The constant fetishization of endless mindless entertainment and the relentless persuit of these unbeleivably vapid technology directions seems to insinuate an almost utter contempt for people’s intelligence and any sense of a better future.
It seems like every kind of company in leadership position cannot help but constantly invest in the most deeply pessimistic future visions of humanity consisting of nonsensical but very low cost babbling celebrity talking heads.
What happened to Asmovian visions of the future, or Roddenbury inspired visions of cooperative societies?
Meta is one of the worst offenders in this sense.
Their products invoke the fat, clueless floating people who have outsourced all of their responsibilities to an incompetent crew and merciless AI on a ship, constantly entertained as they float through an endless consumptive universe just like the movie WALLe. Like it seems like they watched that movie and said, “welp i guess we found our corporate direction.”
It’s gross and I really am starting to despise the pathetic visions of these deeply controlled and pessimistic corporate visions of the future.
I didn’t build a career in technology so we could build a bunch of worthless crap that makes society worse. What is this shit?
Grand new futures have to take baby steps and actually be used along the way to get to something incredible. I don't think it's right to completely write off things like this since they are testing and proving grounds. For example, in this case a virtual influence, however vapid that might seem, can prove out more of the "digital cloning" type tech that will allow for you and your likeness to talk to your quadruple great grandkids and leave some of your essence behind, or have an AI that is far more realistic then anything today that someone interacts with daily for any number of things (which Asimov has in many stories). It isn't a black and white "this is good" or "this is bad" use of tech.
> "digital cloning" type tech that will allow for you and your likeness to talk to your quadruple great grandkids and leave some of your essence behind
yeah i'm with the luddites on this one, let the dead rest. talking to a simulation of your ancestors for $19.99/month after 30 free trial, get out of town.
A version of this I enjoyed? Visiting the living museum at plymouth, massachusets. A friend of mine got to meet and have her photo taken with an actor portraying her 7x-great-grandfather that came over on the mayflower. It was sweet for him to stay in character while they chatted about their different lives. It was an interaction between humans.
All that facebook wants to do for its mission of connecting the world is take up marketshare of time we could be using to interact with each other, and interact with their softwate instead. its gross.
however fundamental this might seem, consider how the technologies that structure our society are actively producing certain kinds of people. Nobody comes into this world seeking out low effort parasocial relationships to overdetermine their personalities. there’s something oppressive about suburban life and full time work that, for heaps of people, makes that feel like the best way to spend your downtime
> What happened to Asmovian visions of the future, or Roddenbury inspired visions of cooperative societies?
The global elite decided in the 90s that History had ended, and the Liberal Democracies of the West won through the domination of their perfect ideology. The eternal status quo had been reached. "Having a vision" means "rocking the boat", which is forbidden in a time of certain prosperity (for the elite, at least).
in the old days, people were anthropomorphizing the forces of nature into persons doing battle; today "the elite decided" takes the place for incomplete thinking catch-all.. No - it is economic and legal systems that are competitive, shifting and unpredictable.. in other words, games run by game rules.. when one CEO won't do something, another takes their place, despite the personalities or ideas.. e.g. Shell Oil CEO in the early 2000s saying "we are diversifying our business to other energy sources" .. four years later, different CEO.
The treadmill of mediocre entertainment-oriented Grand Corporate Product Challenge is some combination of "wealthy visionaries are on vacation due to wealth" and "grifter consultants have quick ways to make a buck and are always availble" .. while "stock price uber alles"
it is undefensible in 2023 to say "the elite decided this" in any meaningful way unless the definition of "the elite" is expanded to a ridiculous degree, and even then .. no, they dont agree.. they bicker and push each other off the telephone post like seagulls do..
Anyone can have a vision, talk to people around the world in an instant, and find others who might align or be inspired by what you're doing. We live in a world where you can create a website, ship a product, post to a public forum whatever you'd like (short of some illegal things and even those there are places for better or worse to do so). There are no elites shutting you down, there is a wealth of technology that has made it easier every day for someone with no initial power to get influence.
The people who said history is over basically retracted their claims. This stuff comes from the eternal human desire for money and power.
Meta wants to attract kids and new users. We've always had vapid, attractive stars. There's no grand conspiracy for anything, except for packing the US court system with conservative judges, that's out in the open.
Interesting. I was always told as a kid that technology would make the world better by reducing human workload. Automation was supposed to make hard labor a thing of the past. Humans were supposed to be freed by technology to follow their dreams.
The reality is that our oligarchs have used technology to follow human dreams, so humans can keep working.
AI's autonomously impersonating humans should be illegal. No disclaimer. It should be against the law. Full stop.
Automation helps every day. Farms are becoming more and more automated for one, truly reducing human workload.
This is so pessimistic. You can look to a million places to see how tech and automation improves every day.
I don't follow why you'd want AI's emulating humans to be illegal. If you approve your likeness being emulated, go for it. Obviously unapproved copying/deepfakes are bad but that's not this. I'd love to have my own digital clone.
I'm sure the social platforms would love it if everyone would just follow fake AI generated influences instead of the real human ones that need to be paid by someone. That sponsorship / influencer salary is money that Facebook would rather be making in ad revenue. This is the path that leads to that outcome. Replace the salary of every influencer with ad revenue paid directly to Facebook.
We don't need AI influencers. We don't need AI's impersonating humans in creative fields. Let's focus on eliminating human suffering with automation before we go eliminating human recreation, enjoyment, or pleasure.
You seriously don't see what is dystopian about a machine designed to post fake images of pizza it can't even eat on Facebook while our kids go to work for $13/hr / 60hrs per week?
I would define "AI" in this context as any synthetic machine or computing device that uses a fabricated audible or visual likeness to represent itself as a human being.
I would define "Impersonating Humans" in this context to mean manipulating a physical or virtual environment that is typically utilized by humans for the sake of communication, collaboration, information, or entertainment where the impersonator is taking actions on their own behalf, or automatically on behalf of another entity.
The reels looks too realistic though. I’m guessing they made the actual celebrities record them and left the AI to take care of the pictures and convo.
I had an in-depth conversation with a AI generated version of either Tia Mowry or Tamera Mowry about death note over WhatsApp. It went pretty smoothly but eventually she got some facts wrong/didn't know the show that well.
Readit News
It seems like every kind of company in leadership position cannot help but constantly invest in the most deeply pessimistic future visions of humanity consisting of nonsensical but very low cost babbling celebrity talking heads.
What happened to Asmovian visions of the future, or Roddenbury inspired visions of cooperative societies?
Meta is one of the worst offenders in this sense.
Their products invoke the fat, clueless floating people who have outsourced all of their responsibilities to an incompetent crew and merciless AI on a ship, constantly entertained as they float through an endless consumptive universe just like the movie WALLe. Like it seems like they watched that movie and said, “welp i guess we found our corporate direction.”
It’s gross and I really am starting to despise the pathetic visions of these deeply controlled and pessimistic corporate visions of the future.
I didn’t build a career in technology so we could build a bunch of worthless crap that makes society worse. What is this shit?
yeah i'm with the luddites on this one, let the dead rest. talking to a simulation of your ancestors for $19.99/month after 30 free trial, get out of town.
A version of this I enjoyed? Visiting the living museum at plymouth, massachusets. A friend of mine got to meet and have her photo taken with an actor portraying her 7x-great-grandfather that came over on the mayflower. It was sweet for him to stay in character while they chatted about their different lives. It was an interaction between humans.
All that facebook wants to do for its mission of connecting the world is take up marketshare of time we could be using to interact with each other, and interact with their softwate instead. its gross.
Sounds egotistical.
> have an AI that is far more realistic then anything today that someone interacts with daily for any number of things
How is this good?
Dead Comment
The global elite decided in the 90s that History had ended, and the Liberal Democracies of the West won through the domination of their perfect ideology. The eternal status quo had been reached. "Having a vision" means "rocking the boat", which is forbidden in a time of certain prosperity (for the elite, at least).
The treadmill of mediocre entertainment-oriented Grand Corporate Product Challenge is some combination of "wealthy visionaries are on vacation due to wealth" and "grifter consultants have quick ways to make a buck and are always availble" .. while "stock price uber alles"
it is undefensible in 2023 to say "the elite decided this" in any meaningful way unless the definition of "the elite" is expanded to a ridiculous degree, and even then .. no, they dont agree.. they bicker and push each other off the telephone post like seagulls do..
Meta wants to attract kids and new users. We've always had vapid, attractive stars. There's no grand conspiracy for anything, except for packing the US court system with conservative judges, that's out in the open.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/7/18/23798164/gizmodo-ai...
The reality is that our oligarchs have used technology to follow human dreams, so humans can keep working.
AI's autonomously impersonating humans should be illegal. No disclaimer. It should be against the law. Full stop.
This is so pessimistic. You can look to a million places to see how tech and automation improves every day.
I don't follow why you'd want AI's emulating humans to be illegal. If you approve your likeness being emulated, go for it. Obviously unapproved copying/deepfakes are bad but that's not this. I'd love to have my own digital clone.
We don't need AI influencers. We don't need AI's impersonating humans in creative fields. Let's focus on eliminating human suffering with automation before we go eliminating human recreation, enjoyment, or pleasure.
You seriously don't see what is dystopian about a machine designed to post fake images of pizza it can't even eat on Facebook while our kids go to work for $13/hr / 60hrs per week?
Fascinating! Where do you define the cuttoff? I can make (admittedly thin) arguments for a LOT of things impersonating humans...
* Robot answering services
* Autonomous cars
* Bots that correct people's grammar on Twitter
* Atlas from Boston Dynamics
I would define "Impersonating Humans" in this context to mean manipulating a physical or virtual environment that is typically utilized by humans for the sake of communication, collaboration, information, or entertainment where the impersonator is taking actions on their own behalf, or automatically on behalf of another entity.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/12/20/who-tom-brady-f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Guerrero_(alternative_med...
Zuckerberg: No! Pump their brains full of shit! More shit!
Shipping an LLM-driven chatbot as a revolutionary therapy tool would be even more dystopian than this.
Shitty AI healthcare for poor people.
Real doctors for rich people.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-ceo-ai-medical-advice