monetization produces profit, don't care at all about the quality and start a new project. I've simply stopped buying AAA games at this point like I've stopped using Facebook. It's mostly garbage so why pay more for it. I drive a 96 pickup so maybe I'm just not a good person to ask about this shit.

[@garykelley9027]

The company I work for has training videos, and they just started to try to make them "interactive AI" Metaverse nonsense, and everyone I know goes on to file an exception, says they have motion sickness, and takes the alternate video because WE DO NOT WANT THIS GARBAGE!

[@Vesta_the_Lesser]

“We are being told one thing and presented another.” That’s always how it is in the United States isn’t. We’re told that if we work hard we will succeed. Meanwhile, there are people working two jobs who are struggling to keep a roof over their head, NAFTA made it easier to offshore jobs and most recently jobs are being eliminated by AI. So we are told that working hard is success when in reality working hard is someone else’s success until they can replace you for an even cheaper option.

[@tofu_golem]

When game executives got excited about adding NFT to every conceivable game, I remember thinking "Which gamer actually wants this? Which gamer asked for this? It seems like the executives are very excited about this, and the average game consumer couldn't be bothered to give a damn." Now we have AI buttons on mice and keyboards. Is anyone else getting "NFT game item" vibes from this?

[@fPonias1]

I suppose a valid application of AI to game design would be in making the bots less stupid or procedurally generated levels to be less boring but I can't imagine management limiting themselves to useful applications when there's so much hype.

[@onjulraz754]

​@@fPonias1seen a great mod that uses character descriptions to create unique portraits for generated NPCs. Pretty sweet!

[@w花b]

Yeah but it's worse because AI has actual use cases and you can fool people into thinking that it's presence in your rice cooker is necessary lol

[@snakesnoteyes]

Gamers who wanted to trade rare items in alternative markets were pretty stoked for a new area to speculate in

[@spacekitt.n]

95% of the ai they are pushing solves a problem the world doesnt have

[@jimmypickles1123]

I feel like if I studied every artist and every image ever uploaded, I'd at least be able to draw hands.

[@pin65371]

The hand problem has been solved a long time ago.

[@dreamwanderer9769]

​@@pin65371Eh, I still see messed up hands time to time in AI generated images. This is just AI bro cope

[@Isaacthemaniac]

@@dreamwanderer9769 i still see messed up hands with humans sometimes, this is just human bro cope

[@WokeandProud]

​@@pin65371No it wasn't you're full of shit it still does hands horribly.

[@GIGADEV690]

​@@pin65371a long time ago I saw a baby having a half leg half hand

[@czarquetzal8344]

I asked ChatGPT to write effective business letter. The result is cliche-filled, wordy letter that I still need to edit.

[@unseeliedream42]

here in italy, two months ago, the regional center for learning in school sent to all the teachers a pamphlet to learn how to use chatgpt to create homework for the kids - said homework will be probably done with chatgot. that is the absurdity of AI atm

[@wesleymitchell2460]

Companies: Yeah, we can lose millions on this garbage program that shits mediocrity. Also Companies: No, you can't have a raise. Costs like that are untenable.

[@Jasper_the_Cat]

Oh wow I feel like you are in my brain.

[@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme]

Apple to their unions: no, that's unworkable and too expensive for us, we're not agreeing to that Also Apple: Hey Shareholders, we're announcing a $110 billion buyback program! (Equivalent to giving away $750k per employee)

[@thegamesninja3119]

@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme if they keep buying back stock, they can eventually go private and no longer worry about maintaining stock price.

[@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme]

@@thegamesninja3119 I think it is woefully expensive as it currently is, and not to mention that even if they buy back stock, the price will just keep going up and maintain a $3T market cap, so my hunch is that it'll get more expensive as the market maintains as identical a valuation as pre-buyback. Granted, I suck at getting jokes so my bad if I forgot to laugh xD

[@thegamesninja3119]

​@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme likely more sarcasm than anything else. Use of failed humor to make a point. Bubble chasers now have Web3 to try to get rich quick, so they are left with buying back stock. Stock buybacks are a valid choice... if a company has no clue as to what they can work on next... or what it means to be human. Again, sarcasm. My humorist very dry at times. Just call me Sandy.

[@kelton5020]

"The markets are disconnected from value" nail on the head there

[@charlesreid9337]

Always has been.Wall street started off as a fixed cattle trading market. US capitalism is based in fraud

[@mattmaas5790]

? Ai is probably under invested in in my opinion. It's world changing.

[@MomirsLabTech]

​@@mattmaas5790 you're right, it sure is world changing. Training AI models has caused a massive spike in electricity usage and computer components manufacturing to support those training efforts, negatively impacting our environment. It's also been implemented without regulation on a grand scale, causing as others have said to be the "enshittification" of the internet at large. Google is largely useless now and social media has been flooded with ai powered bot accounts, a lot of which are malicious. Don't forget about the massive layoffs in the tech industry that were triggered by these AI models rendering human input "redundant" and expendable, and the constant threat of theft/actual theft that is occurring to artists who post their work online almost anywhere in order to train models to replicate their own works royalty and license free. I'm *so* glad that the tech industry pushed the use of AI onto the general public /s

[@tomazferreira6990]

​@@mattmaas5790I think about half of this interview is on providing arguments against your perspective.

[@mattmaas5790]

@tomazferreira6990 can you name a single reason lol? These guys have no idea what they're talking about.

[@pb_and_nutella]

“It’s an automated DM” Brennan Lee Mulligan would like a *word*

[@JONNYSORENSEN_AU]

if your emails are all around you in VR basically you are in Hellraiser and should think about all the choices that lead to this moment.

[@gregoryferraro7379]

In French, Chat GPT sounds like, "Chat, j'ai pété," which means, "Cat, I farted." That says a lot about where this is going and how people feel.

[@w花b]

Yeah in french you're supposed to write "Tchat" but people seem to use the English word which makes it very confusing too.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

"like wiping your ass with silk "

[@newelllondon724]

It definitely farted last week at the Presidential debate. We weren’t supposed to see the Biden shit show. He was supposed to be cleaned up using AI CNN held the “debate” at the Georgia Tech basketball arena to get around the robust CNN network security Then the two candidates had separate camera feeds (split screens at times) The Biden campaign and media went to the DC FEMA center and deployed AI to clean him up. The telltale signs were all there. Cardboard appearance and black edging contouring his suit

[@emmanuelm4808]

AI is definitely in bubble territory

[@Disaster_Tourist]

Always polite to warn your poor cat though

[@Grizabeebles]

Re: Facebook and growth --> Too bad Zuck didn't realize that eliminating poverty would grow his user base.

[@TheMissingxtension]

🤯🤯🤯

[@Dong_Harvey]

But what's the point of being rich if you don't get to know that you definitely stepped on everybody on the way.

[@auraguard0212]

Dumping money on people results in them wasting most of it and prices increasing. Plus Zuck isn't THAT rich. 😅

[@Grizabeebles]

@@auraguard0212 -- I never said anything about welfare. I'm talking about investing. Zuck could have beaten Musk to the punch on Starlink decades ago. The problem is that investing in literacy, water treatment, disease prevention electrification, and internet access would have taken a generation and next to nobody in tech seems to think in a 20-year time scale.

[@lukepurse9042]

Imagine if they just delivered a product that people actually wanted. Dollars signs for days!

[@redtailarts101]

My personal fear with AI is that people won't care about what's good, and studios will create shitty AI scripts for movies, then move to shitty AI animation when they can, and so many people will hop on it that it's all we get.

[@larissabrglum3856]

I'm not too worried about that. People don't necessarily care what's good, but there's no replacement for a human soul being behind a piece of art. AI-generated scripts aren't just low quality, they're completely lacking what people are looking for when they go to a movie. Even a bad movie made by humans is going to have more value to moviegoers than something generated by an algorithm. I just don't think there's going to be a demand for movies that are literally soulless.

[@t3tsuyaguy1]

Here's the thing. Across our entire business culture, a critical shift happened. No one's actual job is what appears in their job description. Their job is managing the perception of the person who signs their performance eval. As it turns out, the skill set that makes you good at managing perception, does not make you good at actually solving problems. In fact, just the opposite. It is best to maintain a problem while shifting the blame elsewhere. It requires less effort on your part. Your direct supervisor will begin expecting to hear from you that nothing has progressed, because they understand the problem to be someone else's fault, in someone else's control. People who operate this way have slowly saturated leadership and decision-making positions throughout the country. Their day-to-day calculus is completely unmoored from the truth. The truth is a non-entity, fully irrelevant to goal. It is much more important to provide a low effort way for _your_ superior to pretend to _their_ superior that everything is under control.

[@aphoxema]

This is the first time I ever heard of Ed Zitron and I've never laughed out loud like an idiot in the middle of housework so many times that I'm instantly obsessed with anything he ever does

[@CaptainFram]

Highly recommend his Better Offline podcast!

[@djadelaney]

Robert Evans regales Ed Zitron with stories of awful people on Behind the Bastards a lot. He was on the Steve Jobs episodes. He is very funny and I love his voice

[@justingerald]

@@djadelaney ah I knew I recognized his voice

[@rvantong]

Google The Man Who Killed Google Search

[@rebeccat9389]

Yeah honestly I am impressed.

[@wesleyhudson2779]

so many older managers legitimately thinking we would hold meetings on the metaverse

[@anderslarsen4412]

The same ones who are already in the middle of laying off workers - because the actually believe the tech is able to do most of the work already... Thinking about how people so clueless and out-of-touch have been able to fail upwards this long is infuriating. Makes you realise how much of all of this is just complete BS.

[@kapsi]

Jesus wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.

[@theeccentric7263]

⁠@@kapsi 🤓☝️ “jesus wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer”

[@joannot6706]

You think we'll just continue to have meeting as zoom calls or skype forever and not in a more immersive 3d environment when the technology will be available and affordable (e.g. not apple VR)

[@wesleyhudson2779]

@@joannot6706 we will when it is a better alternative that can be done with the same or less effort. Right now - doesn’t provide anything more useful than zoom and requires more effort.

[@benjaminsandeen9241]

Great video, but it's disappointing that you don't discuss the blatant and utter disregard for ethics that the entire AI "industry" has for stealing everything it can get its hands on

[@GlassesnMouthplates]

The fact that the "acceptable" video clips generated by SORA cost a lot more money and time than conventional filming makes me think of how it actually would consume a lot more resources for the US to fake the moon landing and keep it a secret through all these decades.

[@unduloid]

Those insane Google AI answers are actually gathered from really old forum posts and web articles, most of which were parodies. AI simply can't handle irony.

[@timothystamm3200]

Right because it only knows how to produce sentences like the ones it has seen, it does not know what any of the words mean or the mood, voice, or intentions of the speaker.

[@empanada223]

@@timothystamm3200 Yup, computers are not human. (shocking...) Computers cannot decipher human context or meaning in anything they copy. Sure, you can "program" a computer into deciphering mood or meaning but that's not the same thing. Also, not even the greatest programmer in the world can do that for every conceivable thought or question.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

It can handle irony...by taking it at face value.

[@thegamesninja3119]

ChatGPT said a game I invented was created in the 19th century, making me immortal.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

Behold: the God-Emperor of Mankind!

[@thegamesninja3119]

@darksidegryphon5393 who knew the secret to that title and power was the creating of games no one cares about? 🥷

[@carultch]

@@thegamesninja3119 What game is it, out of curiosity?

[@thegamesninja3119]

@@carultch Oneonta Whist. ChatGPT confuses it with regular Whist, which was of note in the 19th century.

[@ClickBeetleTV]

You used it wrong, and it acted wrong as a consequence. ChatGPT isn't an information repository; it's a language processing system.

[@therandompineapple3805]

I don't think we're anywhere near the point of chat GPT writing code for games for us. However, I did see a demo for a game called suck up which basically revolves around you, playing as a vampire and trying to convince people to let you into their house. But the cool part was that all of the people were AI they had distinct personalities and instead of giving you a pre-programmed response you could actually have a conversation with them. That is a genuinely great use for AI and video games and I can't wait to see more of it

[@blasphimus]

A lot of these Demos are made to seem better than they really are. The reality often shows they don't work as intended. And you can still break the GPT fairly easily. Plus it doesn't hold memory either so imagine chatting with someone who forgets the next conversation. It's just a dynamic NPC rather than a heavily scripted one.

[@joker927]

AI is the next NFT which came after IoT which came after SocialMedia. Each have left behind some useful things and the majority of it was useless cashgrabs.

[@AnthonyStatera]

I saw a meme once that summed it up nicely. "I dont want Ai to create art, entertainment or learn for me, I want Ai to clean my house, do my taxes, do the mundane things so I can create art, entertaiment, learn new things and have time to socialize." - Ai is targetting the low hanging capitalistic fruit so they can make profit. If there is a bubble lets hope it burst soon so some real progress can happen that benefits us all.

[@tonysolar284]

NEVER train your AI off Reddit data.

[@Hosea405]

I was laughing my ass off when I saw that Google was buying Reddit data... I knew where it would end and was not mistaken lol

[@tonechild5929]

Yeah they should've used discord instead

[@stevengill1736]

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that....

[@snakesnoteyes]

Or fanfic websites

[@Huggybear711]

ALWAYS train your AI off reddit data

[@Sunmonks]

It isn’t curing any diseases, it ain’t helping people earn more, it ain’t helping new businesses become profitable, so we should ask ourselves why it took so long for ppl to realize how stupid the whole AI hype cycle is. All it does is draw bad pictures, and make bad music. Glad we can all move on.

[@Liostro]

"markets are disconnected from value" hits so fucking hard

[@SpiderKnives]

Another thing about Sora and the woman in the Hong Kong street evolving into a full blown movie - how do you make a movie if you can't even have the same person across shots?

[@danielmethner6847]

It's an engineering problem. The current AI capabilities are pretty much just there without much engineering having gone into product development. It's like saying databases won't help automate accounting processes, because they don't write the SQL queries automatically. We have barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of current AI from an engineering and product development perspective.

[@SpiderKnives]

@@danielmethner6847 that is absolutely NOT an engineering problem. Set and object persistence between shots in AI generated values will load so much artifacts and bullshit into a scene even if you gave them a decade. And quit with this "in the future" BS just because it seems like it MIGHT happe , nobody believes that anymore and if you still do I got a 2016 self driving car to sell you.

[@Hjernespreng]

​@@danielmethner6847Except as the video clearly explains, there's a hard limit to how much the AI will be ABLE to do, and especially doing it in a way thst is COST and TIME effective.

[@danielmethner6847]

@Hjernespreng Well thankfully not everything one may find in a KZbin video is accurate.

[@carlobinance]

18 months ago, before Sora: "How can AI generate a video clip from a prompt when AI generated images have so many issues." My point: look at the pace of progress in the recent past to give you a sense of the near future.

[@anthonydevito1815]

Ai, basically stealing our own hard earned work and talents and selling it back to us as a “convenience”

[@Sunmonks]

For real

[@USGrant21st]

AI is a BS generator, ask it anything out of ordinary and it starts hallucinating.

[@HalfWiseFennec]

ChatGPT is literally free

[@sabin97]

@@HalfWiseFennec i tried it a few times. it's good for trivial stuff. but if you press it for any specific formulas for anything that isnt trivial, it gives you either incorrect, or circular responses.

[@lequoiscontreonu]

Like copying someone's blog post and spill in it out as it it was novelty text or imitating style that artist has had perfected for years.

[@Carlin2810]

But if AI fails how do social media sites censor information in real time to stop people talking about stuff the establishment doesnt want you talking about.

[@ElTuco84]

The effect of nausea in VR is not an issue of the hardware itself, its an alert response of our organism to our eyes watching our bodies moving in a virtual environment and our bodies feeling like they're not really moving. It goes away after a few days, I find unfair criticizing VR because of that, and most games allow you to custom movement in a more comfortable way.

[@iferlyf8172]

Seeing the AI images becoming inbred due to the massive numbers of AI images online that gets fed back to the AI made me stop seeing genAI as much of a threat tbh

[@iferlyf8172]

Like at the very least they will be forced to add SOMETHING to those images to differentiate them from the man made ones, so there will always be a way to tell

[@pixels_per_minute]

This is somewhat the foundations for the Dead Internet & the Dark Forrest theories. Eventually, so much of the internet will be full of so much artificial nonsense that it will supposedly drive real human users to a handful of private and secure services, in hopes of getting away from the bots. Honestly, with how much nonsense is already on the internet, I feel those theories aren't too far off.

[@DreamcastSoup]

Ai art was never good to begin with lol

[@cyrus6461]

​@@DreamcastSoup unless the person "doing" the art takes like... Idk 4+ hours "making" the image... And I'm at that point just like "dude just learn to draw, you clearly have an image in your head. Learn to draw so you can put it on paper"

[@jamessderby]

that's funny because that's not happening and you're just repeating what you heard

[@tjet34]

My husband works in tech. We're very concerned what's coming later this year or next. When the AI bubble bursts, it'll take a number of industries with it, and likely be the thing that bursts a bunch of other bubbles.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

Oh the curse of living in interesting times

[@jonathanlindsey8864]

You are either lying, or your husband is an idiot. Here's the thing about bubbles, *You can't see them* People think AI is a bubble because they keep comparing it to .com. Main concerns with 'bubbles' is people dump money into a thing, and nothing profitable comes out of it. But we are already seeing returns on basic AI ( not even pushing agi groups ). Where the new modeling techniques help critique existing narrow AI systems.

[@stonykark]

If you have savings, get out while you can. It’s never too late to change careers, but it will soon be too late to hang on to the one he once had.

[@xXstevilleXx]

Thing is, there is a reason why at least 5 countries have outright banned AI, some since GPT3. Other issue hardly mentioned is the CO2. The amount of energy used to train these LLMs is shocking, it is is not sustainable. Big tech knows this and you can find out just how bad if you do the research. The reason it will halt is ironically not related to the technical problems that are facing but instead climate change. There is a reason why FinalSpark is taking a different approach (yes they mention this issue) but what they do is controversial, since it deal with ethics... after all, using 'human biological tissue'... best is to research this.

[@tjet34]

@@stonykark yeah... We just bought a house and have a baby on the way, he's looking at other options. His work has always been a bit unstable, usually going from one startup to another every couple years, but his current job is the most stable yet. Just not sure it's going to stay that way :/

[@macmccormick5983]

I'm disturbed that companies like MS and Google are completely blowing past their sustainability commitments in service of using AI. And for what?

[@Thehighwayman429]

"I will check Sam; I got it in my flipping calendar. I do." I am so here for this level of petty vengeance, you can't even imagine. Thank you, Ed Zitron.

[@trannusaran6164]

As someone who ground away learning to code to get out of the literal farms and fields in 2022, then worked successfully in semiconductors for a year before the layoffs hit...this is EXACTLY the kinda shit I'm worried about. Not skynet, not HAL 9000, but 2008 pt 2.

[@ekwensu8797]

Do you still work in tech?

[@trannusaran6164]

@@ekwensu8797 applying everywhere, but mostly washing dishes now

[@keremgo3d]

it's not just a bubble; it's also a cult.

[@mattmaas5790]

You're in denial, you got clickbaited by non scientists.

[@CharlesAnjos]

like every scam ever

[@anju5124]

Is it the new NFT?

[@Michanicks]

@@anju5124 yes

[@akeelyaqub2538]

​@@mattmaas5790and you've been brainwashed by corporate bs. Like the metaverse, like the data revolution, like the dropshipping craze and so on and so on. Once the bubble bursts, you'll move on to the next fad and fall for the bs all over again. Have fun with whatever shiny new thing corporations shove in your face and you seal clap for.

[@Rexini_Kobalt]

_im putting glue in my pizza sauce and you cant stop me!_

[@sha8photo]

I was most concerned with it destroying creator livelihoods. I’m now most concerned about it cancelling health care plans or refusing payouts

[@matiascamprubi-soms7719]

I always assumed that if they had something amazing, they would have shown us by now. First rule: show, don't tell

[@epb9000]

It's a solution in search of a problem. Most of the specialized solutions that already exist are better, so it's hard to fit genAI into an actually useful task. And when you can, there's often a less resource-intensive option that does that useful task better. It's good at summarization or rewriting, I guess. That can be occasionally useful, but not as a standalone product.

[@jonathan0berg]

​@@epb9000if not for the over-hyped expectations I think we could see that AI in its current limited state is already pretty neat, and even useful in the right context. "Pretty neat" and "occasionally useful" are a far cry from the corporate hype we are being sold though.

[@GiggaGMikeE]

@@epb9000 Yep, add it to the list of the "Metaverse", NFTs, and cryptocurrency aka "Things that we have to invent problems for so that we can sell as a solution or at the very least turn into a grifting bubble we can make billions on through speculation and hype and then rug pull and shift to something else"

[@GiggaGMikeE]

@@jonathan0berg I kinda agree, but it's "pretty neat" quality alone also comes at the expense of all the data being stolen to power it. It's like a hover car that runs on insulin. Sure, it's "pretty neat" but very quickly becomes a needless waste even if it's not hyped up as the "standard of the future".

[@tokreal]

@@epb9000 Disagree - the language problem does exist and indeed a giant step has been made with the new gen LLMs. There also exists no other software that does it actually better to my knowledge (feel free to educate me if I am wrong). That the costs of the solution is in no way appropiate to the problem it is solving is obvious. That google / Microsoft / Meta market the LLM's as a solution to everything instead of stating what it actually does (as in it solves the language problem) is another problem, but in terms of technology the new gen LLMs are really a giant leap.

[@melimsah]

My CEO, who is so boomer he refuses to use slack when the rest of the company does, keeps pushing for us to add AI into our processes SOMEHOW just to make investors happy. I'm so jaded now that I'm just sitting back with my tea and waiting for shit to burn.

[@direktive4]

@@melimsah slack does have ‘AI’ features doesnt it?

[@Mordofatal]

Haha, I was there 6 years ago but with blockchain. Thank God that startup failed and I was able to move onto different things.

[@Kereea]

Yeesh. Meanwhile my family is trying to essentially find "elder friendly Discord-like" for my grandmother and her friends' meal meetup planning. That'd be freaking AWESOME. Because they need forums, not email chains, but are also in their eighties and nineties and need it to be easy.

[@nikinikolov6570]

He is not wrong, though. It is incredibly stupid but adding AI somehow in your product at the moment demonstratively improves your company's performance on the stock market. Same way everybody and their mother wanted to have something involving "block chain technology " and TIOT. From the perspective of an executive this is the correct move. Moronic, but it is the stupidity of our markets and consumers that eat up tech babble without a second thought. The executives just do what makes number go up. To be fair that is their job.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

​@@nikinikolov6570 think of the shareholder's first Utility comes later And profit comes last (if ever)

[@daispy101]

That point about how people used social media as a town square to meet and discuss stuff, that are now gated garden squares lined with billboards.

[@danielhild9448]

Whenever corporations start to try to profit off of something, all progress in that initiative will atrophy to nothing.

[@derricksteen403]

To be fair to Google about the fiber, the other providers fought them every step of the way. They did everything they could to prevent Google fiber from entering the areas they controlled because they knew they would have to improve their infrastructure and pricing to compete.

[@mattmullett9521]

And its still going strong where it did grab a foothold. I'm a GF subscriber paying $70/mo for 1gb. But I realize how lucky I am compared to a lot of places.

[@Praisethesunson]

So you are saying the internet search monopoly had trouble trying to break into the already monopolized telecom industry?

[@ArtemGms]

@@mattmullett9521 America? It's still insane for me, as an European that pays $8.5/mo for 1/1 Gbps to imagine how bad it is in America when it comes to fiber. Especially considering how America was always considered as"that technologically advanced" country here.

[@trenvert123]

I remember over a decade ago before google fiber was anywhere other than a couple of cities, there was a guy offering gigabit speed internet, and ISPs sued him until he ran out of money. capitalism is such a drain on innovation. I'm still mad about the sugar substitute that is a protein, so it's low calorie, low glycemic, called brazzein. Naturally occurring in plants in West Africa, and the people trying to bring it to market were blocked. It's only now starting to come out, I'm guessing after sugar companies were able to get their hands on it. Or even the drug risug that is reversible male contraceptive first made in India that was stopped because it was too effective. It could last 8 years, so it was made not available, and an American version that lasts 1 year is being worked on. Not only that, but risug is already market ready, but vasalgel is still years away.

[@derricksteen403]

@@ArtemGms Jesus, I didn't know that it was that cheap

[@JasonGulya]

My favorite: when companies and CEOs looked at completely crazy results and said that it was the AI programs being "creative."

[@ArkaSaura]

The irony here is that people in the creative industry today, the digital space, including the very platform we're watching on, were accused of not being "creative" and not being real "journalists" or not being real entertainment. All "real" means is incumbency.

[@SloMoMonday]

It always just a data model compiling something halfway interesting out of a near infinite number of seeds and a massive training set. I'm curious how these companies take this stuff to enterprise customers. "Our system will let you fire 99% of staff for a tool that 10% chance of providing correct data."

[@alexcardosa8079]

@@SloMoMonday At the Enterprise level its about using the decades of data created that no one can parcel or use in any meaningful way. LLM not getting things right is mostly as it always has been, look to the humans not understanding the technology or just having bad data sets. Sound like everyone wants magic and is mad when its going to take a lot of smart people and years to make it better.

[@spqri3]

​@@SloMoMonday Humans work off of data models in their head. Enterprise uses humans.

[@spacekitt.n]

ai has hit a wall and plateau'd. machine learning can only go so far

[@vincent21212]

I call bs. I was a college student in the 2000's and Im back in college in 2024 - LLMs are a game-changer. No question. As a "co-pilot" to research, writing and (sometimes) maths, they've changed everything. And it has accelerated my learning, even as an older student vs my first time around. If chatGPT turned around and started charging $100 a month tomorrow for the same exact service (and even less than) I would pay it in a heartbeat. Even with its flaws and hallucinations, it's the only way to go since Google has killed search and made the broader webpage ecosystem worthless and dead.

[@Adam-vf4fs]

Supreme court took care of regulations. So no worries there. They can practically do as they please and no way insane congress will work together to regulate them

[@vannyblutea]

nothing makes me happier than news of the imminent ai bubble bursting... as an artist, hate that sh*t so much. as a person i hate it even more.

[@vvee4725]

Digital artists weren't considered "artists" for the longest time. They were accused of being cheap imitations that only produced mass produced garbage.

[@charlesreid9337]

Llm' will end up just being a tool like Photoshop. You can't. Copyright the work so no company will use it

[@teeteestar3012]

I know what you mean. I’m a writer. I can’t wait for A.I. to go downhill and burst into flames. 🙄

[@justinqpa]

​@@charlesreid9337 lmao thats perfect. Big power hoarding corpos love their copyright baby

[@jogadorjnc]

@@charlesreid9337 No company uses photoshop?

[@gorzonthechampion6784]

AI has at least made non trained voice typing way better. As a dyslexic person this has been a huge improvement in my life, but the effect AI has had on the internet are not worth it.

[@Kereea]

Yep. Small AI tools to do a very specific thing are the only thing that seems to have any potential. Like Amazon's AI that summarizes all of a product's reviews or even searches the reviews for certain info for you. Simple, not revolutionary, but improves the experience to make you more likely to Buy The Thing, which is how Amazon makes its money.

[@LC-sc3en]

The lesson they started with in my first User Oriented Design class is that you have to first figure out what users want and also what they need. Sometimes people know exactly what they want. Sometimes need and sometimes they think they know what they want but the root of that desire is a problem that they either haven’t quite identified correctly or there is a solution that is different to the one they asked for that actually is better or simpler for everyone. Good design engineering figures out the problem and develops a solution for a specific problem or set of use cases. LLMs and other AI algorithms can be used as a tool for very specific use cases especially if the interface is good but they are not General Artificial Intelligence. Like he said there are use cases out there. They just aren’t the broad “everyone will use it” industry destroying takeover that is being sold to people.

[@mattmaas5790]

​​@@Kereeaeven big general ai tools like chat gpt and claude 3.5 are astonishingly intelligent when used over their api to execute software functions on the fly.

[@doomedwit1010]

Yeah. There are good things software can do. But it's not going to be a 1 trillion a year product. I am in an industry where we still pay people to do dictation, and I need certified transcripts But court reporters are using AI to do a rough transcript and then they listen to it and fix. That is a big time saver to skip a step. But it's snot a 1 trillion industry

[@mattmaas5790]

@@doomedwit1010 wrong

[@FutureAIDev2015]

I think what people call AI, which is basically just a complicated statistical model of language, needs to be replaced with something that somehow actually has the capacity to perform real logical inference and understand what it's talking about instead of just continuously predicting the next symbol in a string.

[@gruntsghosts3885]

Something to note, many of the people who support AI are also the same people who support NFTs.

[@bizzy1648]

i have been so depressed looking around and seeing everyone being duped by this nonsense. you have no idea how much hope and relief this conversation brought me. from contra last week to this you have really helped uplift me during this stupid stupid stupid dark time that we';re all suffering through. thank you adam

[@Skutnu]

Depressed? The people will keep getting duped. The people are too busy chasing dopamine highs to understand when something techy sounding is scamming them. It will only get worse. Grow up.

[@pickledshoe]

Same here as an artist this is really good news

[@mattmaas5790]

You are the one who is duped. I'm a computer engineer and has seen the proof with my own eyes. It is a huge breakthrough.

[@smaza2]

from the perspective of a coder - honestly it's been disastrous because the managerial class has bought into it, and the people actually doing the work are being dismissed or having the team size reduced because ai can spit out mediocre code snippets. and now there's less of us doing the same job and a lot of our time is taken up by trying to tweak the bad code to actually work in the broader context of whatever our product is

[@GiovannaIwishyou]

AI should replace middle management, not workers.

[@3dartxsi]

The thing is that even code that has been written and checked by people still gets released with bugs(sometimes glaring ones) that were not spotted because you simply cannot anticipate every possible issue that crops up in real world circumstances. Now these software companies are moving to a world where they are going to be putting out whole products with massive amounts of code that they are assuming works, sight unseen, that no one even knows how it works because an AI wrote it, and it seems to work during a limited beta. I'm not even talking about just smartphones or games. This can happen with airliners and cars.

[@SahilP2648]

I mean I am a software developer and I can tell you for sure it saves so much time. I am 50-300% more productive. Tbh the big companies should be threatened since all the people who were fired can create startups that can threaten these big companies using generative AI. It really does allow people to start single developer companies and develop games etc. which wasn't possible before.

[@SahilP2648]

​@@GiovannaIwishyou not high IQ workers* low IQ jobs should indeed be replaced by AI like customer service, fast food, factory jobs etc.

[@no.5924]

Don't worry bro, they will see their day

[@karolusmagnus3992]

"they want growth but they don't invest for it" While true, it misses the point. They want quarterly growth, not long term growth. Their entire purpose is to make number go up as soon as possible, so obviously investing for the long term is bad policy. I think this whole mindset is stupid and destroying the environment and society as a whole, and leaving hundreds of millions poor while a few are obscenely wealthy, but what they're doing is absolutely logical under the system they're in. which is why we need to change the system rather than just hoping these massive corporations are going to just magically "do the right thing"

[@terranova8890]

We can only wish lol... In america poor people support Trump and lower taxes for corporations that can only hurt them more, it's really sad to see

[@snakesnoteyes]

No one asked for “A.I.” Like this. My next phone will be a dumb phone.

[@RapsCalorie]

Ironically, buying a Pixel phone makes it super easy to ditch Google because Pixels are one of the few models left with unlockable bootloaders. My phone has a completely google free profile for day to day use then a sandboxed profile with google services running in their own sandboxes if the app I need requires them. I use GrapheneOS but there are a few options.

[@Imevul]

I almost got a dumb phone last week. Unfortunately, there are still a few apps I need for work and for everyday convenience. Contactless payments and bank app being the main ones. Maps is also extremely useful since I'm terrible at knowing where I am going. Might be worth getting two phones, and just having the smart phone off most of the time.

[@snakesnoteyes]

@@Imevul work phone and personal phone (and learning how to read a map to plan a route)

[@TheReferrer72]

@@Imevul Hilarious, so smartphones are good?

[@toxizenz]

@Imevul i was expecting something actually related to work, like a sign-in or communication app or something, not three easily replacable apps 😭

[@yebkamin]

It's still hilarious to me that people refuse to call facebook "meta" and twitter as "x". I think some of it is just habit but i also think it is interesting that twitter and facebook are the names of there first and most successful products and the rebrand attempts have brought us nothing new. Its like our brains refuse to adapt until these company's prove they are worthy of these rebrands. We have built in bs meters.

[@bluester7177]

I don't think that's true for Facebook as much as it is for X, Facebook is still called Facebook, what's is called Meta is the company responsible for the product, so most of the time people are using the names appropriately, they are Facebook for the social media and Meta for the company which is trying very hard to not let it die.

[@Praisethesunson]

That's a great way to describe it. We are developing a natural immunity to corporate BS.

[@FallacyBites]

​@@bluester7177yeah. the only reason I let the word 'meta' into my brain regarding that company is them also owning instagram. I still think it's a shit name for them---to quote a character from M.O.D.O.K.: "They think they're deep, but they're just trite."

[@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070]

I REFUSE to refer to Facebook as anything other than Facebook. Everyone was using "meta" as its intended meaning Zuck saw that and decided to steal a word from normal people conversation and name his dogshite company after it. Idgaf I will never refer to his business as meta, its definitely not meta. And I already don't use twitter so idgaf what its called. Actually to be fair to Muskrat, "X" was an old company name he had before his Paypal days so at least he already had the idea rolling around in his head

[@FallacyBites]

@@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070 X as a lone name is so fucking stupid. He's trying SO HARD to be cool circa 1990

[@davidintokyo]

The problem with Facebook, Instagram and the like for third world folks is that it makes no sense to put up ads to people who don't have any money to spend.

[@Coconut-219]

and the problem for advertisers in the first-world is, *"we already know your product exists... we just still don't want to buy it"*

[@metacob]

We went from "oh, this thing is really good at summarizing texts" to "next month this will literally solve all of the worlds problems" within a very short time. The truth is much more complicated, and if we could all just calm down, it would be easier to focus on the good parts.

[@leonpeters-malone3054]

I'd like to relate an in industry story, from game development, visual media. Someone tried to work with some people who provided good, but still incorrect work. They received instructions on what to correct and what was the minimum required standard. They also had a number of traditional artists working on the same project. The traditional artists were able to adapt their work, correct the elements present and complete the work. The AI prompters, produced additional images and those were less suited for the project and only progressively got further away from the desired end state. Every single time was a new image, a new prompt. Every single refinement proved to be less suited to the project at hand. I've explained it badly, left out the details I couldn't confirm, couldn't remember. Generative AI is a verbose if badly trained parrot, just repeating what it knows. Giving answers that at best might, be close to what someone actually wants. As they said, probabilistic.

[@hypotheticalaxolotl]

It can have a role in generating ideas, frameworks, and prototyping. It's easier to generate a bunch of things that look sorta-kinda-maybe like what you want and have an actual artist use that as reference, rather than trying to explain what you're looking for in words or badly drawn napkin diagrams or spending a bunch of time trawling through google images and pinterest. That's a fairly legitimate use-case and fulfills a need. That's... not worth trillions of dollars and gigatonnes of CO2, and should not be involved with anything anywhere near the final product.

[@Hosea405]

Then those were badly uninformed and incompetent genAI users.. with Controlnet and IPAdapters it's ridiculously easy to modify an image even pose subjects just as you want.

[@FuzBrain]

@@hypotheticalaxolotl I still prefer napkin doodles honestly, I'd rather make exactly what my client wants then what they just settled for when looking through the generated options

[@hypotheticalaxolotl]

@@FuzBrain I mean in either case I would hope they wouldn't just dump them on your desk and say "Go off, king." Either way they should be guiding you through what they're handing you, how the scribble/generated doodle has this failing, doesn't reflect that idea, has a decent pose but they aren't enthralled by it, etc. But fair enough.

[@anderslarsen4412]

​​@@Hosea405 Sure 🙄... Like this problem isn't EXACTLY what most people encounter when trying to have AI-prompt generators create anything more intricate than a thumbnail for KZbin. No-one has ever shown - what you're claiming is "ridiculously easy" for anyone who knows how to use the tech - is actually possible... Not even the big tech companies pushing this overhyped garbage are able to show that it's "easy" to change small details here-and-there on an AI-generated image... in any reproducible and predictable way. It's always a version of "prompt and pray" again and again - until you hopefully manage to get anywhere close to what was asked by the client.

[@gagglegames]

5:10 oh wow, that explains the sudden push for Google to stifle adblockers. Much easier to show growth when the small percentage of those not looking at ads suddenly has to look at a dozen of them instead.

[@taradid409]

Or they just leave Google cuz Google sucks anyways. I can't find anything I'm searching for using Google anymore. At this point I miss Yahoo of the mid to late 90s where it had what you were searching and then it broke it down into a bunch of different options.

[@aluisious]

…and caused me and other people to switch back to Firefox after 10 or whatever years. Well played, google.

[@TheWickedMessenger3]

Anyone interested in this topic needs to read the book "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity". Also, what started the line go up mentality was the Friedman doctrine. Well at least what gave them the cohesive excuse the eschew all social responsibilities other than the one to shareholder value.

[@FerpectOval]

The juxtaposition between Ed's tee shirt and his very fashionable shoes is lovely.

[@NoSacredCowFla]

It's called Xitter now. I worked in tech for 20 years. I'm done. I hate it. Thinking about bagging groceries for my retirement years because all of the start-ups I worked for didn't pan out. I'm 63 and now...

[@boyunderbridge]

Haven't self service checkouts killed those jobs

[@NoSacredCowFla]

Also, Microsoft's CoPilot makes web searches more cumbersome. It provides presupposed responses based on somebody's searches but not mine.

[@colleenroberts8202]

30 and all my friends went into tech. I work retail because I majored in the arts (lol). Retail isn't so bad, I promise.

[@stickjohnny]

​@@boyunderbridge not completely yet but they are trying their best!

[@chriswiltz6860]

@@boyunderbridge Some stores are actually getting rid of them in part because it turns out when prices are high, and there are no humans around, people are fine just walking out the door with their merchandise.

[@leafykille]

I want to popularize a new term "SI" simulated intelligence. It is a system that is not smart but pretends to be. As opposed to AI which is a real intelligence.

[@transcenderstarship1254]

How about "Pretend Intelligence" (PI) for when AI and SI are out pretending to be real while we humans sit back with our popcorn, watching the show.

[@Rbanh]

In this context, "Simulated" would really just be a synonym of Artificial... making it completely pointless.

[@OzWannabe]

That is basically what training does. Simulates intelligence and in 90% of the cases is successful

[@elink12]

​@@Rbanh Simulated and artificial aren't synonyms. Simulated accentuates the "simulacrum" part, whereas "artificial" just means "man made".

[@evi1ways]

This guy is literally the Dude fire selling horses as the Modle T roles out.

[@digiryde]

Funny you mention the Raspberry Pi. As a test, we hooked one up to a system to monitor it. The raspberry pi actually did a much better job than the built in circuits did. Raspberry Pi is not the only device out there, and it is not appropriate everywhere (yet?).

[@nexx410]

Finally someone that says what I’ve been thinking about AI. It’s great for really targeted things but as general intelligence it sucks

[@mattmaas5790]

Disagree :( have you tried using Autogen and Claude 3.5?

[@dupre7416]

I want this new disruptive nonsense to stop and be recognized as a fancy "auto-complete" that it is. I've been a programmer since 1991 and I've seen so many things like this fizzle out.

[@Hosea405]

As a programmer you should be well aware that GPT is way more than a fancy auto-complete. It's neural network architecture... modeled after our own brains, and processes information like we do.. so much so in fact, that neuroscientists are looking at GPT and neural networks in general to get more insight into our own brain processes.

[@periapsis413]

@@Hosea405 The architecture is very complex and interesting, and I'm sure there's things to be learned neuroscience wise from all of this. But FFT architecture is nowhere near like a brain besides the abstract concept of neurons and strengthening/weakening connections, it's like a child's toy compared to all of the different complex biochemical processes going on in your brain 24/7. And just in general, LLMs aren't made to "think like a human": they are trained with the goal of *creating text that looks like it was written by a human*. That distinction is very important, imo.

[@johnmickey5017]

Microsoft now added “Summarize with Copilot” as an automatic mouseover pop-up when any text is selected in edge. “Summarize” has been an effective feature in MacOS and iOS for literally two decades, and no one cared then or cares now.

[@NotSteve1992]

@@Hosea405- Except it’s not. The current AI is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the complexity of a human brain. It’s not even close. A cognitive scientist studying ChatGPT to get a better understanding of neural networks is analogous to a gastroenterologist studying a Cabbage Patch doll to gain insights into the human digestive tract.

[@estefencosta1835]

@@periapsis413 This "it's like your brain" thing has been a parroted thing from AI cultists err... enthusiasts for a while now. Trying to explain that there's way way way more happening in your brain than just some electricity going through some neurons just doesn't land, they refuse to believe it.

[@Scottotronia]

It’s a flawed argument to say that increased search volume absolutely represents poor quality of search results. For some, like answers to queries about basic facts, yes, but for those where folks are in the act of discovery, no.

[@Cranky_Crone]

I asked ChatGPT to make me a weekly meal plan, and it did. So I asked for a fussy-kid-friendly shopping list “to go with that” and bam, there it was! I was pretty impressed, until I noticed the shopping list was *entirely disconnected* from the meal plan. I think both included “chicken nuggets” but that was about it! 😂 Back to the drawing board.

[@twilightbin]

I know people who talk about how awesome AI is and I ask 'what exactly do you think will change in the next few years because of AI?' And they say 'everything'. And i'm like 'what exactly?' And they don't know.

[@direktive4]

@@twilightbin their stock portfolio

[@JakeStine]

AI has changed the way spammers go about their business by huge amounts. I imagine most people wanting to support AI will neglect to mention that one clear and obvious beneficial use of AI, where it's made a tremendous impact.

[@Kereea]

Legit I have seen ONE company come up with a way to use AI in a useful manner--Amazon. They use it to scan reviews and make a short summary of "reviews overall" and you can ask the AI questions to see if any of the reviews answer them. It's VERY open about the fact that yeah, it's not useful on products without a lot of reviews, so it needs human input, but it's useful for using Amazon. It legit improves the Amazon experience. I have yet to see ANYONE else manage that.

[@PatrickDodds1]

Medicine. Law. Music. Your mobile. Video games. Animation. Coding.

[@matheussanthiago9685]

​@PatrickDodds1 hmmm I know about one sector of law that's going to have a real big change That is copyright law The other stuff... Meh

[@scharlesworth93]

Ed's 'Better Offline' podcast is definitely worth a listen y'all

[@edzitron5848]

Thanks for listening!

[@anju5124]

Since Google Podcast's demise, I having a hard time finding podcasts on KZbin Music! If it's on that platform, could you just give me the link?

[@bad1080]

nvidia out there selling shovels in the gold rush

[@JasonWelch]

I personally would love to see small startups popping up again that focus on making good products, are as self funded as possible, and refuse to ever go public. A friend of mine and I have spoken numerous times over the years about this topic and have both agreed we'd rather pay the employees the same, if not more than we take, give huge yearly bonuses, as many benefits as possible... you know, actually give a shit about the people making the company money. We'd be happy making just enough money each year to keep the company going. Having fun building stuff we love and able to do that until we decided to retire. Sounds like this may be a much larger shared mentality than I thought.

[@2sourcerer]

I like the idea if only I could make something that the market needs and still yet unfulfilled.

[@pixels_per_minute]

So many things I use daily have major issues that, if a better competitor was to exist, a lot of users would freely abandon the current product. It's just about trying to find a way to stay profitable while staying private, and fighting the greedy need to constantly grow at unhealthy rates.

[@ianflanders5096]

Thing is we live in an economy of monopolies that will do a hostile takeover of any startup that tries to compete with them. It's virtually impossible to start a new tech company in the current economic climate. This is really just part of late stage capitalism.

[@agathalynx]

I double this

[@TheNeven87]

The tech growth of the last 3 decades have spoiled executives and investors.