Hacker News Reader

I don't think Cory is writing for the machine learning community.

Cory is trying to inform people that AI and ML aren't a magical solution to all our wasteful systems because in some cases we need to throw away the system and start again, and AI can't tell us that. It can only tell us the best way to run the current system. That's what he means when he says AI is conservative.

It's not surprising at all if you understand AI but most non-tech people don't.

View on HN

It has the same flavor generally of people who criticize something that’s hard but offer no solutions — a style that has become increasingly popular IMHO. This also isn’t a new angle for the non-informed audiences. It bears repeating for those audiences, but I’d wish he’d at least point to others who have already echoed such concerns.

Paragraph two cites the inspiration for this piece, a 2017 article by Molly Sauter: https://reallifemag.com/instant-recall/

And he points to three other sources right in the first paragraph.

But... it's Cory Doctorow. He's not just some random writer; he's one of the best and most insightful technology commentators around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com