TechTakes

Occasional sneerclub character Nate Silver is bluechecking again.

New piece from Brian Merchant: 'AI is in its empire era'

Recently finished it, here's a personal sidenote:

This AI bubble's done a pretty good job of destroying the "apolitical" image that tech's done so much to build up (Silicon Valley jumping into bed with Trump definitely helped, too) - as a matter of fact, it's provided plenty of material to build an image of tech as a Nazi bar writ large (once again, SV's relationship with Trump did wonders here).

By the time this decade ends, I anticipate tech's public image will be firmly in the toilet, viewed as an unmitigated blight on all our daily lives at best and as an unofficial arm of the Fourth Reich at worst.

As for AI itself, I expect it's image will go into the shitter as well - assuming the bubble burst doesn't destroy AI as a concept like I anticipate, it'll probably be viewed as a tech with no ethical use, as a tech built first and foremost to enable/perpetrate atrocities to its wielder's content.

haha, it's starting to happen: even fucking fortune is running a piece that throwing big piles of money on ever-larger training has done exactly fuckall to make this nonsense go anywhere

Not really a sneer, nor that related to techbro stuff directly, but I noticed that the profile of Chris Kluwe (who got himself arrested protesting against MAGA) has both warcraft in his profile name and prob paints miniatures looking at his avatar. Another stab in the nerd vs jock theory.

google's on their shit again

can't sneer it properly just yet, there's a lot

The most naked attempt yet at allowing billionaires to live on without the rest of us.

What infuriates me the most, for some reason, is how nobody seems to care that the robots leave the fridge door open for so long. I guess it's some form of solace that, even with the resources and tech to live on without us the billionaires still don't understand ecosystems or ecology. Waste energy training a machine to do the same thing a human can do but slower and more wastefully, just so you can order the machine around without worrying about it's feelings... I call this some form of solace as it means, even if they do away with us plebs, climate change will get'em as well - and whatever remaining life on Earth will be able to take a breather for the first time in centuries.

The New York Times Pitchbot enters our territory:

We wanted to understand the future of AI. So we talked to three Hawk Tuah cryptocurrency investors at a White Castle in Toms River.

Media companies continue to impress me with their hard-hitting investigative boots on the ground reporting

Write a brief article titled "ICE Prosecutor Linked to Anonymous White Supremacist X Profile: Report"