Thanks to Samantha Cole at 404 Media, we are now aware that Automattic plans to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com (which is the host for my blog) for “AI” products. In respon…
random code monkeys aren’t evil or too stupid to figure out opt-in is more ethical
Coming in with a hot fucking take, they very much are that evil and/or stupid. They’re not at fault for how the software is structured, but judging by the crazes around tech hype (crypto, AI, NFTs) and my personal experience with average code monkeys, they would happily support “unethical” solutions (like opt-out tracking) if asked
Yeah I’m gonna need some elaboration on that. How is AI anarchist? What exactly do you mean by anarchism? And how does this relate to my comment about the moral and intellectual (and thus cultural) tendencies in software engineering and the wider tech community?
Running a local FOSS AI model that allows one to generate images, text, code and even video circumvents the power of the capitalists by giving the proletariat the means to produce themselves much more readily and with far fewer startup capital required, plus being able to train a model on the internet turns it into a trap for corporations who want their intellectual property to stay theirs, as now anyone can violate IP laws readily, similar to what the internet did to copyrighted media (paying for stuff being just a suggestion via the magic of P2P).
what do you mean by anarchism
For a good starter I’d suggest “The Conquest of Bread” and “Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution” by Peter Kropotkin.
how does this relate
There is no moral, and there’s no such thing as culture. These are spooks in your head. There is no “community” either, that’s a spook too.
There are wageslaves (proletariat or ‘working class’) who want a roof over their heads, their best chance is to slave for corporations who’s primary product of exploiting the proletariat labour ends up being technology of some kind, be that a toaster or a marketing tool, most workers have no choice or way to affect that.
Capitalists who own these enterprises are those who make the calls because they own the means of production.
It’s that simple. There are no other forces at play here.
You want to change that? Better start practicing communism, e.g. by working on foss AI projects or even foss in general.
I don’t think I know enough about anarchism to really dispute that. Though how much can the proletariat gain compared to the capitalists from AI? FOSS models are limited - I don’t think most people have supercomputers required for the training in their basements.
I will however question your denial of community. What definition of that word do you use? We’re not in a worker - capitalist relationship all the time. See: us right now, right here. See: me with other students at my university. Class distinctions are irrelevant to that.
Hell, Lemmy as a whole is a tech enthusiast community to an extent, though it being a lesser known specific form of social media introduces forces that make this community different in meaningful ways (e.g. it’s not corporate - there are fewer corpowhores here, it requires more effort to get in - people here will be on average more interested in actually contributing something meaningful).
On top of that, you mentioned FOSS models. Who were they built by? Corporations? Or a bunch of loosely associated volunteers who came together to work towards a shared goal? Is this not a community? (Those are actual questions btw, I couldn’t be bothered to check)
And with some form of a community comes some form of culture and morality.
As for additional forces even in workplaces, did you know most tech workers are men?
And as an aside, where have I said that it’s the tech workers who are responsible for bad, unethical solutions? I’m pretty I explicitly claimed the opposite
Coming in with a hot fucking take, they very much are that evil and/or stupid. They’re not at fault for how the software is structured, but judging by the crazes around tech hype (crypto, AI, NFTs) and my personal experience with average code monkeys, they would happily support “unethical” solutions (like opt-out tracking) if asked
Ur an idiot. AI is anarchist af.
Yeah I’m gonna need some elaboration on that. How is AI anarchist? What exactly do you mean by anarchism? And how does this relate to my comment about the moral and intellectual (and thus cultural) tendencies in software engineering and the wider tech community?
Okay I’ll bite:
Running a local FOSS AI model that allows one to generate images, text, code and even video circumvents the power of the capitalists by giving the proletariat the means to produce themselves much more readily and with far fewer startup capital required, plus being able to train a model on the internet turns it into a trap for corporations who want their intellectual property to stay theirs, as now anyone can violate IP laws readily, similar to what the internet did to copyrighted media (paying for stuff being just a suggestion via the magic of P2P).
For a good starter I’d suggest “The Conquest of Bread” and “Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution” by Peter Kropotkin.
There is no moral, and there’s no such thing as culture. These are spooks in your head. There is no “community” either, that’s a spook too.
There are wageslaves (proletariat or ‘working class’) who want a roof over their heads, their best chance is to slave for corporations who’s primary product of exploiting the proletariat labour ends up being technology of some kind, be that a toaster or a marketing tool, most workers have no choice or way to affect that.
Capitalists who own these enterprises are those who make the calls because they own the means of production.
It’s that simple. There are no other forces at play here.
You want to change that? Better start practicing communism, e.g. by working on foss AI projects or even foss in general.
I’ll bite back >:3
I don’t think I know enough about anarchism to really dispute that. Though how much can the proletariat gain compared to the capitalists from AI? FOSS models are limited - I don’t think most people have supercomputers required for the training in their basements.
I will however question your denial of community. What definition of that word do you use? We’re not in a worker - capitalist relationship all the time. See: us right now, right here. See: me with other students at my university. Class distinctions are irrelevant to that.
Hell, Lemmy as a whole is a tech enthusiast community to an extent, though it being a lesser known specific form of social media introduces forces that make this community different in meaningful ways (e.g. it’s not corporate - there are fewer corpowhores here, it requires more effort to get in - people here will be on average more interested in actually contributing something meaningful).
On top of that, you mentioned FOSS models. Who were they built by? Corporations? Or a bunch of loosely associated volunteers who came together to work towards a shared goal? Is this not a community? (Those are actual questions btw, I couldn’t be bothered to check)
And with some form of a community comes some form of culture and morality.
As for additional forces even in workplaces, did you know most tech workers are men?
And as an aside, where have I said that it’s the tech workers who are responsible for bad, unethical solutions? I’m pretty I explicitly claimed the opposite