Money, shareholders, capatilism, exploitation of others work online with little to no oversight and is extremely cheap compared to hiring people for it.
AI is only pseudo useful right now and really needs to he targeted to a specific task to be practical and even then its usually not consistent enough to be useful so it needs a lot of funding probably to the tune of billions of dollars and several years to get there. That won't happen unless these companies developing AI get investors and you get investors by generating hype, that's where we are now. We are hyping the shit out of AI and sticking it in everything to see what stick, unfortunately the only thing that will come out of this is businesses providing their data that employees have done for AI to train on to replace those employees.
You could say the same about NFTs, blockchain and all of the other buzzword scams that came before it. It's like we've entered a cycle where every few years a new "revolutionary" technology comes out only to spill as much money out of investors and then disappear.
Of course I'm not saying the same will happen to AI (it's here to stay) but I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple years technobros start throwing away their money at some new toy. Maybe then we'll be able to talk about AI seriously without all the stupid hype surrounding it. Maybe.
This seems like a pretty slanted piece to me. The fact that the atrocities in Gaza are happening with US-made weapons doesn't mean that all weapons are bad or that there aren't places that legitimately need anti-done systems. The systems shown are inherently defensive, even if the same companies make offensive systems as well. And I don't remember Mark saying the drones were cooler than the Patriot, I remember him saying that they were significantly less expensive (though I didn't go back and watch to confirm).
This piece seems to be saying that there can be no good use of military systems, and we shouldn't say anything positive about them, because some of them are being abused, which is nonsense.
I'm very upfront about my slant. I'm biased against war, and against those who profit off weapons of war. The site exists to advocate openly and honestly for the world that I (and my collaborators) want to live in, and that world just doesn't include popular YouTubers making ads for companies worth billions of dollars that make death robots owned by billionaire ghouls, even if some of their products aren't as bad as others.
I don’t remember Mark saying the drones were cooler than the Patriot, I remember him saying that they were significantly less expensive (though I didn’t go back and watch to confirm).
He has an animation about how they're recoverable and talked about how they're part of their program that use new technology like SpaceX and such. He definitely hyped it up.
This piece seems to be saying that there can be no good use of military systems, and we shouldn’t say anything positive about them, because some of them are being abused, which is nonsense.
"Because some of them are being abused" is a comical understatement when talking about the American drone program, or American militarism in general.
But more importantly, that's just not what I said. There's a huge difference between "there can be no good use of military systems" and criticizing one of the single most influential educational YouTubers with more followers than there are people in most countries for uncritically repeating American "war on terror" style propaganda towards children while fawning over an arms dealer.
I guess I just feel differently than you. I think Mark was spot on that drones pose a threat, that there's a real need for anti-drone technology, and that the technology is really cool and aligns with the kinds of things he's been doing for years. Have you not seen the countless other devices he's made that target stuff and shoot nerf darts?
I'm not in any way supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza, I just think that weapons of war, both offensive and defensive, are necessary, and I don't have an issue with companies making a profit from selling something that's necessary. I also don't think that drone weapons are inherently bad (Ukraine is using them effectively to defend against an invasion). They can be less indiscriminate than the big bombs that were used in their place prior. My biggest issue (with any weapon) is with targeting civilians, or having complete disregard for civilians in the area.
Like i said in the OP, good propaganda isn't lies, but the truth selectively emphasized. Drones are a threat, but I have a problem with the way that the whole package is being presented here. I get that, in a way, it's a subtle complaint, but the subtlety is part of what makes it effective. That's why it took me 3000 words to explain my point!
I suspect that another important point of disagreement here, besides my personal moral objection to making weapons of war in general, is that I believe that arms manufacturing and wars themselves can't be treated separately, as you're doing. Weapons contractors are hugely influential in American politics. They spend tons of money advocating for war, which reenforces the giant war budget, which feedbacks forever. Basically every news article about foreign policy quotes a defense contractor funded think tank, for example. They also give generously to hawkish members of Congress.
I don't disagree with much of that; I believe there are abuses all along the way. But situations like Ukraine (and what's brewing in Taiwan) are conclusive proof that we need a capable military.
In full disclosure, you're not going to think I'm very unbiased because I work for an aerospace and defense contractor (though mostly for NASA projects). But I'm also personally very liberal.
But situations like Ukraine (and what’s brewing in Taiwan) are conclusive proof that we need a capable military.
That's extremely facile. The word "capable" is a massive understatement. Our military budget is bigger than the next ten countries combined. That includes Russia and China. There are years when the American military budget grows by an amount bigger than the entire Russian budget.
Also, because American weapons do sometimes end up on what you consider the right side of a conflict doesn't conclusively prove anything about the American war industry, or the American military, in general. There's a Yemen, a Gaza, an Iraq, or a Pakistan for every Ukraine.
re:Taiwan - When reporting on the situation in Taiwan, American media relies heavily on think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It's a very sanitized, academic sounding name, but they're funded by the Arms industry and the Pentagon, and all they ever do is advocate for a bigger military budget. I'm not saying that China is puppies and rainbows, but I am saying that our military budget is already so much bigger than China's, and that these think tanks have a vested financial interest in convincing us that China is a huge threat and our budget is too small to confront it.
Just to add another example, it's the same with Iran: When those protests broke out in 2017, the American media had arms-industry-funded think tanks on nonstop constantly advocating for "regime change" and military build up in a country already completely surrounded by American military bases. That doesn't seem like a good faith path to peace to me. Imagine for a second how the US would react if Iran put a single base within our hemisphere, let alone all along the Canada and Mexico borders.
Interesting, insightful and moving. Again I learned about a current topic of which I knew almost nothing, from your ability to convey your unique perspective. Or, in other words, you can see what's really happening and you can tell it like it is.
If the mass protest is a communicative act, but the protesters haven't come together to decide what exactly it is that they're trying to say, then what the hell is it saying? What is the victory condition? How do they negotiate with power?
Occupy had this problem.
It'll be interesting to see what structures come out of this.
Totally agreed. Bevins does a great job with exactly that.
I have this extremely radicalizing memory of being at Occupy with a friend, who was an accomplished, award-winning economist (who has since passed; drink a toast to an old and missed friend for me). A national news network spoke to him for some time, and told us that the segment would air at a certain time. We all tuned in to watch it, only for them to give him some 10 seconds of air time, and play the entire interview that they did with a probably homeless guy who was quite unwell, who was at the camp for free food, and, to the camp's credit, was being fed and taken care of there. Not only was it grossly exploitative of that guy, but it was so dishonest as to the reality that I was witnessing on the ground. I'll never forget how they portrayed that guy, as a representative of the protest and complete lunatic, rather than as someone society had tossed aside who was, for once, being taken in somewhere.
From his book:
To sum up the dynamic at work here—in Egypt, in Turkey, and indeed across the mass protest decade—Tuğal paraphrased one of Marx’s most famous lines, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Those who cannot represent themselves will be represented.”
Another excellent read. The topic is so frustrating for most humans, it seems like some kind of self inflicted torture.
Your Pre-Julian Calendar idea sounds better than anything anyone else has come up with but, as you noted, the powers that be won't allow it. Like most things that shake the system, even if it's clearly better for humanity.
Thanks! It means so much when people take the time. And if the calendar does ever come to be, I will promptly announce my candidacy for pontifex maximus ;)
Lol the part about non-copyrighted text definitely should be read with a wink.
You can use any text that you want, but please, do not choose something copyrighted. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT on its copyrighted material. Reddit's data is uniquely valuable, since it's not subject to those kinds of copyright restrictions, so it would be tragic if users were to decide to intermingle such a robust corpus of high-quality training data with copyrighted text.
Yeah, would be awesome if you could move them to a Lemmy community and then point to that. Then replace it with "I've moved to the Fediverse and so should you. To see this comment, follow this link."
Yeah, me too. Here's how I think about it, though: The French are famously proud of Paris. They love it. The French government also knows that if they push their citizens too hard, they will burn Paris to the ground. This is, surprisingly, very healthy, and has allowed the French to resist the neoliberalization that has swept the rest of the west much more successfully. Meanwhile, Americans would never do such a thing, so we don't get healthcare, pensions, vacation days, etc. Tech companies are insufficiently afraid of their users. They should know that we'll burn down the internet should they displease us. We might end up losing a few valuable things in the short term, but in the long term, we'll have a much healthier relationship.
Does Reddit not persist post and comment revision history? If they do-- as a developer imaging myself in charge of such a feature-- I would just use full post and comment revision history for training, directly from the database.
This extension probably feels great, but may accomplish very little.
They do. After I deleted all my comments, using automatic tools (that replace the text) and manually, they keep recreating them. In fact, this might sound a bit like a conspiracy, but I've noticed all my comments that do come back are the ones that people find coming from Google.
So everything is deleted, then some user searches Google for a solution and my comment was the only one, as soon as they click the post, my comment is back and shows up in my account. The original comment, not even the modified version that should've replaced it.
Luddite
Hot