Oh yea I mean I was joking, the whole idea of the basilisk is comically stupid to me. Mostly because of the absolute impossibility of constructing one. If we take for granted that such a thing could exist, then it makes a lot more sense to be afraid of. But I see no way for that to happen. I don’t see how the categorical imperative relates though - would be interested in hearing some explanation on your thinking there.

Well we have to try to lie to ourselves to convince ourselves we don’t believe in it otherwise there’s no escape

Most people are so stupid and just do whatever they’re told to the extent that if meta releases these glasses and tells you that they’re cool, then people will be like, wow, these glasses are cool. Rayban just wants in on it. It makes a lot of sense unfortunately.

If you actually looked at the link that they gave you, it’s pretty obvious that the person has a lot of programming experience. I would say less than 2% of the developers I’ve ever met have an app on the app store so for a lot of them it would be their first app if they published one too.

I mean however unlikely this law is to pass it would be outright impossible if the idea was to take 50% of AI profits and then somehow mail checks to every person on earth, even outside of the country doing the profit distribution

Earnest question: do fresh news stories belong in a TIL community? It seems like a clearly overly literal interpretation of the name and goes against not only the spirit of the community but the general good practice of keeping communities from becoming generalized dumping grounds for any kind of post.

I don’t like the comic either, but the pictures all being together in the comic is because they’re supposed to be the same kind of problem, not because they’re supposed to be at the same level of badness.

Maybe I can restate my point more succinctly and spare you a pedantic lecture while still having a useful conversation.

1. In the other panels, the act depicted (smoking indoors) is fully identical with the act discussed (smoking indoors).

2. In the AI panel, the act depicted (pollution) is not fully identical with the act discussed (AI). It is closely related, but not identical.

3. The comic therefore undeniably conflates two separate (but indeed closely related) things. This alone is a mistake in the artist’s thinking.

4. In your counter-argument with smoking, you make the same sort of mistake. The comic discusses smoking indoors, and then you discuss cigarettes. Cigarettes and smoking indoors are related, but not identical things.

5. We cannot go back from cigarettes, as you agreed. But we can go back from smoking indoors. Similarly: We cannot go back from AI, but we can go back from polluting to produce it.

6. Because the comic conflates the cessation of pollution to produce AI, which is possible, with the ability to go back from AI, which is not possible, the comic mistakenly implies that it is not possible to stop polluting, contrary to its own purpose, hence why I say the artist is confused and makes a flawed case.

I would love it if you could specify what sentiment exactly it is that damages hope for our cause, and what exactly our cause is. My post, in my opinion, expresses a positive sentiment that would increase hope that there can be a future where there’s not pollution for the sake of AI. The comic is what damages hope, according to my reasoning above - Although I would never assume the comic was made in bad faith.

As others have pointed out, AI is a technology. It is an understanding of a certain way to program a computer. It’s not a behavior, but rather it’s a piece of information. That makes it different from the other three things, which are behaviors more than being technologies.

The reason why this matters and isn’t just some pointless nitpick is because the comic is conflating the sentiment of not being able to go back from AI with having a bunch of pollution and gigantic data centers. In the other images, for instance, they depict smoking indoors, and say smoking indoors is already here. what they depict and what they say is already here and can’t be gone back from are one in the same thing. But data centers and pollution are not the same thing as AI because AI is a technology, not a behavior. It would be fully possible to develop the same AI models without expanding the data centers or polluting any more than we already did. In fact, it would even have been possible to train AI models with sustainably sized data centers and recoverable amounts of normal pollution. It would just take longer. but the comic draws a false equivalence between the technology and the way that the technology is currently being implemented.

It’s wrong because there really is no going back from AI. We’ve never, ever, ever, ever gone back from a piece of technology. It’s always known how to create it. And regulations to stop it don’t really work, as we’ve seen with nuclear weapons. Because once knowledge of how to do something is out there, it’s pretty hard to stop people from, at the very least, knowing how to do it. And AI models can even be trained on a local computer, though obviously not very powerful ones

But just because there’s no going back from AI doesn’t mean that we can’t build a better world where there’s not irresponsibly gigantic data centers creating irreparable pollution, and all these other problems that we see with AI today. In the same way that just because there’s truly no going back from nuclear weapons doesn’t mean that we need to constantly be living in a cold war situation. We can indeed build better behaviors that regulate that technology.

But conflating the two is a serious mistake because it leads people to think that the only way to fix one problem is to get rid of the other and that’s going to produce a lot of pointless hopelessness and confusion because it’s just not true.

That was not the issue I took with it actually

Yeah, for most people the only gate something needs to pass is whether it expresses a view they agree with. It’s certainly a minority that imposes additional constraints. I don’t know to what extent this is educational, cultural, vs. just human.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of bubbles that I want no part of. But it would be nice if I felt like I knew some people who were dramatically smarter than myself. I’ve been able to help other people with problems. And they thank me and tell me how nice it is to be able to go to me and get help. But honestly, I don’t have many people like that myself. I guess even if I did, then all that would happen is they would just solve my problems… And then I would be up at their level and have whatever their level of problems are. 🧐 I’m talking purely about intelligence here, not like “social level” (ew), to be clear

Look, I get pissed off at AI and the AI industry every day. I definitely don’t hate it as much as some people, but I’m not a fan either.

That said, it seems like there’s not many comic artists out there who are able to actually articulate a coherent and rational criticism of AI. 90% of anti-AI comics end up being weak, strawman, or just generally sort of confused and vague. It’s shocking to me because it seems like the problems and ways to criticize it are so plain. But comics like this and many others show how silly, reactionary, and unthinking a lot of these complaints are. There can be such thing as overreacting to a bad thing, there can be such thing as being confused about what’s bad about a bad thing, etc. And in the case of this comic we have confusion about the nature of the problem and about its solution.

Ngl, it really irritates me seeing these artists think they’ve served up epic poignant AI ownage when they’ve really just demonstrated their own poor thinking ability.

No, I’ve only heard about them, usually at least three degrees of separation from me. There are levels of stupidity out there that are truly alien to me. I had the same realization you did… What I thought a stupid person looked like was not nearly as stupid as they can get. The fact that I usually need to go about three hops from myself to find them really goes to show how socially stratified they become. It’s very unfortunate because it seems to imply that people don’t really get exposure to people that are very much smarter than them, and the same goes for me.

Interestingly, it would probably do a better job of writing a piece of code to count how many T’s there are, and then reading output of that.

You were the chosen one!

This is why it really sucks that app developers offering their APKs directly isn’t more common, forces people to turn to sites like this. I’ve installed apps from apkmirror just because I want to avoid Google Play. I don’t really understand why there isn’t some third party app store that helps lift the hosting+verification burden from developers but still doesn’t rely on randos uploading apks from gplay.

What a great world it would be if every time you went to some software’s website with an app, they had that “download from google play” button right next to a “download from <this other legit Store>” button so you know its their real account, and a “download apk” button, because why not put some faith in users?

Yeah. Market downturn is always when they take the opportunity to make things worse. Resisting the fucking is a big part of what creates a better job market. But I totally understand not everyone is in a position to risk it

I get why people do this, I feel the pressure mounting at my job too. At some point we gotta draw a line. We’re gonna collectively manifest AI into being a fact of life, just like they want us to. Purposely using AI for dumb junk isn’t rebellious, its exactly what the AI creators want you to do. They want us all to have one big mass hallucination that this shit is as necessary as they say it is.

Again, purposely using your job’s AI for wasteful purposes is NOT rebellious, but in fact purposely plays into a worse future as planned. If you can afford to quit on principle, and your job is forcing AI usage metrics, thats probably a good time to quit on principle.

Oh yeah this is a very nice way to get it across. I know a couple smart people who are always saying shit like “people can’t be that stupid” and I tell them they don’t understand how smart they are. Homie thinks he’s 20% smarter than like 65% of people, its probably more like 200% smarter than 80% of people