You're too nice about it. Giving you ONE fracking MINUTE to critique their whole shtick, and then taking their time to respond, with you unable to say any more? And then they'll say they had critics on their show so that's done. You were able to put in one aspect of what's wrong with AI, or with their take on it. Not only did you not get to correct the slanted view of the Luddites, you weren't able to point out that the buildout of a zillion data centers at breakneck speed is ramping up climate pollution when we've already crossed all kinds of red lines, demanding enormous quantities of water, often in arid places, and the supposed desperate race against Chinese AI development is used to justify shoving these things wherever the developers want to put them with no local control or regulation allowed. So it's killing the climate, ecosytems and democracy.
You didn't get to point out that AI is already being used to centralize all the data collected on every American, creating a Panopticon for control.
And you didn't get to point out their key meme that "it's inevitable so just lay back and try to enjoy it" is manipulation designed to prevent us from rising up and saying we WILL have some fracking say in this, we won't let them immiserate us even more..and for what? That's a point you don't make enough, that all these enormous costs are balanced against benefits, for the average person, that are TRIVIAL. Sure, if it really was going to cure cancer or solve the climate crisis that would be worth considering--but those are wild claims based on absolutely nothing. So we face these enormous, existential risks, of which job loss is the least of it, and we get--some cool aps? Easier to cheat on our homework? Help making pretty pictures (by ripping off human artists)?
They get us to hold still for this, postponing the risks of revolution until it's too late, by promising us candy and by saying it's inevitably coming whether we like it or not, nothing anybody can do.
Probably! Lots of folks agree with you. All valid points and there were as you note so many critiques to choose from. It was an impossible ask, and I did my best, and I am constantly assessing my approach here. I am very tired.
If you're very tired, Brian, it's because you're so busy doing critically necessary work, work that is urgent, and while you're not the only one, there are not enough people leaping in fast enough, loudly enough. Most people are somewhat caught up in a screen trance, a bit fuzzy on the distinction between various fantasy worlds and the Real World, not ready to join a serious resistance...but they did not ask for this.
I hope you didn't take my comment as "You should have used your one minute better." I'm saying one minute is not nearly enough and it's not a fair debate when they go on for however long their show is, every week, putting forth their talking points; you and the other person get a minute apiece for the opposing point of view; and then they get to put their spin on what you said with no chance for you to correct them.
This reminds me of something Noam Chomsky once said. In the rare case that he was allowed on "mainstream" TV he was handicapped in arguing his case because he'd never get adequate time. His opponents could say provably false things in shorthand and everyone would understand because these notions (like Cold War tropes) were drummed into the populace every day. Whereas if he said a provably true thing like "The CIA is the largest terrorist organization in the world," it would sound crazy because he would never be given the 20 minutes he'd need to make the case. So, he wrote books. And you have your blog.
Oh no not at all — I hear you and agree! You raised many of the same points I mulled before I went ahead and contributed, and appreciate all the thoughts here. Am thankful for your comments
As always the question is who benefits? The way things are unfolding, it is clear that the answer (as usual) are the overlords. Displaced workers are viewed as collateral damage. No real thought is given to the impact this will have, especially on a consumer based economy. AI is being pushed on us with little thought, which is always an indicator that there are many downsides. Profits are what is driving all of this, as AI offers little that actually improves our quality of life, and a case can be made that it is detrimental to it. That the Trump regime is in alignment with the push only further shows how suspect it all is.
I’m building a couple of AI ethics modules for teaching college computer science students and your emphasis on the people wielding the tech is the thing that’s lost with technologists. Makes me crazy that they just completely ignore the social/political/economic contexts.
The problem with the Luddite analogy in the context of "AGI" is that generative AI today is nowhere as good as the machines that harmed the livelihood of skilled textile workers. "AGI," as you note is a bogus term for something that generative AI as we know it will never achieve; the best equivalent for it in the nineteenth century was snake oil or similar miracle cures. I don't listen to Hard Fork but I do read Roose's "reporting" and regard him as a flack, hack, and techbro wannabe. The sad thing is that at one point in his career Roose was an actually investigative journalist who wrote a very good story on YouTube.
It's pretty telling that their approach to giving their critics a say was so paltry. Obviously they know they'd get caught with their pants down. Even Fox News gives their oppositional guests a better deal than you got. The correct tattoo for them isn't "Feel the AGI," it's "Smell the brown-nose."
The only thing that matters when it comes to technological change in production equipment — whether it’s machines, robots or AI — is who will OWN it. Everything else follows.
I’ve never heard of this show but being accused of being too bullish on a topic and then addressing that with one minute critiques is insane. It also feels very appropriate for AI boosters (“give me a one minute critique of this topic” is more of an LLM prompt than a reasonable request of a fellow human).
As usual, your point of view on this is great, illuminating and sorely needed in these spaces. The fact that they misunderstood the issue the Luddites had is a great example of WHY A ONE MINUTE CRITIQUE IS A BAD FORMAT. Respect you for showing up and trying anyways! ✊
Ideally, they have a series of episodes with various critics, one at a time, for a proper discussion. They can still do that and I hope they will. I can't figure the NYT out. They sued OpenAI 2 years ago, but just signed a licensing deal with Amazon. It feels like appeasement.
every time one of these people shouts exponential i feel like we should immediately have them renditioned to a camp which teaches the S-curve. maybe we could get a camp brand.
“And if there’s any job an AI can do well right now, it is one whose design is to efficiently allocate resources, surveil workforces, and summarize output”
This are my exact thoughts every time my bosses push us to “use more AI” (a directionless suggestion by the way). Most of what they do is try to optimise their resources, go to meetings that then they need to summarise to agree to a course of action, and then “manage” the team, which should include taking into account our feedback, but in practice it rarely does. Through catchphrases and rhetorical tricks they manage to dismiss any criticism we could have and they end up doing what they want anyway, so not so different to a machine in the end.
I've lost all interest and hope for Casey Newton and his projects, who sold out to Silicon Valley and NYT coverage a long time ago. These are the among the last journalists pretending to be unbiased. America has disrupted its own media. And even the NYT will feel the backlash.
How can I find anyone to speak with about pushing back on Autonomous Vehicles? It feels like there is only a very tiny group of us pushing back on the false marketing and inevitability help of robot trucks - myself, James Year, Will Cook, Scott Douglass - and I’m the only one of them who writes about it regularly and I’m no one - where can I go and pop some tech bubbles?
I stopped subscribing to Platformer and listening to their podcast because of how they cover AI. Roose has long been uncritical of any tech bubble/fad (he wrote some of the most embarrassing stuff about crypto), but Newton relatively quickly was rightly critical of crypto/Web 3.0. He's well-sourced, and I think he has done great work covering tech companies seemingly without being taken in by their rhetoric despite being exposed to it day in and day out. I used to have a great deal of respect for his work. As such, I expected him to at least express some skepticism from time to time, if not outright criticism, of AI, and it just never happened. The show just became more bullish on AI and was quite proud of being stenographers for every utterance made by prominent AI supporters, especially if they were CEOs of the largest/trendiest companies. I don't need to pay to read or hear that, so here I am redirecting the money behind that lapsed subscription.
I'm curious what you would recommend for a good podcast that can keep someone up to speed & give balanced views on these new techs without being too academic where a normie can't keep up.
I have Hard Fork in my feed because I find them an entertaining way to stay up to speed, even though they are wayyyy too bullish on all things tech (but I'm a craftsperson not a journalist/tech junkie so that isn't surprising) and the Center For Humane Tech "Your Undivided Attention" pod which comes at it far more critically and usually leaves me feeling like we are totally doomed.
I did look for your Blood in the Machine podcast in Apple and didn't find it?
I like to stay up to date because these technologies are actively shaping our current and future culture, but not spiral into depression over some nebulous, imminent doom. Is there a podcast you would recommend for that? 😂
Blood in the Machine: The podcast is coming soon, I hope — in the meantime, Tech Won't Save Us is great, Ed Zitron's BetterOffline, This Machine Kills, and TrashFuture are all worth a try!
One thing among the many that struck me about that episode of the show was they seemed to alternate between saying they're covering "tech" and saying that they're covering the "tech" *industry*. To me, the former would require a much more sociologically and historically informed perspective, a less presentist one, and definitely a less "What's new now?" focus than the latter. Of course someone could do both things -- they're not mutually exclusive -- but I think that they're doing much more of the latter than they are of the former.
The replacement of management is one thing about AI that's been driving me crazy since the beginning, LLMs would work just fine in place of most managers or C-level jobs. Not just because those jobs are superfluous but because they already act as capricious information manipulators as anyone who has ever tried to persuade them with information already knows. Of course this will never happen because managers are the people in the room deciding who gets the ax.
As I've said before about the hosts before:
Casey Newton - "Every time I think I see a man behind the curtain a bright flash goes off and makes it really hard to see for a minute."
AGI as an argument suggests the metric is ‘quality’. Reality is that this varies a lot. Often (mostly?) it is in volume as in ‘cheap slop’. LLMs already massively outperform *all* humans in that category. Doesn’t mean AGI has arrived.
You're too nice about it. Giving you ONE fracking MINUTE to critique their whole shtick, and then taking their time to respond, with you unable to say any more? And then they'll say they had critics on their show so that's done. You were able to put in one aspect of what's wrong with AI, or with their take on it. Not only did you not get to correct the slanted view of the Luddites, you weren't able to point out that the buildout of a zillion data centers at breakneck speed is ramping up climate pollution when we've already crossed all kinds of red lines, demanding enormous quantities of water, often in arid places, and the supposed desperate race against Chinese AI development is used to justify shoving these things wherever the developers want to put them with no local control or regulation allowed. So it's killing the climate, ecosytems and democracy.
You didn't get to point out that AI is already being used to centralize all the data collected on every American, creating a Panopticon for control.
And you didn't get to point out their key meme that "it's inevitable so just lay back and try to enjoy it" is manipulation designed to prevent us from rising up and saying we WILL have some fracking say in this, we won't let them immiserate us even more..and for what? That's a point you don't make enough, that all these enormous costs are balanced against benefits, for the average person, that are TRIVIAL. Sure, if it really was going to cure cancer or solve the climate crisis that would be worth considering--but those are wild claims based on absolutely nothing. So we face these enormous, existential risks, of which job loss is the least of it, and we get--some cool aps? Easier to cheat on our homework? Help making pretty pictures (by ripping off human artists)?
They get us to hold still for this, postponing the risks of revolution until it's too late, by promising us candy and by saying it's inevitably coming whether we like it or not, nothing anybody can do.
Probably! Lots of folks agree with you. All valid points and there were as you note so many critiques to choose from. It was an impossible ask, and I did my best, and I am constantly assessing my approach here. I am very tired.
If you're very tired, Brian, it's because you're so busy doing critically necessary work, work that is urgent, and while you're not the only one, there are not enough people leaping in fast enough, loudly enough. Most people are somewhat caught up in a screen trance, a bit fuzzy on the distinction between various fantasy worlds and the Real World, not ready to join a serious resistance...but they did not ask for this.
I hope you didn't take my comment as "You should have used your one minute better." I'm saying one minute is not nearly enough and it's not a fair debate when they go on for however long their show is, every week, putting forth their talking points; you and the other person get a minute apiece for the opposing point of view; and then they get to put their spin on what you said with no chance for you to correct them.
This reminds me of something Noam Chomsky once said. In the rare case that he was allowed on "mainstream" TV he was handicapped in arguing his case because he'd never get adequate time. His opponents could say provably false things in shorthand and everyone would understand because these notions (like Cold War tropes) were drummed into the populace every day. Whereas if he said a provably true thing like "The CIA is the largest terrorist organization in the world," it would sound crazy because he would never be given the 20 minutes he'd need to make the case. So, he wrote books. And you have your blog.
Oh no not at all — I hear you and agree! You raised many of the same points I mulled before I went ahead and contributed, and appreciate all the thoughts here. Am thankful for your comments
As always the question is who benefits? The way things are unfolding, it is clear that the answer (as usual) are the overlords. Displaced workers are viewed as collateral damage. No real thought is given to the impact this will have, especially on a consumer based economy. AI is being pushed on us with little thought, which is always an indicator that there are many downsides. Profits are what is driving all of this, as AI offers little that actually improves our quality of life, and a case can be made that it is detrimental to it. That the Trump regime is in alignment with the push only further shows how suspect it all is.
I’m building a couple of AI ethics modules for teaching college computer science students and your emphasis on the people wielding the tech is the thing that’s lost with technologists. Makes me crazy that they just completely ignore the social/political/economic contexts.
The problem with the Luddite analogy in the context of "AGI" is that generative AI today is nowhere as good as the machines that harmed the livelihood of skilled textile workers. "AGI," as you note is a bogus term for something that generative AI as we know it will never achieve; the best equivalent for it in the nineteenth century was snake oil or similar miracle cures. I don't listen to Hard Fork but I do read Roose's "reporting" and regard him as a flack, hack, and techbro wannabe. The sad thing is that at one point in his career Roose was an actually investigative journalist who wrote a very good story on YouTube.
It's pretty telling that their approach to giving their critics a say was so paltry. Obviously they know they'd get caught with their pants down. Even Fox News gives their oppositional guests a better deal than you got. The correct tattoo for them isn't "Feel the AGI," it's "Smell the brown-nose."
The only thing that matters when it comes to technological change in production equipment — whether it’s machines, robots or AI — is who will OWN it. Everything else follows.
I’ve never heard of this show but being accused of being too bullish on a topic and then addressing that with one minute critiques is insane. It also feels very appropriate for AI boosters (“give me a one minute critique of this topic” is more of an LLM prompt than a reasonable request of a fellow human).
As usual, your point of view on this is great, illuminating and sorely needed in these spaces. The fact that they misunderstood the issue the Luddites had is a great example of WHY A ONE MINUTE CRITIQUE IS A BAD FORMAT. Respect you for showing up and trying anyways! ✊
Ideally, they have a series of episodes with various critics, one at a time, for a proper discussion. They can still do that and I hope they will. I can't figure the NYT out. They sued OpenAI 2 years ago, but just signed a licensing deal with Amazon. It feels like appeasement.
every time one of these people shouts exponential i feel like we should immediately have them renditioned to a camp which teaches the S-curve. maybe we could get a camp brand.
“And if there’s any job an AI can do well right now, it is one whose design is to efficiently allocate resources, surveil workforces, and summarize output”
This are my exact thoughts every time my bosses push us to “use more AI” (a directionless suggestion by the way). Most of what they do is try to optimise their resources, go to meetings that then they need to summarise to agree to a course of action, and then “manage” the team, which should include taking into account our feedback, but in practice it rarely does. Through catchphrases and rhetorical tricks they manage to dismiss any criticism we could have and they end up doing what they want anyway, so not so different to a machine in the end.
I've lost all interest and hope for Casey Newton and his projects, who sold out to Silicon Valley and NYT coverage a long time ago. These are the among the last journalists pretending to be unbiased. America has disrupted its own media. And even the NYT will feel the backlash.
How can I find anyone to speak with about pushing back on Autonomous Vehicles? It feels like there is only a very tiny group of us pushing back on the false marketing and inevitability help of robot trucks - myself, James Year, Will Cook, Scott Douglass - and I’m the only one of them who writes about it regularly and I’m no one - where can I go and pop some tech bubbles?
drop me a line! briancmerchant at gmail or on the app here
I stopped subscribing to Platformer and listening to their podcast because of how they cover AI. Roose has long been uncritical of any tech bubble/fad (he wrote some of the most embarrassing stuff about crypto), but Newton relatively quickly was rightly critical of crypto/Web 3.0. He's well-sourced, and I think he has done great work covering tech companies seemingly without being taken in by their rhetoric despite being exposed to it day in and day out. I used to have a great deal of respect for his work. As such, I expected him to at least express some skepticism from time to time, if not outright criticism, of AI, and it just never happened. The show just became more bullish on AI and was quite proud of being stenographers for every utterance made by prominent AI supporters, especially if they were CEOs of the largest/trendiest companies. I don't need to pay to read or hear that, so here I am redirecting the money behind that lapsed subscription.
Cheers Kyle — it's much appreciated.
I'm curious what you would recommend for a good podcast that can keep someone up to speed & give balanced views on these new techs without being too academic where a normie can't keep up.
I have Hard Fork in my feed because I find them an entertaining way to stay up to speed, even though they are wayyyy too bullish on all things tech (but I'm a craftsperson not a journalist/tech junkie so that isn't surprising) and the Center For Humane Tech "Your Undivided Attention" pod which comes at it far more critically and usually leaves me feeling like we are totally doomed.
I did look for your Blood in the Machine podcast in Apple and didn't find it?
I like to stay up to date because these technologies are actively shaping our current and future culture, but not spiral into depression over some nebulous, imminent doom. Is there a podcast you would recommend for that? 😂
Blood in the Machine: The podcast is coming soon, I hope — in the meantime, Tech Won't Save Us is great, Ed Zitron's BetterOffline, This Machine Kills, and TrashFuture are all worth a try!
One thing among the many that struck me about that episode of the show was they seemed to alternate between saying they're covering "tech" and saying that they're covering the "tech" *industry*. To me, the former would require a much more sociologically and historically informed perspective, a less presentist one, and definitely a less "What's new now?" focus than the latter. Of course someone could do both things -- they're not mutually exclusive -- but I think that they're doing much more of the latter than they are of the former.
The replacement of management is one thing about AI that's been driving me crazy since the beginning, LLMs would work just fine in place of most managers or C-level jobs. Not just because those jobs are superfluous but because they already act as capricious information manipulators as anyone who has ever tried to persuade them with information already knows. Of course this will never happen because managers are the people in the room deciding who gets the ax.
As I've said before about the hosts before:
Casey Newton - "Every time I think I see a man behind the curtain a bright flash goes off and makes it really hard to see for a minute."
‘Outperforming’ begs a question: on what metric?
AGI as an argument suggests the metric is ‘quality’. Reality is that this varies a lot. Often (mostly?) it is in volume as in ‘cheap slop’. LLMs already massively outperform *all* humans in that category. Doesn’t mean AGI has arrived.
I want whatever Roose is smoking that allows him to believe he is an agitator for labor