this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
153 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

72267 readers
3044 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 95 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Comparing these two technologies seems somewhat silly

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Imperial media has to push some kind of garbage to distract from their ceaseless support for genocide.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

I believe they meant “imperialist”.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

It is much more nefarious than that. It is disingenous and misleading, on purpose. These AI techbros are going to use whatever means it takes in order to spread their minddeleting slop.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Yeah, but internet was for the people for decades.
(And it didn't really cost nature as much. Or stolen from the people so much - even by current laws LLM companies do that illegally.)

"AIs" are getting their enshitification & monopolies pre-baked into their core bossiness models from the start.

Not to mention that AIs will definitely worsen inequalities all over the world (like assembly robots that replaced people but aren't owned by people, and people still need to work 8h/day for decades for some reason).

(This but AI. I'm not saying, there aren't/won't be other jobs, just pointing out how this reshapes & concentrates wealth that on the other hands allows for slave wages with no prospects for full time jobs.)

If AIs will affect the world as much as the internet (and do so with peoples data), then they should be seen as core infrastructure - and government or non-profit owned.

Monetisation of all the things is killing us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Also the AI could automate away that man's hobby...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

I think there is no possible world where people are without meaningful work and are happy about it. Even if they collected $10,000 a month and got to spend all of their time doing hobbies and spending time with family, it would feel pointless and hollow. Why have a family? Why raise children? Why do anything if there's no struggle, if you're not the one providing for your kids? I think if AI replaces humans in the workplace, even with UBI, humans would cease to exist shortly thereafter as our lives will have become meaningless

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (15 children)
load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think there is no possible world where people are without meaningful work and are happy about it.

-->

Even if they collected $10,000 a month and got to spend all of their time doing hobbies and spending time with family, it would feel pointless and hollow.

What is the difference between "hobby" and "work" if not what random people decide what is better monetised?

Both is labour & value added.

In a world where everyone gets enough money people could do what they actually want. So a CEO wouldn't be "stuck" being a CEO if they don't like that job & would rather be eg a baker. In the current system bcs of a huge pay divergence you get an unhappy CEO (who ofc won't quit) and an unhappy baker that just couldn't get a more suited paying job.

But we as a society would get a lot more out of life & cultural progression if people would be happy & satisfied at what they do (job=hobby).

Empirical evidence (even USA did extensive tests in the 60s) show that given a universal income (so basically no scarcity) basically nobody just sits around watching TV all day, everyone is productive (research, art, services, etc).

Imagine only having customer support or food industry workers that truly enjoy their job & want to do it.
How many prodigies are stuck at random dead end jobs with no prospects and life options?

Labour is what we all benefit from.
Work is what the employer/owner benefits from.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Okay let's do an experiment.

Get some annoying trust fund kid, take all their money away from them, and tell them that they now have to get a job but it's a good thing because now their life has meaning. Let's see how happy they are about it.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 weeks ago

Nothing like comparing a technology that took more than 10 years to get "released in the wild" and had several "killer apps" built using it very early on (email, instant messaging, web pages, online games) and many companies had no idea how to get money with it, vs. a "content generator" that is run almost entirely on promises of increased productivity and profit.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Search sucks now, LLMs are useful. Not as useful as tech companies claim it to be but yeah, most people will use it at some point.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That's because search engines have reached the stage of enshittification where they no longer need to be good. Instead, they want you to spend as much time there as possible.

LLMs are still being sold as "the better option" - including by the exact same search giants who intentionally ruined their own search results. And many of them are already prioritizing agreeableness over "truthfulness." And we're still in the LLM honeymoon phase, where companies are losing billions of dollars on a yearly basis and undercharging their users.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Exactly. It will be ruined eventually when the shareholders come knocking wanting profitability.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

This is something I think the 'you have to use LLMs or you're falling behind' crowd are missing. Of course these companies want you to become dependent on their product, and unable to complete basic tasks without it, because then when they slap you with monthly fees and ads and tokens you won't have a choice but to pay.

Use them if they're useful, but don't out source your brain. You'll need it when the enshittification begins.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The two aren't equivalent. One of them is an actual proven technology that definitively exists, the other one is still to prove itself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It helps write emails and reviews and edits resumes. I have very little other use for it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

hope you proofread those emails, least you send part of a romance novel that the AI hallucinated into being.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Those can be sent to me.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It also helps with tons of complex tasks in the sciences like finding new protein folding algorithms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That right there is the problem with this discussion. They're not even remotely similar technologies.

The ones doing protein folding are specialised limited capability AI. They are absolutely useful and very good at their jobs, but they are not the kind of AI that the public are using.

The public are using large language models and Diffusion-Based image generators. Not the narrow AI that you're talking about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

AI is a superset of transformers which is then a superset of LLM’s. I think I’m making the same point as you, that in the broader sense “AI” can be useful.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

the internet is actually useful and serves a purpose.

ai isn't useful at all and has no purpose.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It is very useful, just only in very few circumstances. 99% of what people are shoving it into, it has no place being there, but there are some things that it legitimately just does better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I used it to select flowers to decorate my room with. In this case, it worked out excellent. The selection was done within hours, and I created a map of my room for arranging--all on a day off work.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

AI is very useful and powerful as a propaganda device and a system to generate and disseminate disinformation, misinformation and non-information very quickly and very efficiently.

It was thought that the internet would do the same but that system only goes at the speed of humans and the whole system is regulated by humans ... so as propaganda tool, it has worked better but not as well as predicted. Humans saw the the potential for abuse and fought back against it.

AI is like propaganda on cocaine ... and there is very little to stop it other than our awareness of it ... but the majority of everyone in the world don't care to understand what they are watching is real or not. What that means is that AI is set to reshape how everyone thinks and how we all see the world.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

We already saw Grok being used for this, though rather clumsily by stuffing the prompt.

If an AI company were behind the scenes fine tuning on specific political sentiment you would never know.

In fact there’s some evidence that later ChatGPT models are more right wing biased than early models (which were accused of being left wing).

Also important to note how much social media gets fed into these things and how astroturfed modern social media is these days, so even if not explicitly biased the well has been poisoned.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've used it to learn how to read sheet music and help learn other skills I normally wouldn't be able to.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

I've used it to figure out a button on a vintage calculator which had multiple humans give up assuming it's broken. Neither I, nor the AI knew what it was for but I could use it as a very willing conversation partner that didn't grow tired of trying new things.

I've had it help me come up with an effective deep fry batter that fit my exact needs and gave a perfect result.

It's usefulness is limited in many respects but if you have a rough idea of what you're talking about it will (mostly) be helpful. Until it forgets things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

That’s what they said about the internet in its infancy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Are you not self aware at all? Who do you think the article is about?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Tech itself maybe. But the money, the copyright and the politics. AI is filthy.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

No it doesn't. Fuck this fake news from these genocidal scumbags.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

One worked, though. 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Ah yes 1998, the last year before Matrix.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Huh I thought matrix was pretty new, and people used irc back then.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It's the same sentiment towards immigrants that's seen on the right.

The media have been running the exact same headlines. It feels weirdly like the corporate run media have an agenda to show us all the horrors of AI like they will take our jobs, they are going to collapse our society, they are a threat to our children, they contribute to organized crime. Same headlines every time.

I anticipate people here will be bothered by this statement just like if you say immigration isn't really a big problem in r/conservative. The media is insidious. But I really think it's a good opportunity to see how it shapes public opinion.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

I find this false equivalence pretty disgusting.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

That’s intentional. They sensationalize to desensitize. Unlike the introduction of computers or the internet, AI will absolutely take far more jobs than it will create. Goldman Sachs predicts a 50% reduction in US jobs by 2045, and Republicans added a provision into the budget reconciliation that prohibits any regulation on AI for a decade, to ensure that prosperity goes to the corporations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've learned of one interesting pathway from ancap to socialism long ago, as you might have guessed, through Georgism, but more generally - every finite resource that can't be produced, like territory and laws of nature, shouldn't be owned and should be considered common property shared by communist means. What can be produced is private property without limitations.

Thus you can own guns, tanks, jets and air carriers, but you shouldn't be able to fully own territory and patents, because that eventually leads to legally reinforced monopoly.

I think there's a logical connection from that to what our future looks like and how it will have to be resolved. Unless we want a caste society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Geoffrey Hinton agrees.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›