We cannot allow AI to make Big Tech even bigger | Hacker News Reader

We cannot allow AI to make Big Tech even bigger

cnbc.com

47 pointsmarban19 comments

If you read past the first few paragraphs what he’s saying makes sense. We don’t want corporations using AI regulation to pull up the ladder. A world where we outlaw open source and garage projects from using AI and only allow big corporations to use it wouldn’t be a better one.

I find that Taleb’s take on this phenomenon makes the most sense. He argues that due to the internet, everything is now connected and this causes massive power laws. It would be much better if things were decoupled a bit again because distributed systems are much more robust.

Big-tech billionaire who long ago got paid now wants to keep big tech from growing.

Doesn't mean he's not wrong

Steve Case got his big AOL payday two-and-a-half decades ago already, and his investment portfolio doesn't have a dog in the social-media arena (AFAIK), so he has no (serious) conflict-of-interest, and his motive is not to prevent tech growing (which would be unachievable, and even if it wasn't he wouldn't personally gain from that).

He's actually a reasonably altruistic tech m/billionaire like Paul Allen, Steve Wozniak, Tony Hsieh (RIP), Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics, Netscape), Mark Cuban, Esther Dyson, Heidi Roizen.

Worth reading even just for this reminder:

"The iterative experimentation that eventually birthed the commercial Internet was delayed until the 1990s not because the technology wasn’t ready - the underlying infrastructure had been invented in the 1960s. Rather, the problem was that AT&T convinced policymakers that it was too dangerous to give outside players access to their closed access system."

Corporations were on the Internet before the 90s, so I'm going to assume by "commercial Internet" he means "consumer Internet" (e.g., AOL).

I doubt the consumer Internet could have happened before PCs became widespread in the 80s and early 90s, so it's misleading to attribute the delay solely or primarily to regulatory shenanigans by AT&T.

there was no "internet" at that time. Corporations mainly had private phone systems, and bought computers from IBM or others.. Some network engineers in Salt Lake City Utah sold custom networking, and from Boston.. but those lines connected only to specific others.. Overall, "no"

There was definitely internet in the late 80’s, it was just largely confined to academia and a few labs. Two things kept it from going mainstream; firstly the lack of a friendly interface (no web browsers), and cost (back then you could be paying more for 2400bps dial-up than you do for modern broadband).

.. then we must agree on a definition of "internet"

Steve Case? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in literally over 20 years.

What special knowledge does he bring to the conversation, beside being rich, I mean? Seriously. The idea that someone rich now is some sort of philosopher king is just absurd. He’s just a schmo, not a particular informed schmo at that.

He is wrong.

Everything is tech now. And other things are the value add.

For example, if you are a law firm, or a real estate company, and if your tech is not operating then your company is not operating.

If your Internet is offline, or your local network, then your business is not running.

If your company has a security breach, then you will have massive reputation problems.

If you're a small business, you need to have an online presence with Insta, Facebook, and Google maps.

It's all 75% tech now. Get with the programme.

Isn’t that kind of making the point?

Big tech is too big to fail

"Too big to fail, but not too big to bail out" was what was learned after 2008. Why wouldn't tech want to get in on that graft?

Too big to fail, but also not big enough to be broken up. If the government's priority was safeguarding the financial system, as soon as the crisis passed the big banks would be broken up to reduce risk if any one of them failed.

That breaking them up wasn't even discussed in government or media shows how powerful their influence is.

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it" - George Carlin

He’s not arguing for less tech, just that big tech shouldn’t monopolize AI. Are you saying they should?

Big Tech is term for big tech companies. Meta, Alphabet, MS, Apple and few more, the companies that have monopolized large sections of the Internet/Mobile and tech in general and are using that power + money to expand further into related/unrelated areas.

right, not tech itself, but the big tech companies that have platforms and are gatekeepers.

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