5 ms·

This is how democracy dies

23 points by johntfella 5y ago

raxxorrax 5y ago
> A few months back a handful of bootcamps opened, where parents pay $2,000 for experts to teach their kids how to succeed on YouTube This is just sad. I like some people that are very successful on streaming and video services, but it is an extremely high risk venture. It was the privilege of the pioneers that could basically be themselves. Today the demands of users are propbably completely different.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  It's basically the modern equivalent of those "acting studios" where people seriously think that paying a few thousand dollars for acting lessons will make them a star.
  - engineer_22 5y ago
    It's really just a pricey day camp.
- al2o3cr 5y ago
  TBH $2k is chicken feed compared to what some parents will spend on sports camps and the like.
ajuc 5y ago
At that point technology really is magic. You live in an environment where spirits that you can't understand daily influence you in weird ways and you try to appease them.
machinehermiter 5y ago
IMO a big problem is we want to feel like we live in this high tech world so we collectively invite surveillance technology into our lives because so little interesting innovations are actually happening. A huge bull market in surveillance because if you get rid of that our "innovations" severally lack use cases.
helen___keller 5y ago
This is like a big list of complaints about potential negative externalities of technology all put into the bag of "complex thing is bad". How you even address an article with such wide ranging concerns from "smart fridges will tell me to eat less meat for better insurance rates"(invasive / creepy tech) to "driverless car fatalities will have no accountability"(intersection of tech / law) to "our inability to disagree with The Computer will lead to a global thermonuclear war" (intersection of tech / politics) People will (hopefully) not buy the creepy fridge. At the very least, there's no fridge monopoly so there should always be a noncreepy option on the market for you personally. If there is a fridge monopoly, human lawmakers and judges have the power to break up the monopoly. There will be a slew of laws/lawsuits about driverless car fatalities when it first becomes a big thing. How that plays out will be entirely determined by humans (lawmakers / courtrooms). The idea of having computer simulations so good that it replaces human decision making at the executive level is ridiculously far from being reality, it's pointless to worry about it.
- ajuc 5y ago
  > The idea of having computer simulations so good that it replaces human decision making at the executive level is ridiculously far from being reality, it's pointless to worry about it. It's already reality, see for example video recommendation on youtube (and it has far-reaching consequences like promotion of extreme political views and conspiracy theories to the point of influencing election and interfering with vaccination). Nobody in google decided "let's make people believe vaccines have 5g chips in them".
  - helen___keller 5y ago
    Executive level meaning C suite and it's political and military equivalent The idea that an AI is going to decide we should first-strike another nation and top brass say "well the AI has never been wrong so let's do it" is laughable.
    - ajuc 5y ago
      This is the Hollywood version of problems with AI. Real life equivalent: "AI changed the margin on humanitarian aid in country X by 28%", the end result would be war as well but the decision wouldn't be "war or peace" it would be "a little more cost-savings vs a little higher risk of problems". And it's not sci-fi, see 2008 crisis and its consequences. Bad model that gives short-term profits is almost always preferred over good model that reduces profits. Or, to put it in Gulag/private prisons terms: "on the advice of AI we decreased calory intake of our prisoners by 30%" sounds much better than "kill prisoners by overworking and strvation".

23 points by johntfella 5y ago

> A few months back a handful of bootcamps opened, where parents pay $2,000 for experts to teach their kids how to succeed on YouTube This is just sad. I like some people that are very successful on streaming and video services, but it is an extremely high risk venture. It was the privilege of the pioneers that could basically be themselves. Today the demands of users are propbably completely different.

jhbadger 5y ago
It's basically the modern equivalent of those "acting studios" where people seriously think that paying a few thousand dollars for acting lessons will make them a star.
- engineer_22 5y ago
  It's really just a pricey day camp.
al2o3cr 5y ago
TBH $2k is chicken feed compared to what some parents will spend on sports camps and the like.

ajuc 5y ago

At that point technology really is magic. You live in an environment where spirits that you can't understand daily influence you in weird ways and you try to appease them.

machinehermiter 5y ago

IMO a big problem is we want to feel like we live in this high tech world so we collectively invite surveillance technology into our lives because so little interesting innovations are actually happening. A huge bull market in surveillance because if you get rid of that our "innovations" severally lack use cases.

helen___keller 5y ago

This is like a big list of complaints about potential negative externalities of technology all put into the bag of "complex thing is bad". How you even address an article with such wide ranging concerns from "smart fridges will tell me to eat less meat for better insurance rates"(invasive / creepy tech) to "driverless car fatalities will have no accountability"(intersection of tech / law) to "our inability to disagree with The Computer will lead to a global thermonuclear war" (intersection of tech / politics) People will (hopefully) not buy the creepy fridge. At the very least, there's no fridge monopoly so there should always be a noncreepy option on the market for you personally. If there is a fridge monopoly, human lawmakers and judges have the power to break up the monopoly. There will be a slew of laws/lawsuits about driverless car fatalities when it first becomes a big thing. How that plays out will be entirely determined by humans (lawmakers / courtrooms). The idea of having computer simulations so good that it replaces human decision making at the executive level is ridiculously far from being reality, it's pointless to worry about it.

ajuc 5y ago
> The idea of having computer simulations so good that it replaces human decision making at the executive level is ridiculously far from being reality, it's pointless to worry about it. It's already reality, see for example video recommendation on youtube (and it has far-reaching consequences like promotion of extreme political views and conspiracy theories to the point of influencing election and interfering with vaccination). Nobody in google decided "let's make people believe vaccines have 5g chips in them".
- helen___keller 5y ago
  Executive level meaning C suite and it's political and military equivalent The idea that an AI is going to decide we should first-strike another nation and top brass say "well the AI has never been wrong so let's do it" is laughable.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    This is the Hollywood version of problems with AI. Real life equivalent: "AI changed the margin on humanitarian aid in country X by 28%", the end result would be war as well but the decision wouldn't be "war or peace" it would be "a little more cost-savings vs a little higher risk of problems". And it's not sci-fi, see 2008 crisis and its consequences. Bad model that gives short-term profits is almost always preferred over good model that reduces profits. Or, to put it in Gulag/private prisons terms: "on the advice of AI we decreased calory intake of our prisoners by 30%" sounds much better than "kill prisoners by overworking and strvation".