@theluddite@assemblag.es
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

theluddite

@theluddite@assemblag.es

Once, long ago, we were miserable. We lived in cold, dark caves, until someone figured out fire, which lead directly to the iPhone. Most of that happened very slowly, but then we came up with capitalism. Suddenly, we went from no iPhones for 200,000 years, to the iPhone 15 — all in the last two decades!

We all know that technology is progress, but progress towards what? Where exactly are we going? And who the hell is driving? What are computers even for, and why do I need one in my fridge?

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

brianmerchant, to random
@brianmerchant@mastodon.social avatar

The torching of a Waymo car was not a random act of vandalism, as certain pundits want you to think, and it did not take place in a vacuum.

In fact, it's a major escalation in the growing revolt against Silicon Valley, and may just be the beginning:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/torching-the-google-car-why-the-growing

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@brianmerchant

Wow, that eyewitness account is incredible. I agree entirely with everything you wrote. Also, being stuck in traffic behind (as you note) such a perfect symbol of Silicon Valley and deciding to smash it is the single most American possible path to violent resistance imaginable.

Now that I think about it, self-driving car accelerationism might be our society's most viable path to class consciousness. 🤔

loshmi, to Palestine
@loshmi@social.coop avatar

The counter-protestors at included a large number of bona fide antisemites. Their only care for Jewish safety is how to exploit it for political gain.

What I witnessed that Tuesday night chilled me to the bone - one of the men named in this article screamed at me and my colleague that white supremacy will rule and white violence will come. We were standing on the sidelines as observers.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/10/college-campus-protests-far-right

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@loshmi Not really a reply to this thread specifically, but you are cool as hell for how much you as faculty are taking students seriously as stakeholders in both society in general and the university community specifically. So many lame responses from the mainstream waving away student protests as kids doing dumb kid shit, which is just so frustrating and stupid and even ahistorical.

I took a little road trip to visit my own alma mater's encampment last weekend and I'm just so proud of them.

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

theluddite.org is under heavy traffic right now, and I want to take this opportunity to point out how much compute and energy the tech industry wastes.

I host theluddite.org on the absolute smallest linode server available, for $5/month, along with several other websites. It's currently receiving well over 10 requests per second, and has been for many hours.

Here's a graph of the CPU usage hovering at 5%.

#permacomputing

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

I've been software consulting for years. Most systems that I've worked on use orders of magnitude more compute than they need. I frequently cut clients' cloud bills by 90+%. I find this bloat has two factors:

  • Some nebulous, completely uninterrogated need to "scale." This is usually aspirational and exists to boost egos vs grounded in real specs.

  • Devs want to use some recent hyped up tech. Wanting to learn a new tool isn't justification for using it where it makes no sense to use.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@tinyrabbit that's awesome!! I wanted to host at home but my ISP charges double for a static IP than linode does for a nanode so here I am

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

A very hard-hitting critique from Jacobin about . I don't know how the movement will survive this one.

https://jacobin.com/2024/02/degrowth-movement-problems-climate-change

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

FWIW I'm a big degrowth person but I actually do think that their point could be valid, were it articulated seriously. Degrowth literature often has an incredibly robust critique of capitalism followed by an insufficiently articulated theory of political change or of the post-growth economy. I have a running joke with some degrowth friends that "cargo bikes and repair cafes do not an economy make" about this.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

While I'm here, another critique of degrowth literature: It's very urban. As far as I can tell, a decarbonized post-growth economy will result in a fuckton more people doing agricultural work. Many books talk a lot about walkable downtowns, cargo bikes, etc., but we in the global north have no idea how to farm at scale without fossil fuels. I would like to see someone tackle that. Closest I've seen is analyses of Cuba's transformation after the fall of the soviet union. Recs appreciated!

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

I'm going to write a Jacobin article about how people care more about making apple pies than not dying.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=US&q=apple%20pie%20recipe,how%20to%20avoid%20dying&hl=en-GB

theluddite, to ai
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Nature published an article titled "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-023-00047-6

Even among the awful hype articles, this one is egregious, even before taking into account the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Here's my response, where I break down this outrageous piece of marketing pseudoscience:

https://theluddite.org/#!post/replika

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

After an email exchange with the journal, I did some digging, and it turns out that the lead author on this paper is the CEO of an AI company. I didn't think that this paper could get more egregious.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

More updates: Here's Replika's CEO, Eugenia Kuyda, a well-documented liar, touting the results of the study on Feb 16 podcast episode of "Cognitive Revolution."

https://pca.st/pma0q3bs

That Replika can maybe stop suicide by 25% or more is the cold open of the episode. Then after intro, at the 2:23 mark, the host says "Replika has been in the news again, this time, for a study out of Stanford, that found that 3% of its users found relief from suicidal ideation..."

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Goddammit, I just realized why the study was conducted in 2021 but the results didn't come out until 2024.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/01/30/replika-launches-new-immersive-ai-wellness-avatar-experience/

Replika launched a mental health product at the same time, and I strongly suspect that this is part of their press blitz.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Another update: Shivon Zilis, the neuralink person and mother of two of Elon Musk's children, is on the board of the author's AI company.

So we have a paper claiming that AI chatbots can prevent suicide in student populations based on a survey of users of replika, the erotic chat app, which failed to disclose the erotic nature of replika, whose author also failed to disclose their conflict of interest as CEO of an AI education company, which is apparently in the Elon extended stupidverse. 🆒

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

I somehow derailed this into a climate inaction/vessel analogy discussion, detracting from main point, so to come back to that:

There is more and more evidence that the slowdown/end of #AMOC could be a real prospect, quite soon, with very serious consequences for everyone in the northern hemisphere, the world. Not to be too doomsday-ish, but as @rahmstorf says: this is not good news. https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112303970032266377

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@pvonhellermannn

The Met Office is betting on Mr. Burns style climate change, in which you're so sick that all your diseases cancel out.

(reference: https://youtu.be/DnBtoOAhba4?t=58)

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

"Quiet quitting" discourse has been beaten to death, but now they're adding "quiet vacationing," which seems more sinister to me. CNBC, The Guardian, Newsweek, Business Insider, and more are all running this story.

This is all based on a poll that shows that millennials take "time off" without informing their managers by going on vacation but taking their laptops with them. That same poll shows that 78% of respondents don't take all their PTO, because they feel pressured not to.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

CNBC even says that millennials "have found workarounds to play hooky," an infantilizing analogy that places millennials as schoolchildren that ought to be disciplined, not adults in their thirties, as I am.

This analogy also misses the most important distinction: School (with its many problems) ostensibly exists for the benefit of children, whereas companies exist for the benefit of shareholders, at the expense of labor.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Any reasonable interpretation of these results would conclude that actually it's the companies coming out ahead here. The poll clearly shows that work is creeping into their vacation time, not the other way around.

By interpreting it backwards, they're explicitly supporting that very pressure that the respondents say they feel, shaming them for taking what's left of the vacation to which they are entitled, but during which they're now expected to work.

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Flagging a questionable AI stat from Ed Zitron's newsletter. First pic is from the newsletter, second one from the linked source.

The so-called study is from boston consulting group, and its results are mostly positive for AI ("The opportunity to boost performance is astonishing"), but they found one area where participants that used GPT did worse.

Also, I propose that we stop citing corporate "science" altogether, even when it agrees with us.

The opportunity to boost performance is astonishing: When using generative AI (in our experiment, OpenAI’s GPT-4) for creative product innovation, a task involving ideation and content creation, around 90% of our participants improved their performance. What’s more, they converged on a level of performance that was 40% higher than that of those working on the same task without GPT-4. People best captured this upside when they did not attempt to improve the output that the technology generated. Creative ideation sits firmly within GenAI’s current frontier of competence. When our participants used the technology for business problem solving, a capability outside this frontier, they performed 23% worse than those doing the task without GPT-4. And even participants who were warned about the possibility of wrong answers from the tool did not challenge its output.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@PaulGrahamRaven

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

BCG's study is just an ad for its own services, like all these studies always are. The headline is "How People Can Create—and Destroy—Value with Generative AI." It talks a lot about how AI is "a double-edged sword" but can unlock so much value if you use it right.

I wonder who I can hire to help my company's "leaders [...] watch for other potential pitfalls."

🤔

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Game show idea: A host interviews a panel of policy experts and politicians about how they would solve a problem, but if one of them uses the word "incentivize," we throw them into a volcano.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@PaulGrahamRaven oh yes I love that idea! Each new round we can add another codeword for enriching private interests.

zzzeek, to random
@zzzeek@hachyderm.io avatar

tech bros are assholes, part a zillion. Bros are now doing violent sex/LSD parties and coercing women to participate.

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/21/coercive-climate-of-silicon-valleys-ai-boom-fuels-troubling-parties-researcher-says/

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@zzzeek

Well, I feel not great after reading that, but I did just write several thousand words arguing that the AI hype is fundamentally about power, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised, I guess?

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

AI Chatbot Credited With Preventing Suicide. Should It Be?

https://www.404media.co/replika-suicide-prevention-loneliness-study/

We've been following this paper since January. I'm the one who contacted 404 media about it. It's a rare victory to see this getting more scrutiny.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

The article pretty clearly relied on my blog post, to the point where they repeated a very minor error that I made (see corrections). Would've been cool to see theluddite.org get credit directly, but they say that standard journalistic practice prevents them from linking to something that has claims that they can't verify.

Still, enjoyed their angle. I hope this causes Replika, Maples, or the journal to respond.

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

Reading proposals to "rein in" fast fashion by checks notes uh, maybe making them reuse the fibers from some of the stuff that doesn't sell? I know I'm not supposed to rag on things that might be even a tiny step in the right direction, but holy crap, people, is this all we've got in the tank? Because it ain't even gonna get us to the edge of town.

theluddite,
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

@PaulGrahamRaven At least they're not proposing a fiber-credit system based on "avoided fibers" that lets huge clothing manufacturers claim that they use a net-negative amount of fibers every year. That would be a really stupid approach for such a serious problem!

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Marketing emails are just capitalist mad libs. This one gave me a good chuckle.

Note that space in the salutation before the comma, which I assume is because their template has a spot for my name ("Hey <name>,") My name isn't anywhere on the site but their code isn't smart enough to handle that gracefully.

I'll make sure to follow up when they give me that list of sweet blogs that you can all get your anticapitalist tech at!

(also Garbanzo isn't my real name)

Screenshot of my response: Hey Ben, I'm very interested in this opportunity. Can you please provide me with the names and contact info of the other anticapitalist tech blogs that you work with, as references? Thank you, Garbanzo

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

I like to read AI papers then scream into the void.

GPT versus Resident Physicians — A Benchmark Based on Official Board Scores

https://ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/AIdbp2300192

Notice that framing: The paper puts the LLM against the human labor of lowest status doctors. Whenever a paper does that in the title, it usually means that, according to the authors, labor lost, but also that the authors have contempt for that class of laborers, and probably gave the bot unfair advantages in methodology and interpretation.

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Any scientist or science communicator who takes a pharmacological cure for loneliness seriously needs some sort of emergency philosophical intervention. They are a danger to themselves and others.

https://scienceillustrated.com/humans/loneliness-eats-your-brain

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

I hope that all the bad press about return to office, and how research shows that it's just worse in every way, leads people to realize that the economy is structured around control, not productivity, rationality, innovation, etc.

Most of our jobs, seen from the workers' perspective, are a waste of time. They exist to stop us from organizing an actually democratic society by keeping us subservient to and dependent on undemocratic workplaces that we further enrich and entrench with our labor.

theluddite, to random
@theluddite@assemblag.es avatar

Lots of skeptics are writing lots of good things about the AI hype, but so far, I've encountered relatively few attempts to explain why it's happening at all. Here's my contribution, mostly based Philp Agre's work on the (so-called) internet revolution, which focuses less on the capabilities of the tech itself, as most in mainstream did (and still do), but on the role of a new technology in the ever-present and continuous renegotiation of power within human institutions.

https://theluddite.org/#!post/ai-hype

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