If you only read one article this year, it has to be THIS by @Mer__edith, the president of #signal :
"AI is a marketing term, not a technical term of art. [...]
This is also why it’s imperative that we recognize mass surveillance – and ultimately the surveillance business model – as the root of the large-scale tech we’re currently calling “AI”."
Only accusing the "big companies" for doing all sort of "unethical" things, is like only accusing mass murderers for the killings that they do. Every crime is a crime. Big or small. Small companies do similar shady practices and abuse people or destroy the environment.
But best is to look at the system that creates these entities instead of accusing companies or people.
As long as the underlying practice on this planet is to TRADE or else you are fucked, then this is what we are going to do and prioritize. Thus the evolution of companies and billionaires, waste, pollution, you name it.
#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#BigTech: "For years now, OpenAI told everyone that these were all secondary concerns — that its deeper ambition was something nobler, and more public-spirited. But since Altman’s return, the company has been telling a different story: a story about winning at all costs.
And why bother with superalignment, when there’s winning to do?
Why bother getting actresses’ permission, when the right numbers are all still going up?"
Seen in that light, it’s no surprise that Big Tech is refusing to comply with the rules. If the EU successfully forces tech to play fair, it will serve as a starting gun for a global race to the top, in which tech’s ill-gotten gains - of data, power and money - will be returned to the users and workers from whom that treasure came.
The architects of the DMA and DSA foresaw this, of course. They’ve announced investigations into Apple, Google and Meta, threatening fines of 10 percent of the companies’ global income, which will double to 20 percent if the companies don’t toe the line.
It’s not just Big Tech that’s playing for all the marbles - it’s also the systems of democratic control and accountability. If Apple can sabotage the DMA’s insistence on taking away its veto over its customers’ software choices, that will spill over into the US Department of Justice’s case over the same issue, as well as the cases in Japan and South Korea, and the pending enforcement action in the UK."
> “In other words, the DMA is meant to push us toward a world where you decide which software runs on your devices, where it’s easy to find the best products and services, where you can leave a platform for a better one without forfeiting your social relationships , and where you can do all of this without getting spied on.”
— I too wish to return to the early days of the internet.
“Today #tech companies and their #billionaire CEOs are becoming increasingly demonized, and some people are questioning whether they should even exist at all.”
Interesting approach. But it's commercial, not decentralized, and is backed by Sam Altman and more Big Tech honchos, so my first reaction is skepticism.
@metin Interesting read, but I see some fundamental problems.
Even if this project were open source, it would still be impossible to know what the algorithm/AI is doing. Moreover, even if there are no followers, there will be some other not-so-obvious metric used to favor posts over others; there has to be, because the algorithm has to prioritize what to show you.
I think this is very dangerous and easily exploitable, just like existing platforms with non-transparent algorithms 😬
Situazione incredibile, ragazzi. Dopo il post che facemmo una decina di giorni fa abbiamo ricevuto diverse mail di lavoratori (od ex lavoratori) di Amazon con racconti allucinanti.
La traiettoria, a ben guardare, non è dissimile da quella di meta: 17.000 licenziamenti nell'anno dei profitti record. Direi che è una tendenza piuttosto consolidata, ormai.