We are destroying any goodwill people have for tech with AI

>Otherwise most normies will slowly, subconsciously lose faith in our industry and repairing that trust and confidence will take generations.

They should. Most of AI is a scam. Much of tech's business model is duping the "normies" and bleeding them dry.

What tech trends do you consider not a scam, out of curiosity?

AI is being thought of in the same likes as the internet, mobile, crypto, etc. I.e. new tech with huge opportunities.

The man scam is “everything must have a monthly subscription to some saas service”.

The immediate next is “appliances let you use all the features only if you have an account in some web service”

Not necessarily related to ai, but still scams.

The internet is full of predatory dark patterns, startups whose primary business model is surveillance, thought control and strip-mining user data. Crypto is almost entirely scams, and anything + "blockchain" like Web3 or NFTs has turned out time and again to be a playground for charlatans and grifters. Mobile apps and games - especially games - are designed to maximize addiction. Gig economies are modern day serfdom.

And AI is no different. The entire AI industry is built on grift at all levels. Sure, maybe it's useful to some people in some limited use cases but it's being pushed everywhere, regardless of its utility, simply because the profit potential seems near infinite. Tech has literally created death cults around it, one of which is currently cannibalizing the American government, which I have mixed feelings about because I hate American imperialism about as much as I hate "Big Tech."

I grew up a child of the late 80's and 90's. I was the shy probably neurdivergent-before-it-was-cool kid who read encyclopedias and books about robots and space travel all the time. Once the internet came along I lived in it, I would have wired myself into it like Lain if I could have. I loved "tech" and the promise of the future. Now that future is here and it all reeks because it was created by sociopaths and nazis to further the interests of venture capitalists. We built the Torment Nexus and now we're just left iterating on it, and offering Torment As A Service.

What tech trends aren't a scam? The nature of the tech industry and its incentives are such that are no trends that are not also scams. If the next big thing was not a scam, it would not trend. You might as well be asking where the water isn't wet.

You’re ignoring its usefulness. I can summarize documents in seconds, and have a portable research assistant that has memorized all human knowledge.

What should have destroyed peoples’ faith in the tech industry is infinite scroll addictionware, algorithmic feeds that promote trash because it’s “engaging,” or vapid scams like NFTs raising billions to do nothing but open casinos.

AI is a lot more useful than that junk. It feels like a return to trying to actually empower people.

Of course it has negative uses but so does everything. Make a hammer and most will use them to build things, but a few will bash someone’s head in.

Who cares if it's right? Shortcuts always work out in the long run.

> summarize documents in seconds

Serious question: What documents include high-quality content but are too long to read and lack summaries written by the authors of the documents? None come to mind immediately. Research papers have abstracts. Book chapters have introductions. I can't think of an example. Are you referring to low-quality content that isn't worth reading?

Driving on I80 in western Nebraska Monday, I asked Google what time zone I was in currently. Based on location, time and date, Google very confidently told me I was in Mountain Standard Time.

Between "AI" and mobile first, technology has lost all of my respect and goodwill.

This hype cycle is about replacing pesky employees not delivering value for consumers. Their good will doesn’t matter, they are all online and won’t leave.

Going on the record that I agree everything AI originated should be marked as such and carry strict liability for the generator to disincent careless, untested implementations.

AI is crack cocaine for capitalists. It has all the trappings of salaryless, ownable labor, and we should stop acting like it's entire purpose isn't to become just that.

The hallmark of a competent practitioner of an art is to recognize when one is potentially doing harm. Technologists over the last 10 years have eschewed this responsibility to society over the last decade or so, and we really need to rein in the excesses we're equipping the market with to the detriment of society.

> salaryless, ownable labor

Automation is indeed the killer app for AI.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/21/1067563/automati...

It is very likely that some kind of AI similar to the current batch of LLMs was already deployed and working before any of the commercial players published their public versions. We just didn't knew about it. You probably talked to one without realizing. I must have done it several times myself.

So, what changed? Really? (rethorical).

You're proposing an HTTPS padlock sign. "This conversation is human" is the new "This connection is secure". Can't do that, it doesn't work. You should know these marks and verified labels are useless by now.

We need to get better than AI can possibly be. It's a mathematical machine turk, we should be able to overcome it (at least in energy efficiency). Smarter, kinder humans are what we need.

We?

I have nothing to do with any of that lol.