They’re also trying to use this as an excuse to strangle open weights models so they can maintain an oligarchy.

That’s a lot of syllables… Don’t strain yourself.

Pretty sure Cory’s pronouns are he/him.

And he’s been consistently spot on from fighting the good fights against DRM, for right to repair, interoperability, anti-surveillance, against enshitification, and his take here today on AI. I was personally happy to read this because it exactly echoes what I’ve said countless times myself and I’m very glad to be in his good company.

He does not even try to present or debate “how” “ai” works. He’s speaking about how it is employed and what the boundaries are around the rhetoric we hear every day in the press that amounts to nothing more than fear mongering.

There’s absolutely a LOT to be afraid about with respect to how “ai” is used to surveil and control our society, but it has nothing to do with intelligent software and everything to do with corporate and government power, enabled by a mystique created around what is really a (admittedly powerful and useful) statistical parlour trick.

confidently diagnosing an essay as dogma while admitting you didn’t even read the thesis is peak internet.

​His mentioning of python being a basic/easy to master language isn’t manipulation, he’s demystifying. It strips the magical hyperbolic framing that has been attributed to AI (and to which those with most to gain from it financially very much wish to feed into!)

​His point about being wrapped in python isn’t a failed attempt to give a lecture on transformer architecture, its to explain that the automation loop is controlled by basic inputs from a user controlled and relatively simple software stack, not some sentient machine with a mind of its own. Its not emergent behavior, it’s optimizing execution patterns embedded in the data it was trained on.

​For my part, I’m just awed how many comments I come across that are just half-assed lazy people who evidently can barely read, but think they’re experts. Calling Doctorow’s work ‘slop’ or quitting reading while feeling so confident proves his point: people would rather buy into hype than actually understand how the tech works.

:::

If you think Cory Doctorow is “slop” you should really consider simply not ever posting anything online again.

I charge my EV using excess solar energy during the day. It’s handy to be able to start and stop charging based on solar output. We also use the app to send map locations to the navigation system. Finally, while I’m privacy sensitive and having a GPS tracker exposing my location through an API I don’t control is dodgy as hell, being able to confirm the vehicle location remotely has come in handy on occasion.

While some neck beards may prefer to live in the 80s, I enjoy using and benefit from modern technology. I just wish regulators would require companies to use open systems. Tech in general isn’t’ the problem. Proprietary tech is the problem.

If this was actually about protecting children then they could simply ensure phones had an ability for parents to enable a firmware lock which added these protections to their child’s device. No need for people to provide age verification credentials to the government. Of course, it’s not really about kids it’s about normalizing explicit tracking of adults’ internet use.

Then there’s the massive amounts of heavy metals that get deposited in the upper atmosphere when the satellite datacenters ultimately reenter and burn up. Good bye ozone layer.

I don’t identify as Jewish but am (based on genetic website) 19% Ashkenazi by heritage. As an atheist I used to (mistakenly) believe the conflicts in the middle east were religious in nature and it took me awhile to realize it was about land, power, and oppression. Once I came to that realization a couple decades ago, everything I’ve seen since has peeled back layer upon layer of false assumptions which I believe are intentionally injected into the public consciousness. For one, I dislike this term antisemitism. The Israelite’s were not the only Semitic peoples, and the descendants of those peoples are dispersed primarily in the area of Lebanon and Palestine. A very large percentage of modern Jews on the other hand (like myself) hail from European origins. The genetics have been traced and show that by in large, the Jews who emigrated to Europe were men, and mated with European females before then interbreeding once they had sufficient populations. Point being, I don’t think its reasonable to describe anti-Jewish attitudes as anti-Semitic, especially when some of the worst things being done to actual Semitic people are being done BY Jews. Further, and regardless of what you call it, the most damage being done to Jews in the world today is done by the so-called state of Israel. How many more people will be attracted to anti-Jewish messages after baring witness to the horrors inflicted upon the people of Palestine? How much damage does this do to the “soul” of those Jews in Israel? It’s not healthy to harbor such evil, its a cancer that attacks outwardly but also destroys itself internally.

So, for me I prefer to say anti-Jewish (just like I would say anti-Islamic or anti-Christian.) The distinction of Zionism I believe is important because there are many Christian Zionists, and as you’ve mentioned, its Zionists in particular who want to promote the idea that Israel == Jewish and Jewish == Israel. In my mind, I see Zionists as truly anti-Semitic & anti-Jewish.