![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
podcast friday
When someone tells you that something is "inevitable" or "here to stay," you shouldn't believe them. You should, in fact, do something between vicious mockery and other, more high-level spells on them. They are lying to you and they want you to suffer.
In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations.
So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.
The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.
In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations.
So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.
The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.
no subject
no subject
no subject
The sad thing, the underlying technology has some good uses. It’s the hype machine behind it that’s the real problem. (Speaking as one who was around for the AI boom of the 1980s, and tinkered with neural nets and virtual reality in the 90s, back when each of those were going to be The Next Big Thing.)
no subject
no subject
I think that we could just walk away from this incarnation of tech if it leaves people anxious and unsatisfied.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
So I'll take any hope.
no subject
no subject
It's what THEY want. And THEY want fewer workers. (But more consumers, go figure).
Even your idea of shuffling around the photos on your phone is horrific to me.
Admittedly, there is no world in which I can see AI being good for anything.
Inevitable to me is less about an unstoppable evolution, but what the tech bros WANT to be, and the potential for balance sheet improvements
Do you know about Robodebt in OZ?
no subject
no subject
We went HARD. Before AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
That is, as with Wiki, mild. (There was a royal commission).
The number of robodeaths is contested.
The number of people who were fucked over... is a LOT.
Two facts:
Welfare payment levels haven't changed since 1990.
I don't even know if I could respond.
PP would have been aware of this fuckery.
no subject
no subject
It is peak Con.
And this is what they did a decade ago.