RE: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@chadmccullough/117181670446402505
Already during my computer science undergraduate program, I took quite a few deep learning classes, and even wrote my thesis about deep learning.
And I see both AI and "AI" for what it is.
With deep learning we could do interesting things, like deciphering the language of sperm whales. How do sperm whales communicate with each other? Do they talk about the warming oceans? Do they notice that the water is getting warmer? Are they freaking out?
Whales are interesting. Each whale has a unique whistle and they use that as their name. They can call each other by their specific whistle unique to them and they hear each other even kilometers apart.
There was even a time when marine biologists observed that many whales wear algae or shells or something like that as a hat, which seemed to be a funny weird fashion fad.
It would be cool to understand their language.
Stories like that is what got me interest in studying machine learning.
But the reliably working AI (pattern recognition, computer vision, …) is only used to build out surveillance, police states, war machinery, and tyrannies.
And the unreliably working "AI" (large language models, generative AI, …) is only used as a power grab by the capitalist class, a way to concentrate power in their hands even more, to devalue labor, and as information warfare on objective truth and a shared reality. Fascists love GenAI to build out a "parallel reality", which fits very well with what fascists like Curtis Yarvin and Balaji Srinivasan have been advocating for for decades already.
This is not something I want to contribute to, so I left the field very quickly after graduating from university and (no longer being consumed 60 hours a week by a demanding technical program) having gained some spare time to study the humanities and social aspects as opposed to the purely technical focus my studies have had until then.
Many people without a technical background (artists, painters, poets, musicians, or just random everyday people) seem to intuitively see the grift. It's the people with a technical background who claim to be atheists and rational, not religious, who are the most quasi-religious zealots who believe in an artificial intelligence as their substitute God.
If a few of the DMs I've received after posting my thoughts on AI are any indication, I've made a few people rather angry at me. And I'm not sorry. There is nothing good about current AI. AI could have been created ethically, but instead, the rich folks behind it decided money was more important so they decided to steal to build their models. And the people who continue to use AI even when they know the ethical issues behind it don't care about the ethical issues behind it. In one of the DMs that I received, I was told that they use AI from Google ethically. That is just not possible. Someone explain to me how this is possible.
