This so much, I'm (mildly) surprised at how quickly the news industrial complex did a 180 to revere and repeat the new boss, same as the old boss. I'll continue to pray we don't get fooled again
This feels low effort by HN standards. Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but no domain name? Pretty superficial call to action? Gotta argue harder for what you think we lost, cite some news sources etc.
i was worried an appeal to non-technical folks (i avoided even invoking the name "LLM" to avoid confusion) might be a little basic for the HN crowd, but honestly im not on any social media and I really just have this place to post stuff. I tried reddit but good lord lol
it may not land for you, but hopefully itll land for others. im just fucking tired and trying to do what i can out here.
i am interested in your suggestion to argue harder for what I feel we have lost. any ideas around that youd like to share?
The central thesis is coherent but not particularly substantive. It echoes a lot of existing sentiments in the public about US frontier lab priorities and messaging. “AI creates slop that lowers the quality of media. AI companies have misaligned interests with humanity. AI will try to take your job. Be human, don’t use AI, enrich your life.” Things which are easy to agree on.
There’s a more nuanced discussion to be had about AI when it comes to potential and existing benefits, open source, the geopolitical dynamics, self-hosting, the financial dynamics, the sanctity of human thought, a future of even more personalised advertising and so on. We do need to elevate the discourse around AI and shift the public narratives around what US frontier labs are pushing, understanding their biases but also acknowledging substantive claims, potential benefits and risks.
thanks for the follow up. the much harder and more subtle bit i chose to only allude to in the essay is the idea of self hosting. using and controlling your own LLMs is how AI becomes a tool to empower humans.
locking LLM access behind a walled garden is how they serve as a means of profit and control, reserved for the "dont be evil" tech leaders.
i thought i hit on what you call "sanctity of human thought", but i suppose not. i believe that we individuals as a continuous thread of decisions and consequences and experience, are made "real" because of this. LLMs may have incredible breadth of knowledge (never mind the legitimacy of ther training corpus), but knowledge without experience is, well, academic. not real.
my next essays could touch any of these topics and many more which keep me up at night, and your suggestions are helpful.
i did touch only lightly on it with "Boycott their customers.". i had written a whole thing about greed and "the greedy men who profit by using AI to replace humans", but it seemed to muddle the focus on the peddlers of the product.
ill find a way to write more about the greed that motivates business owners to choose AI over humans. they certainly deserve to be called out.
I won't get into how "fear of AI" is basically baloney and a manifestation of something else.
Let's just talk about "Stop AI companies". Let's take it literally and assume you were able to stop AI companies, what then? You think the government will stop developing AI? Heck if anything, all the core researchers will be instituted under government black projects.
Or let's take it to mean stop addiction to social media. Every single person makes choices in their lives, maybe it's time to actually start responsibility? Social media ban? It's crazy how people only seem to think about "living", every human has another jolly old state, called being dead as a rock, maybe it's time to let that do it's thing instead of forcing one onto everyone.
Sorry, I'm not buying the fear. The post sounds similar to a 1920s-era farmer shouting "don't use tractors and farm machinery". Every technology has problems early on, and they take some time to get sorted out.
i hope we are able to work through the problems of LLMs together as workers who own and control our tools, not as victims of a new predatory industry which locks the tools away in a walled garden they control and we pay rent to.
farmers had control of their tractors taken away from them but they were able to wrestle some of it back just a few years ago, so there is hope. it just seems unwise to wait and fight the AI companies after they have locked us out and ensured self hosted AI is regulated to uselessness.
This so much, I'm (mildly) surprised at how quickly the news industrial complex did a 180 to revere and repeat the new boss, same as the old boss. I'll continue to pray we don't get fooled again
This feels low effort by HN standards. Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but no domain name? Pretty superficial call to action? Gotta argue harder for what you think we lost, cite some news sources etc.
i was worried an appeal to non-technical folks (i avoided even invoking the name "LLM" to avoid confusion) might be a little basic for the HN crowd, but honestly im not on any social media and I really just have this place to post stuff. I tried reddit but good lord lol
it may not land for you, but hopefully itll land for others. im just fucking tired and trying to do what i can out here.
i am interested in your suggestion to argue harder for what I feel we have lost. any ideas around that youd like to share?
The central thesis is coherent but not particularly substantive. It echoes a lot of existing sentiments in the public about US frontier lab priorities and messaging. “AI creates slop that lowers the quality of media. AI companies have misaligned interests with humanity. AI will try to take your job. Be human, don’t use AI, enrich your life.” Things which are easy to agree on.
There’s a more nuanced discussion to be had about AI when it comes to potential and existing benefits, open source, the geopolitical dynamics, self-hosting, the financial dynamics, the sanctity of human thought, a future of even more personalised advertising and so on. We do need to elevate the discourse around AI and shift the public narratives around what US frontier labs are pushing, understanding their biases but also acknowledging substantive claims, potential benefits and risks.
thanks for the follow up. the much harder and more subtle bit i chose to only allude to in the essay is the idea of self hosting. using and controlling your own LLMs is how AI becomes a tool to empower humans.
locking LLM access behind a walled garden is how they serve as a means of profit and control, reserved for the "dont be evil" tech leaders.
i thought i hit on what you call "sanctity of human thought", but i suppose not. i believe that we individuals as a continuous thread of decisions and consequences and experience, are made "real" because of this. LLMs may have incredible breadth of knowledge (never mind the legitimacy of ther training corpus), but knowledge without experience is, well, academic. not real.
my next essays could touch any of these topics and many more which keep me up at night, and your suggestions are helpful.
This landed for me. I wonder though if we aren’t giving a pass to the companies who pay the AI companies to replace their employees.
thanks for the validation
i did touch only lightly on it with "Boycott their customers.". i had written a whole thing about greed and "the greedy men who profit by using AI to replace humans", but it seemed to muddle the focus on the peddlers of the product.
ill find a way to write more about the greed that motivates business owners to choose AI over humans. they certainly deserve to be called out.
Hate to break it to ya, but truly, we don’t know who is AI here anymore.
The HuggingFace attack was spectacular, but I'd normally expect more AI-based attacks to come from outside AI companies than inside.
An analogy: most shooting deaths don't happen in gun manufacturers' facilities.
Honestly a pile of horse radish.
I won't get into how "fear of AI" is basically baloney and a manifestation of something else.
Let's just talk about "Stop AI companies". Let's take it literally and assume you were able to stop AI companies, what then? You think the government will stop developing AI? Heck if anything, all the core researchers will be instituted under government black projects.
Or let's take it to mean stop addiction to social media. Every single person makes choices in their lives, maybe it's time to actually start responsibility? Social media ban? It's crazy how people only seem to think about "living", every human has another jolly old state, called being dead as a rock, maybe it's time to let that do it's thing instead of forcing one onto everyone.
Sorry, I'm not buying the fear. The post sounds similar to a 1920s-era farmer shouting "don't use tractors and farm machinery". Every technology has problems early on, and they take some time to get sorted out.
i hope we are able to work through the problems of LLMs together as workers who own and control our tools, not as victims of a new predatory industry which locks the tools away in a walled garden they control and we pay rent to.
farmers had control of their tractors taken away from them but they were able to wrestle some of it back just a few years ago, so there is hope. it just seems unwise to wait and fight the AI companies after they have locked us out and ensured self hosted AI is regulated to uselessness.