The article in its entirety:
SEOUL/HONG KONG/TAIPEI/SUNNYVALE, U.S. – A breakthrough in next-generation memory chip design, announced by China’s CXMT at the weekend, has sent shockwaves through markets and the semiconductor industry, although analysts and industry executives say its rivals have other ways to maintain their competitive edge.
Great. What’s the breakthrough? Who are the rivals? What edge was gained and what edge can be kept?
We truly have taken the term “military intelligence” to staggeringly new levels of paradox, haven’t we?
Again, you’re the only one saying those things. I literally just finished saying I’d burn it down if I could and you’re telling me I’m defending it.
Learn to read better, please.
you’d use that as an argument later on to defend AI,
Meanwhile I actually said:
I genuinely believe humanity would be better off without AI
Your reading comprehension needs work.
My literal only point in all of this has become that tools exist independent of politics. I also think guns are abhorrent, but they exist and we have to deal with them. So it is with AI. The gun and AI are neither independently political items. It is their use which turns them into political topics well worth discussing.
If I were able to Thanos snap both guns and AI off the face of the earth along with all capability to ever produce their like again I would do it without a second thought or care for any of the consequences for it as I believe both are indeed net negatives for humanity.
As i lack that capability, I am going to have to learn how to live my life in a world where these things do exist. I also don’t blame the items themselves for existing, but rather the evil people who build them in the name of ever greater profits.
But you keep putting words and beliefs in other people’s mouths if it makes you feel better, I guess.
Because Apple is a political entity and have their own agenda.
Any tracking tool of any description can be used for personal safety or nefarious means.
Rocks aren’t political, but they can still be used to split somebody’s skull open as easily as they can be used to drive a nail. They’re tools, and the hands that use them determine their politics. That still doesn’t make the tool inherently political.
DRM is a tool to protect IP and can (though often does not) protect the individual who created the IP.
Flock cameras are really just cameras that are utilizing other tools to track people. The company using them in that way are the political ones. The tool being used as it is just happens to be the point of contention.
Data centers weren’t really a (Big) problem til they started being used for AI. So again, it is the use case rather than the tool itself.
I want to be abundantly clear that I am not actually arguing for any of these things as i think Flock et al should be slow-roasted one inch at a time just as a starter and our warm-up round for what happens to Meta and Google and Palantir and so on.
The semantic/pedantic part of me just kicks against blanket statements that, when analyzed, tend to be on shakier ground than it first appeared.
Not trying to kink shame, but furry is the opposite of a turn on for me.
You do you, though.
I think we are ultimately in agreement with a subtly different perspective on things.
Nothing is inherently political, but everything is ultimately within the realm of politics. Land itself isn’t political until people draw lines on it and start making claims.
Inert, lifeless things are not themselves inherently political. Their uses and the people who decide such make them so.
Is there anyone who
You can remember
Ever changed their mind from
The paint on a sign
Belief is a beautiful armor
It makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching underwater
You never can hit who you’re trying for
Some need the exhibition
Some have to know they tried
Its the chemical weapon
For the war that’s raging on inside
I never suggested it isn’t problematic, but it is here and apparently here to stay. We can stamp our feet and cry about it or we can learn to live with it and maybe even take advantage of it in what ways it can benefit the intelligent person.
Again, I personally believe AI is a net negative for humanity. But it isn’t up to me any more than its up to you, the existence of this crap.
My bad, I’ll go punch a libertarian to make up for it now.
Oh shit, I think that was a Lemmy user who went so far left they Pac-Man’d their way to the lib right!
Sure thing, spanky…
I wouldn’t dare do the disservice of judging the article (in full) purely on title, but “technology” includes the hammer, the wheel, and all the way around to sticks and fire.
Again, I am willing to debate the ethics of use of any given technology all day as that is absolutely a conversation worth having, especially with some technologies like spy satellites and permanently-connected IOT devices alongside LLMs.
But technology itself isn’t inherently political.
Now I’m clicking the link.
Edit: Upon reading, I fully take their point, but my own lens of it is more that everything is within the realm of politics rather than innately political itself. Tractors aren’t inherently political, but John Deere managed to make them so. Actors using, to my earlier point, any technology as a lever for politics doesn’t inherently make that technology political.
I appreciate that viewpoint immensely however, even though I don’t fully align with it myself.
I am familiar with their actual history, but the colloquialism has taken on its own life just as the term “nimrod” no longer describes the famous hunter of that name but rather a bumbling buffoon.
As regards the politics of it, we can split these hairs all day. Where do we draw the line between a tool and a weapon? Which tools are acceptable to use and in what ways?
That AI is being used as a political bludgeon is not the fault of AI any more than gunshot wounds are the direct fault of the gun; they are tools being used for particular aims. I consider both equally dangerous in the right (wrong) hands, but by that same token a gun can be used to feed a family when used for hunting just as AI has provided monetary benefits to regular working people.
A tool cannot in and of itself be political. Its use and application absolutely can.
ETA: Upon re-reading I see that my “nimrod” comparison can read as an insult. I meant it more in how Bugs Bunny altered the colloquial meaning. I was not trying to be disparaging in Amy way and apologize if I offended.
While this is a perfectly valid point you make, all these companies have spent the past couple years arguing that all this is fair game as long as AI does it.
“Rogue agents?” Do you really believe that? Which reminds me, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn if so. Act fast I’ll even throw in the one next to it for half off.
There are currently no laws that apply to this BS directly and that is precisely the problem that we have all had with AI bros for so long, and it is the problem they are about to run smack into, but not before their own toys cannibalize everything they’ve built into a zombified approximation of itself with bits of other ideas grafted on the side like some Lovecraftian nightmare program. And it’ll be just as maddeningly incomprehensible and their ultimate ruin the moment they behold it for what it truly is.
Again, that doesn’t mean regular folks won’t be caught up in the cascade effects all this will cause, but when the laws go up to rein the bullshit in - and one way or another they surely will - it isn’t going to have to be you and me who figure out how to work without AI. Like I said, these companies are talking themselves blue in the face that IP doesn’t apply to AI. And now its coming back to bite them.
This is only going to cascade. And when the real court does get involved, the AI bros’ own legal arguments will work against them in so many cases for talking out both sides of their mouth all the damn time.
I’m not playing with AI and have gone out of my way to avoid updating my tech with anything AI these days. Linus has made that an exercise in futility given my current OS, but I am nobody and trust that my standard security measures - which are definitely above the average Mac/windows user - will continue to keep me safe from the average threat I am more than likely to face.
I think your sovereign citizen comparison was apt, but even in the name of corporate interests, I don’t see it going against precedent when push actually comes to shove; these stupid bastards wouldn’t stand for anybody else’s hands on their pie and that’s what they’ve inadvertently been arguing for with how things are developing.
I can, uh, go read some Marx if you need? Would that make it better?
She had roughly six months of consciousness in which she swam through the lifetimes and memories of a huge number of her ancestors with nobody to speak to except them and her mother through a quasi-telepathic link.
The link is actually more temporal than telepathic as i understand it because both Reverend Mother Gaius Mohaim and Alia both deny telepathy but the line is “She is in my mind where she should not be.” She also shortly after describes to Paul that she is sending him a message by “writing it on the future stream of time for [him] to find.”
So she wasn’t a mentat, but was basically born as a fully realized Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother which includes incredible mental discipline alongside Prana Bindu techniques; while not capable of the phenomenal computations a Mentat is, they can still assimilate and process bare scraps of information into complete pictures significantly quicker than the average homo sapien.
I finished reading the first book again only yesterday, so this is wildly fresh to me.
Copying my comment from another post that cherry-picked a specific quote of his, but ultimately I believe still applies.
My last use of AI is in my post history and was fairly down voted because I was being foolishly ironic.
This said, I don’t really disagree with his take here despite keeping away from AI as much as I am reasonably able. I do my own critical thinking and hate that I have to jump through hoops on the internet to have a simple question answered without some layman’s AI summary that may or may not be even remotely correct or actionable. Even still, when I asked it to check on local real estate laws and provide summaries of possible actions based on a very strict set of parameters, it gave me information that my wife and I were able to bring to a human agent and have things work out better than we had actually expected.
I think a better way of putting it - and I’m still gonna ruffle feathers - is that AI is becoming the new electricity.
Put down your pitchfork and lemme explain.
When electricity came out, people rather reasonably pointed out that simply coming into contact with an electrical device could result in death if one wasn’t careful. On top of that, the infrastructure required for it was expensive, unsightly, and at the time incredibly disruptive to daily life. It was going to ruin and disrupt entire industries that had existed for centuries because it could do things a human could not do unaided.
All of this is to one degree or another entirely true even through to modern times, but electricity has become a ubiquitous resource that humanity would now deeply struggle to live without. I won’t dare compare AI that far as i genuinely believe humans would be significantly better off without it, but the initial Luddite response to electricity has a historical echo here.
I think Linus’ point is more that it can undoubtedly be a useful tool when used in a measured, controlled, intelligent manner, and that it is a genie that is very clearly unwilling to be put back in its bottle. Like it or not it exists, and while we can absolutely be unhappy about it, being blind to its actual real world beneficial uses because the companies that make it are actual festering waste is a bit silly - especially when in the hands of the right chaotic neutral parties these companies are about to have a massive lesson in just how messy their tools have made things.
Turns out my organic LLM occasionally vomits out sensible things, too.
Hilariously yes. The fact that primarily Nazis feed it and warp its data and output continuously to suit their needs is what makes it a political tool rather than being innately political.
I will absolutely die on this hill.
What possible beneficial use can it have? Teaching rational humans like you and me how to recognize dog whistle bullshit and how to deal with it properly - up to and including RUD and permanent disposal.