I’ve been obsessed with this tiktok for days now
Take away every consequential activity through which AI harms people, and all you’ve got left is low-margin activities like writing SEO garbage, lengthy reminisces about “the first time I ate an egg” that help an omelette recipe float to the top of a search result. Sure, you can put 95 percent of the commercial illustrators on the breadline, but their total wages don’t rise to one percent of the valuation of the big AI companies.
For those sky-high valuations to remain intact until the investors can cash out, we need to think about AI as a powerful, transformative technology, not as a better autocomplete.
We literally just sat through this movie, and it sucked. Remember when blockchain was going to be worth trillions, and anyone who didn’t get in on the ground floor could “have fun being poor?”
At the time, we were told that the answer to the problems of blockchain were exotic, new forms of regulation that accommodated the “innovation” of crypto. Under no circumstances should we attempt to staunch the rampant fraud and theft by applying boring old securities and commodities and money-laundering regulations. To do that would be to recognize that “fin-tech” is just a synonym for “unlicensed bank.”
The pitchmen who made out like bandits on crypto — leaving mom-and-pop investors holding the bag — are precisely the same people who are beating the drum for AI today.
a followup to my axiom verge poster. same composition, different game
Honestly, the main thing driving me away from social media these days is the same thing that drove me to the internet as a kid. I don’t want a child-proofed environment that’s braindead-easy to use! I want to dig and be rewarded for digging. Using a website designed to attract the lowest common denominator is suffocating and weird! I don’t want to be told “here’s what’s popular”, I want the space to set trends all on my own.
And I don’t want the people around me to be forced to look at what’s popular, either— because it landlocks people like me and my friends who do weird and specific things! I went online as an escape from incurious people. And I get that infinite growth needs infinite bodies scrolling infinitely, but god. It’s never gonna stop being a bummer that tech went from “don’t be evil” to “exploit human brain chemistry to make the line chart go up”.
It’s wild how fast people got used to being served content. I see (hopefully just shockingly lazy) people complain that they don’t “know how” to use a website with no recommendation algorithm. Really? You get plopped into an app and you don’t know how to search for something you’re interested in? You need a mommy to grab the keyboard and look up #fortnite???
Obviously the pedagogical/culturally responsible thing is to just let them figure it out. The cleverest among us actually love to get into places they aren’t supposed to be. But now websites somehow can’t function without everyone on earth weighing down their servers, so they started lobotomizing themselves so as not to make anyone uncomfortable. Then the adults get to wake up to child-proofed oven dials and plastic preschool chairs.
It feels like we’re in a paragraph from Harrison Bergeron. Anyway, if your feed is non-chronological on here, there’s still a way to turn it off. For now!
Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
Happy Pri(demon)th! 🏳️⚧️❤️🔥🏳️⚧️❤️🔥🏳️⚧️
(and in horrible GIF form)
Hello! I see that Hue, my pride turtle is making his rounds again on the Internet, and I’m glad that my message has touched so many. If you wish to repost, please use this picture! Thank you and all of you are valid, whether you are out or not. You have all my love!
