If you want a sandwich, you have to make it.

I don’t think AIliens are the same as AGI. I believe in this frame AIliens exist in the mind of people, rather than in the machine. It’s behavior complex enough to be interpreted as such, rather than a sentient being thinking of itself as sentient, as AGI implies. It’s alive in the same way an organization is alive and thinking, or a mycelium network. AGI is human-like intelligence reproduced in silicon. AIliens are… alien.

who here is terrified of technology?

American kids larping as maoists don’t like China to be criticized because they idolize a foreign power in reaction to the misery of their political landscape. It’s a coping mechanism.

A lot of these spaces are reading, writing and designing around so-called “anti-capture” protocols exactly to avoid that.

I’m one of the few volunteer contributors to Bonfire, and I would never dream of recommending Mozilla to use it. You have to reach out to people where they are at, not pick the tools based on prime principles. American platforms are blackmailing us by gatekeeping access to audiences, but it’s not like you can pretend most humans are reachable on microscopic federated platforms. Which btw is not the intended use case for bonfire.

because it is relevant in different communities, no?

I actually teach how to plan, execute, and assess political and social impact, beyond practicing it in my orgs. Are you aware there are plenty of disciplines working exactly on this? Your rethoric is just a way to justify your inaction. If nothing can change, it means you’re exempted from your responsibilities. Too easy.

Everything made by humans can be destroyed by humans. No social system is forever. The rest is just skill issue.

yeah, it’s quite big, because in a way it’s the biggest win so far for the BDS in American tech.

I unionize people in the tech sector. Childish nerds are much harder to work with than anybody else.

I would pick a coked out analyst over an emacs user every day

nerds are often egotistical, selfish and individualistic. Let’s kick them out and unionize instead

So the author’s argument is that youth have just gone to gig work instead of traditional jobs. OK, maybe true, but first of all, this is not a good thing on its own either. And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I’ll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.

Considering the author is possibly the most relevant scholar on (against?) platform work, I’m quite sure he would agree with you. The article implies that AI is deskilling and displacing workers and that’s intrinsically a bad thing.

the assumption is that they are not customers. They are producer on a platform, which is very different. This is more similar to office workers striking alongside riders in a food delivery company rather than a consumer boycott.

That surprises me, marketing and sales being the main user of AI, I thought the back-office automation for sure was going to be by far number 1

Generative AI is a bullshit generator. Bullshit in your marketing=good. Bullshit in your backend=bad.

 > So the number 1 user is sales/marketing but it’s back office admin jobs that are most impacted?

GenAI is primarily adopted to justify mass layoffs and only secondarily to create business value. It’s the mass layoffs that drive AI adoption, not the other way around.

“alignment problem” is what CEOs use as a distraction to take responsibility away from their grift and frame the issue as a technical problem. That’s another word that make you lose any credibility

I’ve met the author IRL. He’s quite famous in his niche

The Free Software movement over the last 30+ years failed at every single one of their political goals. It’s effectively a political zombie which sometimes produces barely usable software for nerds. I know perfectly well what they advocated because at some point I was close to fall for it (more than 15 years ago), but it’s delusional dogmatism. The world moved on and the FOSS movement failed so bad that their enemies are now in control of an Imperial fascist government.

You’re responsible for the technology you create. Unconstrained freedom is more often than not the freedom of the powerful to oppress the weak. Anything else is techbro ideology. FOSS ideology and techno-fascist ideology have the same roots in the freedom of information.

My call to action is unrelated to technological production, because technology doesn’t solve social problems. Unionize workers in Microsoft. If you really want, build software to facilitate the construction and deployment of worker power, and stop playing around with the liberation of software. As long as it’s “Free Software” instead of “Free people” you’re playing on the side of the tech oligarchy.

Contributing to genocide for money is evil. Contributing to genocide for no money is evil and dumb.