Being on "social media" is a fundamentally unsocial activity: you do it alone, it makes you lonely, and it separates you from others. Some people manage to bootstrap a social layer on top of the base medium, but most are being driven apart for profit.
Ditto. AI has the power to make you believe stuff without you noticing, why would they bother with garish ads when they could make you think it was YOUR idea to buy Chlorox?
I guess maybe the garish colors could increase your suggestibility indirectly maybe?
> The environment wins (less tokens burned = less energy consumed)
This is understandable logic, but at a systemic level it's not how things always go. Increasing efficiency can lead to increased consumption overall. You might save 50% in energy for your workload, but maybe now you can run it 3 times as much, or maybe 3 times more people will use it, because it's cheaper. The result might be a 50% INCREASE in energy consumed.
What I want is for THIS to stop. "Listen, no one wants to hear about your moral issues, just stfu."
Don't give up so easily. Let the discomfort in and try & figure out why people keep saying "omg LLMs" until you can hear what they are actually saying.
We need your help! Can you please use your creativity to build resilience to climate change in your community instead of experimenting with more ways to spend computing power?
People who know alcohol is bad for them and don't want to keep being drunks but keep drinking, people who believe phones are bad for their kids but still buy them, people who understand AI will significantly degrade the environment if it becomes ubiquitous but still work to help it become ubiquitous...
Mathematicians who publish proofs that are later proven inconsistent!
I suspect we have fundamentally different views of how humans work. I see our behavior and beliefs as _mostly_ irrational, with only a few "reasoning live-zones" where, with great effort, we can achieve logical thought.
I totally agree. I see this "people don't want to do hard stuff" argument used all over - completely disregarding tens of thousands of years of people doing hard stuff.
It comes off to me as the author not wanting to do the hard stuff of working towards their values. Just kind of defeatist and trying to make a splash but leaning on a pretty weak premise.
> Either you own and control something, or you do not, there's no third option.
I think there's a full spectrum you're missing. You can own something with other people, and your level of control can be continuous, not discrete & binary. For example, my public library is funded by my local government, which I can influence with lobbying and voting. I can join the board of the library, and I can just go and talk to the librarians in charge to influence their decisions.
In an individualist consumerist mindset things are pretty stark : full self-hosting or full submission. If you reject that mindset there are many more options.
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment.
Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage.
Yeah, it's a tradeoff. I don't mean to be glib, but on one side we have a loneliness epidemic, mass misinformation campaigns, and centralized control, and on the other side we have better information about restaurants, easier after-school arrangements, and community blogs. I really don't mean to say that the benefits are not real benefits - they are! I just think their price is way too high.