Sure. But the complexity and the specificity of the implementation… idk, man. This just feels like a Segway to me.
I think that's maybe part of what I'm concerned about. Most really transformative technologies feel like toys at first, because the really killer use-cases haven't yet been created. Outside of the government and academia, the Internet was a similar sort of novelty at first, and people were really skeptical about whether it would ever "take off." That was largely because people hadn't yet imagined what sorts of things the internet could do, or developed the sociocultural systems of use that would allow for it to be really transformative. The same is true of cars, the telephone, and lots of other major milestones--they pretty much always just felt like novelties at first. You definitely might be right about chatbots specifically, but I suspect that the more general trend of relatively cheap, easy to use, and publicly accessible AI expert systems is going to be similarly transformative eventually. I'm just not sure what that transformation will look like, which worries me a bit.
I was listening to an NPR piece this morning about the Horrors of TikTok. It harvests your data. It spies on your travel patterns. It manipulates you based on what it advertised and displays. So now its imperative that we regulate the service.
Clearly, we are not too late to regulate social media. Just so long as its a threat to the right people.
Right. It's certainly not too late or impossible, but the more powerful and entrenched it becomes, the harder it gets. TikTok is kind of a weird case, because the :frothingfash: hated of China works to offset some of the friction that would usually be associated with trying to make this change. That might end up being really helpful, as once one of these companies gets strictly regulated, I suspect it will get easier to do the same to the rest of them. We'll see.
I hope your optimism turns out to be warranted, and that in the long run these technologies are good (or at least neutral) for the fight against capital. Thanks for the great conversation; whichever way this ends up going, I think it's super important for us to think and talk about it.
Outside of the government and academia, the Internet was a similar sort of novelty at first, and people were really skeptical about whether it would ever “take off.”
Idk about that. I think the big problem with early internet was the bandwidth. Subsequent applications came out of improved speed and file transfer capacity. But these were solvable problems that incentivized people to design past the current boundary of technology.
ChatBots are already operating on the edge of system capacity. We're not waiting on a faster CPU or a larger data pipeline or a more robust data archive to improve their viability. What they're trying to do - replicate human behaviors minus modern taboos - is purely a game of administration and refined engineering. And its aimed at a shifting goalpost (demands on human behavior are constantly changing).
Like Segways, their novel iterations on existing technology that lack significant functional gain over what came previously. It's possible we could reengineer our lives to accommodate them, but only if we're willing to retrofit a bunch of existing processes around ChatBots.
Like with Segways and Autodriving cars... this is a thing we could do but not something we seem willing to do. We're not China, after all.
You definitely might be right about chatbots specifically, but I suspect that the more general trend of relatively cheap, easy to use, and publicly accessible AI expert systems is going to be similarly transformative eventually.
I think that they already existed in the form of search engines and older less sophisticated text generators. And I'm sure they'll have applications, just not revolutionary ones.
I hope your optimism turns out to be warranted,
I don't know if I'd call "banking on inertia" optimistic. I'm a FALGSC guy who would love to see jobs automated away under a benevolent administration. But I'm skeptical of the willingness of Americans to abandon their bullshit jobs systems. I don't think you get real useful automation without communism, because the fixation on high employment as a form of social control makes useful automation more of a hazard than a help.
I think that's maybe part of what I'm concerned about. Most really transformative technologies feel like toys at first, because the really killer use-cases haven't yet been created. Outside of the government and academia, the Internet was a similar sort of novelty at first, and people were really skeptical about whether it would ever "take off." That was largely because people hadn't yet imagined what sorts of things the internet could do, or developed the sociocultural systems of use that would allow for it to be really transformative. The same is true of cars, the telephone, and lots of other major milestones--they pretty much always just felt like novelties at first. You definitely might be right about chatbots specifically, but I suspect that the more general trend of relatively cheap, easy to use, and publicly accessible AI expert systems is going to be similarly transformative eventually. I'm just not sure what that transformation will look like, which worries me a bit.
Right. It's certainly not too late or impossible, but the more powerful and entrenched it becomes, the harder it gets. TikTok is kind of a weird case, because the :frothingfash: hated of China works to offset some of the friction that would usually be associated with trying to make this change. That might end up being really helpful, as once one of these companies gets strictly regulated, I suspect it will get easier to do the same to the rest of them. We'll see.
I hope your optimism turns out to be warranted, and that in the long run these technologies are good (or at least neutral) for the fight against capital. Thanks for the great conversation; whichever way this ends up going, I think it's super important for us to think and talk about it.
Idk about that. I think the big problem with early internet was the bandwidth. Subsequent applications came out of improved speed and file transfer capacity. But these were solvable problems that incentivized people to design past the current boundary of technology.
ChatBots are already operating on the edge of system capacity. We're not waiting on a faster CPU or a larger data pipeline or a more robust data archive to improve their viability. What they're trying to do - replicate human behaviors minus modern taboos - is purely a game of administration and refined engineering. And its aimed at a shifting goalpost (demands on human behavior are constantly changing).
Like Segways, their novel iterations on existing technology that lack significant functional gain over what came previously. It's possible we could reengineer our lives to accommodate them, but only if we're willing to retrofit a bunch of existing processes around ChatBots.
Like with Segways and Autodriving cars... this is a thing we could do but not something we seem willing to do. We're not China, after all.
I think that they already existed in the form of search engines and older less sophisticated text generators. And I'm sure they'll have applications, just not revolutionary ones.
I don't know if I'd call "banking on inertia" optimistic. I'm a FALGSC guy who would love to see jobs automated away under a benevolent administration. But I'm skeptical of the willingness of Americans to abandon their bullshit jobs systems. I don't think you get real useful automation without communism, because the fixation on high employment as a form of social control makes useful automation more of a hazard than a help.