What a valuable contribution from the co-founder and CEO of “Cooper AI”… on a platform for business-type show-offs who have nothing better to do than reinforce each other’s outrageous incompetence…

So this is the scope of “Cooper AI’s” operations:

Executives Who Use Cooper Make Better-Informed Decisions. Cooper uses natural language to generate insights and deliver the high-impact opportunities your executive team needs right now.

I think it’s pretty obvious from this sentence alone that this is nothing more than another front-end that forwards all requests to the actual cloud LLM providers.

It’s truly absurd that there are people who see any added value in this.

Are you serious? So you’re saying mods should be able to do whatever they want?

Yes, but a Tag wouldn’t restrict freedom in any way. It would just make things easier.

By the way: You should make a post out of your blocklist and include the keywords in the description - I think that would be very helpful to a lot of people, since it’s pretty obvious that something like what I’m suggesting here will never be implemented.

Yes, but is it really necessary to go to all that trouble?

I think the Fediverse would be much more appealing to new users if they could just tune out all the hate and the utter absurdity of the US—then there would be relatively few posts left, but at least those that remain wouldn’t portray the world as the US billionaires want it to be.

It would also be a step in the right direction, because it’s completely obvious what the US oligarchs’ tactic is: distracting from the real problems through misinformation and hate.

So why shouldn’t people who don’t want any of that have a very simple way to avoid it?

If the moderators are doing their job, there shouldn’t be any problems. As I’ve said before: Many communities have a “no politics” rule that actually causes more problems because it’s so arbitrary. The reason for this is essentially the completely absurd U.S. discours. It’s all about the insane spectacle that the U.S. regime passes off as politics. If that can simply be filtered out - provided no relevant tag has been assigned to a topic concerning the U.S. - then fruitful, civilized debates will once again be possible.

I think the Fediverse would simply facilitate better discussions if we could effectively filter out the clown show in the U.S. - those who are interested in this could still participate in it.

Why is that? It should be very easy for the mods to see whether a post deals with U.S. issues and whether the appropriate tag was used.

In large Lemmy communities, there’s a “no politics” rule that’s so broad it’s completely absurd. It would be much easier to simply remove all posts that discuss U.S. politics and don’t have the tag. That would make a lot more sense.

You should also mention that the robot helps others with bank robberies, and that they can even choose its outfit—which could make the robot look really cool—but that the lion’s share of the loot still goes to you.

What’s needed here is one more panel after the first one in which an Israeli politician or one of their paid representatives abroad portrays the statement from the first panel as anti-Semitic - because that, in fact, greatly fuels the insidious, real anti-Semitism.

Well, plenty others with pretty deep pockets have already tried that. It seems, however, that the LLM providers have significantly deeper pockets. So it will likely come down to a settlement once again—if only because, given the already dysfunctional business model of AI providers, it would be the death knell if those entitled to compensation for their work were able to assert that right. Even if the amounts were negligible—as is common with streaming services like Spotify or YouTube—it would make it completely obvious just how uneconomical what the LLM providers are selling as AI really is—it would likely be so obvious that it would cause the bubble to burst.

In any case, It would immediately result in high costs—unaffordable on their own, even, given the volume of the datasets—and this is in addition to the fact that all AI providers are already operating at absurdly high deficits. The providers cannot afford this, because it’s essential for them to keep up the illusion, the promise of profit somewhere on the horizon at least, which is why they will likely do everything in their power to reach an out-of-court settlement in this case as well.

So, I think Sony can only come out ahead here—even a somewhat credible threat should be enough to skim off a little of the astronomical amount of capital being poured into this technology.

It was never a secret: it’s still the Mechanical Turk, a historical model that, for example, the Amazon company of the same name is based on—and such services are part of its business.

Yes

I’m not so sure whether the super-rich and powerful were really that different in the past. I just think that, at least in the West, they were much more tightly regulated back in the 1980s and even the 90s: It doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me that the rollback of government regulation coincides with the steady growth in the wealth of the richest one percent.

So I think these people have always been degenerate and antisocial; it’s just that they—or rather, those who profit from their wealth—have managed to infiltrate the political system to such an extent that nothing can stand in their way today.

To me, the best example of this development is, again, the U.S.: I find it inconceivable that a government as blatantly criminal as the current one would have been possible even in the 1990s. I mean, it’s very obvious that this is nothing but organized crime. The Epstein case, for example, leaves no doubt in my mind—and this is just one absurd scandal among many that, even twenty years ago, would have forced the government to resign, even in the U.S. Compared to these people, Nixon looks like an innocent schoolboy.

I think this is possible only in a failed state—and the reason for its failure lies quite obviously in the actions of the richest one percent, because they have the greatest stake in it and now even openly advocate this goal, for example, with pseudo-intellectual concepts like “Dark Enlightenment,” which forms the “theoretical” basis of their politics —the goal is the abolition of democracy and a return to, or rather a pseudo-modernized interpretation of, the class-based society of the Dark Ages.

So in short: I think there can be no doubt that the billionaires are completely degenerate, but I believe their kind has always existed in this way. Today, however, they have so much power that they believe they can get away with anything—which unfortunately is indeed the case—and that is why they no longer even bother to keep up appearances.

I think the most important thing would be for people to finally realize what and who is primarily responsible, namely, unbridled, unregulated U.S.-style predatory capitalism, which has been completely out of control since the 1980s and has thus produced this new ruling class of excessively greedy, utterly unscrupulous multi-billionaires who have now become so powerful that they can give free rein to their antisocial behavior without any consequences.

These people are the enemies of humanity, and almost everywhere in the world their ploy is the same: mindless pseudo-nationalism that, with its false enemy stereotypes and wretched reactionary ideology, distracts attention from who the real culprits are. It is always these political factions that rail against foreigners and/or other minorities to hide who the real enemies are—the ones for whom they are actually making policy. The prime example of this is MAGA.

Unfortunately, these far-right extremist movements are by no means popular only among older people. In Germany, for example, the AfD—essentially a carbon copy of MAGA—has had a great deal of success among young people, especially young men. This is, of course, also linked to the fact that they are supported by the same billionaires who control the major U.S. social media platforms, such as Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, and their ilk.

It’s a mystery to me how anyone can fail to see that the idiotic hatred they spread serves, first and foremost, to mask the fact that these political movements exclusively pursue policies that benefit the super-rich. Nevertheless, these movements—which are often characterized by fascist and authoritarian tendencies—are, unfortunately, extremely successful. As long as they remain so, I have little hope that anything will change.

My fault: I had assumed that the people at Lemmy were capable of thinking abstractly.

I’ve added an edit that might make it clearer.

Experts undoubtedly agree on many points. The fact that they have differing opinions—and indeed should have them—is part of their craft, something on which they are in complete agreement, regardless of the field in question.

Here’s an example: A craftsman knows what a nail is, but how, when, and whether it should be hammered in is a matter of judgment.

Edit: To put it more clearly: Someone who doesn’t know what a nail is has no say in whether it’s a good decision to use one.

That’s not to say that the opinions of laypeople don’t matter, since they may very well be affected by the issue. My point is simply that nothing is less productive than someone trying to tell a craftsman how to do his job without having even the slightest clue about the subject.

In this analogy, imagine a client who hires craftsmen and stands behind them the whole time, offering his uninformed opinions on everything they do—that only shows a lack of respect for the work of experts; it’s absolutely counterproductive.

It would make much more sense to clearly state what you want and simply let people do their jobs.

Wow, the billionaires seem completely convinced that U.S. citizens will go along with anything… well, hmmm… who’s going to argue with them… it’s true, after all, that they do…

Yep, sorry. But hey, this thread definitely has its fair share of mudslinging. Hope you’re getting your money’s worth.

Hmm, well, the moderation workload does need to remain reasonably manageable for you guys.

I can’t really judge that, of course, but perhaps you could identify specific topics from the modlog that have repeatedly caused problems in the past. For example, posts about political parties (such as the two U.S. parties or the far-right AfD in Germany, etc.), political movements like MAGA, politicians like Trump and his allies, wars (such as the current U.S.-Iran conflict), or technologies like LLMs.

You could also try surveying the community itself to identify such “controversial topics,” perhaps in a pinned post, where you could set a minimum number of upvotes per suggestion for a suggestion to be included.

I think this would yield a number of concrete examples that illustrate what is meant by “no politics.” The more examples there are, the clearer it would probably be.

Thank you very much for the background information. And also for the time you spend moderating—that is truly commendable and is indeed very much needed.

Perhaps I should have reached out to you directly, but I was so outraged that I didn’t, especially since this wasn’t the first post of mine you’d removed for the same reason.

Well, looking at all the downvotes here, it seems your approach to “showerthoughts” is being liked and even vigorously defended by many.

As I said, I see it differently and consider it very dangerous to define community rules so broadly that they simply leave the decision of what’s allowed and what isn’t exclusively up to the moderators. In your case, this seems to be done with caution and reasonable consideration. Nevertheless, I believe that rules must be clearly defined and transparent from the outset so that it’s clear what to expect. Likewise, to ensure that decisions are not made purely on a whim.

As I said, I consider the “no politics” rule unsuitable for this, since there’s simply no such thing as a topic that might not be political to someone.

But since many here seem to see it quite differently, I’m probably wrong. Still, I simply can’t accept that it’s a lottery whether my posts will be allowed or not in a general community that doesn’t have a fixed topic.

Therefore, I have to accept the rules and just post elsewhere, where there is no such rule. I think that’s better for everyone, since my posts at your community only seem to lead to conflicts, which is certainly not my intention at all.

If you’d like, I’ll delete this post here right away, but it seems to me that it might be a good way to gather some more opinions on the rule in question.

Please let me know if you see it differently—in that case, I’ll delete this post here immediately.