Three AI insights for hard-charging, future-oriented smartypantses

MERE HOURS REMAIN for the Kickstarter for the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There’s also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Living in the age of AI hype makes demands on all of us to come up with smartypants prognostications about how AI is about to change everything forever, and wow, it's pretty amazing, huh?

AI pitchmen don't make it easy. They like to pile on the cognitive dissonance and demand that we all somehow resolve it. This is a thing cult leaders do, too – tell blatant and obvious lies to their followers. When a cult follower repeats the lie to others, they are demonstrating their loyalty, both to the leader and to themselves.

Over and over, the claims of AI pitchmen turn out to be blatant lies. This has been the case since at least the age of the Mechanical Turk, the 18th chess-playing automaton that was actually just a chess player crammed into the base of an elaborate puppet that was exhibited as an autonomous, intelligent robot.

The most prominent Mechanical Turk huckster is Elon Musk, who habitually, blatantly and repeatedly lies about AI. He's been promising "full self driving" Telsas in "one to two years" for more than a decade. Periodically, he'll "demonstrate" a car that's in full-self driving mode – which then turns out to be canned, recorded demo:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/

Musk even trotted an autonomous, humanoid robot on-stage at an investor presentation, failing to mention that this mechanical marvel was just a person in a robot suit:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/elon-musk-tesla-robot-optimus-ai

Now, Musk has announced that his junk-science neural interface company, Neuralink, has made the leap to implanting neural interface chips in a human brain. As Joan Westenberg writes, the press have repeated this claim as presumptively true, despite its wild implausibility:

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/elon-musk-lies

Neuralink, after all, is a company notorious for mutilating primates in pursuit of showy, meaningless demos:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk would risk someone else's life to help him with this nonsense, because he doesn't see other people as real and deserving of compassion or empathy. But he's also profoundly lazy and is accustomed to a world that unquestioningly swallows his most outlandish pronouncements, so Occam's Razor dictates that the most likely explanation here is that he just made it up.

The odds that there's a human being beta-testing Musk's neural interface with the only brain they will ever have aren't zero. But I give it the same odds as the Raelians' claim to have cloned a human being:

https://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/03/cf.opinion.rael/

The human-in-a-robot-suit gambit is everywhere in AI hype. Cruise, GM's disgraced "robot taxi" company, had 1.5 remote operators for every one of the cars on the road. They used AI to replace a single, low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged, specialized technicians. Truly, it was a marvel.

Globalization is key to maintaining the guy-in-a-robot-suit phenomenon. Globalization gives AI pitchmen access to millions of low-waged workers who can pretend to be software programs, allowing us to pretend to have transcended the capitalism's exploitation trap. This is also a very old pattern – just a couple decades after the Mechanical Turk toured Europe, Thomas Jefferson returned from the continent with the dumbwaiter. Jefferson refined and installed these marvels, announcing to his dinner guests that they allowed him to replace his "servants" (that is, his slaves). Dumbwaiters don't replace slaves, of course – they just keep them out of sight:

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/behind-the-dumbwaiter/

So much AI turns out to be low-waged people in a call center in the Global South pretending to be robots that Indian techies have a joke about it: "AI stands for 'absent Indian'":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

A reader wrote to me this week. They're a multi-decade veteran of Amazon who had a fascinating tale about the launch of Amazon Go, the "fully automated" Amazon retail outlets that let you wander around, pick up goods and walk out again, while AI-enabled cameras totted up the goods in your basket and charged your card for them.

According to this reader, the AI cameras didn't work any better than Tesla's full-self driving mode, and had to be backstopped by a minimum of three camera operators in an Indian call center, "so that there could be a quorum system for deciding on a customer's activity – three autopilots good, two autopilots bad."

Amazon got a ton of press from the launch of the Amazon Go stores. A lot of it was very favorable, of course: Mister Market is insatiably horny for firing human beings and replacing them with robots, so any announcement that you've got a human-replacing robot is a surefire way to make Line Go Up. But there was also plenty of critical press about this – pieces that took Amazon to task for replacing human beings with robots.

What was missing from the criticism? Articles that said that Amazon was probably lying about its robots, that it had replaced low-waged clerks in the USA with even-lower-waged camera-jockeys in India.

Which is a shame, because that criticism would have hit Amazon where it hurts, right there in the ole Line Go Up. Amazon's stock price boost off the back of the Amazon Go announcements represented the market's bet that Amazon would evert out of cyberspace and fill all of our physical retail corridors with monopolistic robot stores, moated with IP that prevented other retailers from similarly slashing their wage bills. That unbridgeable moat would guarantee Amazon generations of monopoly rents, which it would share with any shareholders who piled into the stock at that moment.

See the difference? Criticize Amazon for its devastatingly effective automation and you help Amazon sell stock to suckers, which makes Amazon executives richer. Criticize Amazon for lying about its automation, and you clobber the personal net worth of the executives who spun up this lie, because their portfolios are full of Amazon stock:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Amazon Go didn't go. The hundreds of Amazon Go stores we were promised never materialized. There's an embarrassing rump of 25 of these things still around, which will doubtless be quietly shuttered in the years to come. But Amazon Go wasn't a failure. It allowed its architects to pocket massive capital gains on the way to building generational wealth and establishing a new permanent aristocracy of habitual bullshitters dressed up as high-tech wizards.

"Wizard" is the right word for it. The high-tech sector pretends to be science fiction, but it's usually fantasy. For a generation, America's largest tech firms peddled the dream of imminently establishing colonies on distant worlds or even traveling to other solar systems, something that is still so far in our future that it might well never come to pass:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

During the Space Age, we got the same kind of performative bullshit. On The Well David Gans mentioned hearing a promo on SiriusXM for a radio show with "the first AI co-host." To this, Craig L Maudlin replied, "Reminds me of fins on automobiles."

Yup, that's exactly it. An AI radio co-host is to artificial intelligence as a Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz tail-fin is to interstellar rocketry.

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

夜退屈を感じたときに冷蔵庫をあさるのではなく、散歩に行くのです。 研究によると、意志の力だけで引き金に抵抗しようとするよりも、置き換える習慣のほうが成功率が高いことがわかっています。 置換すると神経経路が再訓練され、新しい報酬が提供されます。

How to Build a Habit Lab: A Guide to Scientifically Re-engineering Your Behaviour | by Joan Westenberg | Medium

"When I was in my early 20’s, I hustled my ass off. I worked 2 jobs and a side hustle. I drank 8 cups of coffee a day and popped No Doz pills to work at night.

And then I burned the fuck out. And crashed hard.

And it wasn’t worth it.

There’s a lot of folks who will tell you: “grind to the point of exhaustion. Chase wealth and rest later. Make work your only religion.”

That advice is poison. It will leave you broken and hurt and tired and alone."

Joan Westenberg misses the old internet. “Today’s internet feels less like a global community and more like a series of walled gardens, each meticulously maintained to keep out any unpredicted, and thus, unprofitable, elements.”

It begins with a simple, profound realisation — to quit capitalism, we have to liberate ourselves from its entrenched mindset, beyond economic reform; it demands a fundamental shift in how we perceive success, value community, and envision our role in the future of humanity.

How to quit capitalism by Joan Westenberg

More commonly, independent creators utilise audience monetisation to supplement other incomes. Partnering crowd-funding models with advertising revenue, part-time work, freelancing, grants, merchandising, or institutional funding helps mitigate the uncertainty of relying purely on consumers.

Liner Notes (January 20th, 2024)

This week’s newsletter looks at Green Day’s new album and sprinkles in some other thoughts on the music and entertainment I spent time with last week. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here. If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here. A Few Things * I (for obvious reasons) enjoyed this article from Joan Westenberg arguing that forums have some real benefits over places like Slack/Discord. I continue to like our community and how it looks/works over any other online platform I’ve played around with. * I saw some sad news this week. Former AbsolutePunk writer Tony Pascarella passed away. Tony wrote some of my favorite reviews back in the day, and I’ll remember him for never being afraid to tackle a takedown of a popular artist. Rest in peace. * I asked Alexa about the weather this morning. It gave me the weather and asked if I wanted headlines for the upcoming NFL games. Has anyone written the definitive piece on what went wrong with this product? Every “did you know…?” prompt makes me want to throw this thing through a window. In Case You Missed It * Paramore Cancel Festival Appearances * Sum 41 Announce Final World Tour * Green Day to Play ‘American Idiot’ and ‘Dookie’ on Tour * Graduation Speech – “No Confidence” (Song Premiere) * All the Billion Things * The Spill Canvas Announce New Tour * Finch Post-Up Teaser * Chorus. fm’s Top 30 Albums of 2023 * Yellowcard Announce New Collaboration Album * Albums in Stores – Jan 19th, 2024 Music Thoughts * This week’s big release is Green Day’s Saviors. I think it’s a wonderful return to form after quite a few years of the band wandering in the wilderness with mediocre songs (and the straight up unlistenable last album). It’s an album that embraces the best parts of the band and has some of Billie’s most inspired songwriting since American Idiot. Highlights for me are “Goodnight Adeline,” “Dilemma,” and “Living in the ’20s.” There’s an awesome energy to “Living in the ’20s” that I didn’t think the band had in them anymore. There’s still a few duds (the last three songs drag a little, and the chorus to “Coma City” bugs me), and the album feels its length at 15 songs, but as a whole, I’m extremely happy to have a new Green Day album that I thoroughly enjoy. I’m still holding out hope that the band could do a whole album of songs like “Goodnight Adeline,” “Corvette Summer,” and “Suzie Chapstick” that would feel like a spiritual successor to Warning — a great start to the music year. * The new Strung Out song has me buzzing. Quickly climbing my most anticipated chart. * I like the new Taylor Acorn single; I hope to see a full length this year. * The rest of my week was spent rediscovering MxPx’s Secret Weapon, doing an Alkaline Trio discography run, and sprinkling in some old school Bad Religion at the gym. The Stats: Over the past week, I listened to 25 different artists, 46 different albums, and 459 different tracks (581 scrobbles). Here is my Top 9 from last week, and you can follow me on Apple Music and/or Last.fm. Entertainment Thoughts * I loved Ms. Marvel (the TV show). I liked Captain Marvel. Adore both actresses. And I still thought The Marvels was a total mess. It felt like four scripts badly edited together. It was cut extremely weird, made little sense, and the story’s core was boring. It’s been a long time since I walked away from a Marvel movie excited. * Self Reliance was completely fine. * I’ve been keeping up with my goal to read more in 2024. Of the things I’ve read over the first few weeks, I liked Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane the best. I also finally read Travis Barker’s book. I’d give that a solid 2.5 stars. 2.5 is also the number of pages Travis can apparently go without mentioning how many women he’s slept with. There are some good Blink-182 tidbits throughout, and I would have loved more of a dive into the recording of those albums,… https://chorus.fm/features/articles/liner-notes-january-20th-2024/

A few quick links about the web

Some quick links I wanted to capture. First, Joan Westenberg, writing “I miss the internet.” I miss it, too. The homogeneity of the modern web is disheartening. Every website and platform is just a slight variation on a handful of templates. The eccentricity, the vibrant individuality, and the raw expression that once pulsated across the net all seem to have been replaced by either an…

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Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

So ends my week of relaxation. In the past I’d start becoming angry about how quickly my time off flew by. Not this week. I made the most of each day with some lazing about thrown in.

I managed to get some time to work on Stream for Mac and do a bunch of things around the house I’d put off for far too long. Today I plan on cleaning up Kim’s car and working on my dumpster bike. But I’m open to change.

Anywho, my coffee is ready. I hope you enjoy the links.

PZ Myers • Free Thoughts Blog

Nikki Haley got asked a straightforward question: “What was the cause of the United States’ Civil War?” She staggers back, stalls for time, and finally coughs up, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run.

This is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever seen. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the Civil War was fought over slavery. So, either Nikki Haley is a racist piece of crap or extremely stupid. I don’t think she’s stupid.

This was the easiest of softball questions you could give a Presidential candidate and she failed miserably, that alone should disqualify her from holding office in any federal, state, or local government.

Of course she’s competing with the biggest asshole of all for the GOP nomination. Good luck with that, Ms. Haley.

Maybe this was part of her audition for the Vice Presidency? Gotta show the Orange Man how racist she really is to get the job. 🤬

Jessica Wildfire • OK Doomer

Meanwhile, a world-class trail runner named Emilia kills herself after a Covid infection leaves her with an unstable heart. Around the world, smart talented young men and women are losing their careers after Covid ravages their organs, their brains, their immune systems.

COVID is still around and still wreaking havoc on folks.

I still need to get my booster, you should too. 💉

Mike Hanley • GitHub

Over 15 years ago, GitHub started as a Ruby on Rails application with a single MySQL database. Since then, GitHub has evolved its MySQL architecture to meet the scaling and resiliency needs of the platform—including building for high availability, implementing testing automation, and partitioning the data.

It’s wild to see how big services can become. GitHub — the company that centralized a decentralized version control system — has over 1,200 MySQL databases. That’s a metric crap ton.

It also seems strange given Microsoft has their own SQL Server offering continues to use MySQL, owned by Oracle. 🥴

Joan Westenberg

Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, used an artificial intelligence program to generate bogus legal citations in his motion for early termination of his supervised release.

The moral of the story is don’t believe everything a LLM gives you. You still need to verify the answer.

Laura Paddison • CNN

Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.

Will this pan out? If we’ve ever needed it now is the time. At the rate the climate is changing a team of scientists will emerge from their labs to announce to the world they’ve done it only to find the world on fire.

Raymond Wong • Inverse

Inside Apple’s Massive Push to Transform the Mac Into a Gaming Paradise

But will AAA games come around and make the commitment to the platform? Without developers it’s an instant failure.

Diane Duane

Can you add artificial intelligence to the hydraulics?

This is a link to a comment on a post — at least I think it is? Regardless it’s a funny read. If you only follow one link make it this one. AI is taking over all the things even if it can’t.

Alex Castro • The Verge

Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you’ll start seeing them: it’s January 29th.

I’m kind of surprised they don’t just bake this into Amazon Prime pricing.

Brandon Paul • Flo Racing

With over 1,600 total entries on hand for the Tulsa Shootout this week, there is bound to be some NASCAR connections to the biggest Micro Sprint event in the country.

I’m not sure how many folks not into NASCAR would know that drivers often compete in multiple different types of races throughout the year.

Sprint Cars seem to be a real favorite and winning a Golden Driller is still a highly sought after prize. Even for highly talented NASCAR drivers.

2019年、かつて偉大だったソーシャルメディアの巨人MySpaceは、サーバーの移行と故障により、プラットフォームにアップロードされた12年間に相当する5,000万のユーザーがアップロードしたアイテムを失ったと発表した。 これは驚くべき損失であり、文化的背景の膨大な部分が一夜にして消えてしまったことを表している。 人々がオンラインでどのように生活し、交流したかを詳細に記録した長年の音声と映像が消えてしまいました。 Twitter に買収され、最終的には閉鎖されたソーシャル ビデオ プラットフォーム Vine は、オンラインのビデオ コンテンツとコミュニティに不可欠な要素であり、何千人ものクリエイターがビデオのアーカイブを構築し、アプリ上でキャリアを築いていました。 この短編ビデオ サービスは Vine Camera にブランド変更されましたが、その終焉により、ミームは孤児となり、インフルエンサーはデジタル ホームと作品アーカイブを失い、失脚しました。 プラットフォームは生まれては消え、サイトは再設計され、アプリは閉鎖されます。 独創的だと感じた作品は、バックアップが必要であることに気づく前に消えてしまうことがあります。 プラットフォームが消滅すると、そのプラットフォームの労働力、コミュニティ、ポートフォリオも奪われます。 ポートフォリオを構築し、自分の才能を証明しているアーティストやクリエイターにとって、アーカイブが消えてしまうと、長年の作品が消去されてしまったように感じることがあります。 Tumblrがアダルトコンテンツを禁止したことで、主にTumblrでホストされていた漫画はこの削除に直面し、作品を救いたいと願うクリエイターにとってはほとんど手段が与えられず、フラグが立てられた投稿が一斉に削除された。

How social media’s fading archives are erasing our digital history | by Joan Westenberg | Aug, 2023 | Medium

None of them will surprise you, but it's nice to have them in one place

There Is No Moral Argument For Staying On Twitter/X | by Joan Westenberg | Oct, 2023 | Medium

Quote:

"" Twitter has become a platform that amplifies the voice of the powerful over the vulnerable. It is designed to reward controversy, conflict and outrage. Nuance, expertise and thoughtful debate struggle to survive. And as Twitter becomes more chaotic under its new owner, Elon Musk, the situation worsens.

Musk boosts misinformation. He promotes hate. He demonstrates utter contempt for minorities, dissidents and his own employees. He postures as a free speech fan while selling out free speech at every turn. He courts the content of anti-Semites and sues the ADL for calling it out. He perpetuates an algorithm that boosts bullshit and suppresses insight, all in pursuit of engagement and attention. And every time we shrug and keep scrolling, we tacitly endorse his behaviour.""

You can’t measure life in tweets. We’re so dependent on an instant feedback loop now that if we aren’t getting likes, responses, comments and views, we can feel as though our lives are smaller than they should be. That they mean a little less. What if we can’t rate our happiness in Instagram engagement, we think. We may not be happy at all! But life is bigger than that. Life had value in every second of every moment in every century before social media was invented. It has value now. In the work we do to care for ourselves and our families, in the moments we enjoy peace and passion. In the smells and sounds of the kitchen and the world outside our windows after it rains. We can only a measure a life in the things that have real value. The engagement will come and go. The followers will come and go. But you and I? We’ll be right here.

Joan Westenberg