Ah, hell yeah, the much-anticipated finale.

Gonna give particular praise to the opening, because this really caught my eye:

Tech culture often denigrates humans through its assumptions that human skills, knowledge and functions can be improved through their replacement by technological replacements, and through transhumanist narratives that rely on a framing of human consciousness as fundamentally computational.

I’ve touched on the framing of human consciousness part myself - seems we may be on the same wavelength.

As for the whole “replacement by technological replacements” part…well, we’ve all seen the AI art slop-nami, its crystal fucking clear what you’re referring to.

You know those polls that say fewer than 20% of Americans trust AI scientists?

No, but I’d say its a good sign we’re getting close to an AI winter

What can I say - I saw solid ammo for some machine-gun flow, and gave it a good throw.

(Special thanks to Rhymezone - I wouldn’t have pulled off this rhythmic magdump without it)

This is pure speculation, but this “autonomous AI” hype is probably only further souring the public’s opinion on a thoroughly soured concept.

They’ve already seen AIs royally fuck things up left, right and centre, anything which suggests AI bros are gonna try to magnify their ability to fuck things up is only gonna piss them off.

Part of me suspects there’s plenty of those kinda kits out there. The appeal’s pretty obvious - just pop the fucker onto any random dumb ordnance you’ve got laying about, and boom, instant smart bomb.

Etsy: an artistic one-stop chop shop where slop pops up like catch crops - and that quick shot’s no hatchet-job, so keep it from pops 'fore it leaves him in a strop:

(Full disclosure: the opportunity for some quickfire rhymes may have played a role in birthing this sneer.)

Not a sneer, but a deeply cursed dream from a friend:

In other news, https://creative.ai/ was put up for purchase because the original owner considers AI’s reputation a lost cause.

(In other other news, its my 24th birthday.)

Off-the-cuff prediction: there probably won’t be one dominant search engine after Google stumbles, for a few reasons:

• All of them are making the exact same mistakes as Google, as self noted (when they aren’t having their own unique dumpster fires)

• AI has made it much easier to spam searches with SEO shite, so any attempts at algorithmic search risk being spammed to death in short order

• Public trust in tech is utterly shot to hell - not sure how much people trust search specifically, but I suspect people are currently trusting word-of-mouth (e.g. Reddit, TikTok) over whatever any of the major search engines are providing right now

On the one hand, Google’s still the dominant search engine, having used every dirty trick in the book to reach that position and maintain it. If you aren’t on Google, you arguably might as well not exist.

On the other hand, Google’s already under heavy scrutiny since being officially declared an illegal monopoly, and the public is pissed with how Google’s declined in search quality - and deliberately so.

Part of me says we’re about to see some truly wild shit go down.

But bullshit like trying to throw data at an LLM is going to negatively impact the investment and adoption of the actual useful shit.

I vaguely recall hearing how Theranos’ fraud getting revealed set back the field of bloodwork a fair bit - seems we may be seeing history repeat itself.

Ran across an impressively strong sneer whilst looking through Baldur Bjarnason’s link list for the week:

A JUST TRANSITION MEANS RESISTING A.I. (from Scottish Left Review)

Gonna copy-paste the quote Baldur used because god damn:

AI isn’t simply a problematic technology but an apparatus that is shaped by the injustices of our existing social relations and which, in turn, reshapes and intensifies them.

Also got an interesting Tweet from Ed Zitron:

This is entirely my gut instinct, but there is boiling resentment against big tech. Something is shifting, and it’s shifting violently, both in the general public and the media. Blood in the water. People are ready for a change.

I’ve had that same gut instinct before - I’ve kinda had it since Baldur noted tech’s disconnect from the public a month ago. Feels like we’re entering an era where working in tech is treated as a red flag, a sign you’re a money-hungry asshole willing to hurt innocent people to make a quick buck.

In other news, Procreate put out a damn good sneer aimed at AI art:

Creativity is made, not generated.

Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us.

We’re here for the humans. We’re not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community.

Unsurprisingly, they’re getting a standing ovation from artists for doing the right thing.

I dunno, after 4 years of happily proclaiming that this is the thing we’re going to sell, why have these guys never considered that fraud is bad, actually. Is fully automated luxury gay space fraud really so enticing?

It is if you expect to make an absolute crapload of money off of it and have absolutely zero soul. And, well, its the AI industry - anyone with a soul probably left a couple years ago.

Something you always have to consider, even if it is a shitty doctor for our standards, it might still be better than no doctor.

No doctor means your shit doesn’t get treated. A false doctor (e.g. alternative medicine) gives you a false sense of hope at best and ruins your health at worst.

I’d be happy to see it, this place could do have a notawfulmusic sub

In other news, someone caught a former NFT artist using AI. Not shocked in the slightest an NFT grifter jumped on the AI train.

Witnessed an AI doomer freaking out over a16z trying to deep-six SB1047.

Seems like the “AI doom” criti-hype is starting to become a bit of an albatross around the industry’s neck.

Look on the bright side - we at least got some potential sci-fi gadgets out of it.

The temporal echo chamber sounds like the seed of a good story - you could really get some character analysis out of it if used well.

…I mean yeah that’s a pretty obvious use case - if Elon’s given you a checkmark against your will, might as well use the benefits to cause him as much grief as possible.

(Also, loved your series on Devs - any idea when the final part’s gonna release? Seems its gotten hit with some major delays.)