3 ms·

Could you please keep going? Maybe I'm just old, tired, and have other responsibilities, but things are feeling pretty bleak these days. Google is back to push

Could you please keep going? Maybe I'm just old, tired, and have other responsibilities, but things are feeling pretty bleak these days. Google is back to pushing remote attestation (ie WEI), Apple has already had it for quite some time. "AI" is a great Schelling point excuse for capital structures to collude rather than compete, whether it's demanding identification / "system integrity" (aka computational disenfranchisement) for routine Web tasks or simply making computing hardware unaffordable (and thus even less practical for most people, whether it's GPUs, RAM, or RPis for IoT projects). There are some silver linings like AI codegen empowering individuals to solve their own problems, and/or really go to town hacking/polishing their libre project for others to use. But at best I see a future 5-10 years down the road where I've got a few totally-pwnt corporate-government-approved devices for accomplishing basic tasks (with whatever I/O devices are cost-effective from the subset we're allowed to use), and then my own independent network that cannot do much of what's required to interface with (ie exist in) wider society.

schoen 5mo ago
Alongside "1984 wasn't an instruction manual" we may need the slogan "'The Right to Read' wasn't an instruction manual".
js8 5mo ago
In many countries, people have already won a similar fight with printing press, press censorship and encryption. I think there is a reason for optimism (of the will). If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. I don't think the powers will be able to gatekeep it. There might be some grief but overall human freedom will prevail.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- prinny_ 5mo ago
  I doubt AI can educate the masses simply because the masses would have to prompt it to educate them. Almost no one in my social circle knows, let alone understands Google’s recent work on pushing web attestation, or any other tech company’s power plays enforced on us. They are people blindly hitting accept all in every banner that pops up in their online journeys or use chat apps that blatantly spy on them. They don’t know what they could have or why the new captcha is funny, thus they can never come up with a prompt that leads to them being educated on the matter. They would have to know that they don’t know and since there is no public discourse for such matters in their Facebook timelines, their thinly right wing digital news outlets and their Viber and what’s app chats they will never know that they don’t know.
- mindslight 5mo ago
  > If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. oof. I do not see that this follows, at all. For starters, describing "AI" as "smart" is falling into the trap of anthropomorphization. But the core dynamic of LLMs I see is a reflection of context - both training and the data sources that are presented, but also the questions you ask. On its own it's not going to lead someone to ask about self-empowering approaches to problems or freedom in general. So sure, genAI seems to be greatly helping my own locally-hosted infrastructure approaches (it changes projects from needing a clear head over the course of a day or two, to something I casually push forward on for an hour or two at night). But I don't see that there is a huge pent up demand of people determined to do homeprod/homeautomation/etc projects but unable to find the time. Also keep in mind we're not even near the enshittification stage of "AI" yet. Existing businesses are enshittifying using genAI, yes. But that's much different from when the genAI providers themselves start trying to extract wealth.
- sucrosesucrose 5mo ago
  You are severy underestimating the stupidity of the masses.
TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
I suspect this is correct, and the push towards "age verification" (i.e. user id hiding behind a pretext), the insane build out of server farms, which is making commodity computing unaffordable, and the push towards AI in everything are all pointing in the same direction. The 1990s vision of computing was a bicycle - or car - for the mind. It was libertarian in the sense that if you had a device it would empower you to get where you wanted to go more quickly. And the rhetoric around it was very much about personal exploration on a new and exciting frontier. The 2020s vision is more like a totalitarian transport network where you don't own the vehicle, you don't own the network, there's constant propaganda telling you how to structure your journey to the standard destinations, and deviation is becoming increasingly impossible. The device is just an access port to the network. It's dumbed down, so even if you understand how it works you can't do much with it. And as AI becomes more prevalent, your ability to understand that will diminish further. So the end result is very plausibly a state where you're completely reliant on AI to do anything. And AI is owned by the pseudo-state oligopoly - the same oligopoly which runs the propaganda networks that sell you ads, hype selected content while suppressing other content, and genrally try to influence your behaviour. It's the complete opposite of the original vision. Will consumer AI fix this? Probably not. Even if the hardware keeps improving - debatable - a personal device is never going to be able to compete, in any sense, with an international network of data centres.
- vrganj 5mo ago
  > Even if the hardware keeps improving - debatable - a personal device is never going to be able to compete, in any sense, with an international network of data centres. There's one way to deal with this, but I doubt it'll be popular in these parts: Communal ownership of the means of production. Don't use the oligarchy's AI. Your personal hardware is going to be too weak. But together, we can own our own server farms.
  - jpk 5mo ago
    "Communal ownership of the means of production" evokes an image of a hippy co-op trying to buy pallets of GPUs, or something, which is probably why it sounds unattainable. But if you reorient that to something more along the lines of, "the Mullvad of hosted llama.cpp", then it actually doesn't seem that far out of reach.
throwawayqqq11 5mo ago
The corpolibertarians are betting massively on AI to liberate them from the working class and in their wake, transforming societies and economies as needed. I think this long term goal is delusional and the day of the pitchforks is coming. They can't endlessly fabricate distractive images of enemies, like migrants or what ever, while inflating budgets and claims about the future.
jkwn 5mo ago
I am also old, tired, and have too many responsibilities, and so are most of the people posting here (or at least they are tired of the bleakness). The millennials are also likewise tired of AI and corporate fascism. I think they are smarter than our generation. So there's a sliver of a silver lining. But as to what can be done about it is another matter. Besides "butlerian jihad" the only way I see is by voting with our feet, since ballots don't seem to matter.

schoen 5mo ago

Alongside "1984 wasn't an instruction manual" we may need the slogan "'The Right to Read' wasn't an instruction manual".

js8 5mo ago

In many countries, people have already won a similar fight with printing press, press censorship and encryption. I think there is a reason for optimism (of the will). If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. I don't think the powers will be able to gatekeep it. There might be some grief but overall human freedom will prevail.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
prinny_ 5mo ago
I doubt AI can educate the masses simply because the masses would have to prompt it to educate them. Almost no one in my social circle knows, let alone understands Google’s recent work on pushing web attestation, or any other tech company’s power plays enforced on us. They are people blindly hitting accept all in every banner that pops up in their online journeys or use chat apps that blatantly spy on them. They don’t know what they could have or why the new captcha is funny, thus they can never come up with a prompt that leads to them being educated on the matter. They would have to know that they don’t know and since there is no public discourse for such matters in their Facebook timelines, their thinly right wing digital news outlets and their Viber and what’s app chats they will never know that they don’t know.
mindslight 5mo ago
> If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity. oof. I do not see that this follows, at all. For starters, describing "AI" as "smart" is falling into the trap of anthropomorphization. But the core dynamic of LLMs I see is a reflection of context - both training and the data sources that are presented, but also the questions you ask. On its own it's not going to lead someone to ask about self-empowering approaches to problems or freedom in general. So sure, genAI seems to be greatly helping my own locally-hosted infrastructure approaches (it changes projects from needing a clear head over the course of a day or two, to something I casually push forward on for an hour or two at night). But I don't see that there is a huge pent up demand of people determined to do homeprod/homeautomation/etc projects but unable to find the time. Also keep in mind we're not even near the enshittification stage of "AI" yet. Existing businesses are enshittifying using genAI, yes. But that's much different from when the genAI providers themselves start trying to extract wealth.
sucrosesucrose 5mo ago
You are severy underestimating the stupidity of the masses.

TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago

I suspect this is correct, and the push towards "age verification" (i.e. user id hiding behind a pretext), the insane build out of server farms, which is making commodity computing unaffordable, and the push towards AI in everything are all pointing in the same direction. The 1990s vision of computing was a bicycle - or car - for the mind. It was libertarian in the sense that if you had a device it would empower you to get where you wanted to go more quickly. And the rhetoric around it was very much about personal exploration on a new and exciting frontier. The 2020s vision is more like a totalitarian transport network where you don't own the vehicle, you don't own the network, there's constant propaganda telling you how to structure your journey to the standard destinations, and deviation is becoming increasingly impossible. The device is just an access port to the network. It's dumbed down, so even if you understand how it works you can't do much with it. And as AI becomes more prevalent, your ability to understand that will diminish further. So the end result is very plausibly a state where you're completely reliant on AI to do anything. And AI is owned by the pseudo-state oligopoly - the same oligopoly which runs the propaganda networks that sell you ads, hype selected content while suppressing other content, and genrally try to influence your behaviour. It's the complete opposite of the original vision. Will consumer AI fix this? Probably not. Even if the hardware keeps improving - debatable - a personal device is never going to be able to compete, in any sense, with an international network of data centres.

vrganj 5mo ago
> Even if the hardware keeps improving - debatable - a personal device is never going to be able to compete, in any sense, with an international network of data centres. There's one way to deal with this, but I doubt it'll be popular in these parts: Communal ownership of the means of production. Don't use the oligarchy's AI. Your personal hardware is going to be too weak. But together, we can own our own server farms.
- jpk 5mo ago
  "Communal ownership of the means of production" evokes an image of a hippy co-op trying to buy pallets of GPUs, or something, which is probably why it sounds unattainable. But if you reorient that to something more along the lines of, "the Mullvad of hosted llama.cpp", then it actually doesn't seem that far out of reach.

throwawayqqq11 5mo ago

The corpolibertarians are betting massively on AI to liberate them from the working class and in their wake, transforming societies and economies as needed. I think this long term goal is delusional and the day of the pitchforks is coming. They can't endlessly fabricate distractive images of enemies, like migrants or what ever, while inflating budgets and claims about the future.

jkwn 5mo ago

I am also old, tired, and have too many responsibilities, and so are most of the people posting here (or at least they are tired of the bleakness). The millennials are also likewise tired of AI and corporate fascism. I think they are smarter than our generation. So there's a sliver of a silver lining. But as to what can be done about it is another matter. Besides "butlerian jihad" the only way I see is by voting with our feet, since ballots don't seem to matter.