This illusion is what made the current AI hype possible in the first place, and it is now causing humanity to take steps backward rather than moving forward. Yet AI technology could be used fairly and very effectively if it weren’t marketed exactly as it is: as a machine that supposedly enables everyone to do things they don’t have the slightest clue about.
This is what has made social media so profitable, and it’s also the reason why LLMs aren’t being used the way they should be, but are instead being sold as artificial intelligence to idiots who don’t have the slightest clue about the subject -not about what it takes or how long it takes to write a book, paint a picture, write a scientific article, code a secure application, or whatever.
The profit motive has turned the internet into the opposite of what it should have been, and AI technology has consequently ended up as an instrument of power in the hands of a small number of people who are incredibly narrow-minded but, unfortunately, also incredibly powerful due to their boundless greed.
It is the general public that bears the brunt of this boundless greed.
If things continue this way and we look just a few decades into the future, this is exactly what will spell the end of humanity, since profit is always prioritized over the common good.
You’re wrapped around the axle on how things should be and you should stop that for your own mental health. There’s no such thing as should have been, there may be a what you’d prefer, or a what would have been better for more people, but there are no predetermined outcomes, no should haves.
I saw the internet being born, and I have watched it grow, but I didn’t make it, just like you didn’t. Money made it, but early on hadn’t figured out how to make money back out of it, but they were going to and now they have. That’s it.
LLMs are only different because they sucked from the beginning while the internet was kinda cool and genuinely new, but it was never ours. LLMs are now being shoved down our throats, fed on all we freely put into the internet, regurgitating back our own thoughts and works, creating absolutely nothing. Could they be a super useful tool doing highly specialized shit? Well yeah, and they probably will some day, but for now they churn out modern capital’s favorite product, cheap trash and capital is bound and determined to make that profitable.
We were really never part of the equation as anything other than rocks to squeeze blood from and what we want doesn’t matter to the ones squeezing.
Yes, unfortunately that’s absolutely true. What really bothers me is that centralization is inherent to the nature of the internet, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Unfortunately, however, billionaires have recognized this and have now created yet another advancement in the form of LLMs, which allows them to tighten their stranglehold even further.
I am convinced that the global resurgence of fascism is a direct consequence of this.
But yes, that’s unfortunately how it is: The internet has turned from a hopeful utopia into a dystopia that now makes even the bleak visions of the future by Orwell, Huxley, and others seem almost harmless by comparison.
The saddest part of it all is that it didn’t have to be this way if people were just a little less self-centered. After all, no one is forcing anyone to shop on Amazon or use Twitter, but millions upon millions of people do it anyway, thereby enabling what one might almost call a new—this time, however, global—monarchy of the absurdly rich; even nations are not able to defend its citizens against this centralized power.
But of course you’re absolutely right: we should probably just make the most of the freedoms we still have and use them while they still exist.
We’re still close enough to on schedule to catch Heinlein’s reign of corporations. I believe that left the Earth in pretty bad shape for a while.