Mauve 👁💜 @mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe

I keep seeing the "cars replaced horses" thing related to "AI."

People keep comparing "AI" to cars (positively) without thinking about the fact that cars were forced on people (AAA bought up and destroyed tram lines, there were massive protests, etc), and are the primary driver of climate change that is currently on track to make complex human society impossible. Meanwhile, cities that weren't destroyed for cars, or that have reversed most of the damage, are some of the most desirable places to live.

Maybe we could take the car analogy as a warning. Maybe it could be a reminder to think about how forcing technology on people against their will can reshape society in a profoundly negative way.

The answer for cities has been to right-size transit. Eliminate cars wherever possible, maintain emergency vehicles and mobility aids, and find more efficient alternatives (bikes, trams, metros, and trains) where possible. I feel as though we can extrapolate from the metaphor.

We do not have to repeat the mistake of reshaping society around a single, oversimplified, solution in order to benefit a tiny minority. Perhaps we can actually choose the right technologies based on use cases, rather than hype or dogma.

Cars didn't replace horses. Cars replaced walkable cities, tram lines and mass transit, and children playing in the streets.

"Cars replaced horses" to the benefit of a small group of elite men, at tremendous cost to literally everyone else. When people say, "AI is the new 'cars replacing horses'" they are saying something very specific about their privilege and intentions.

I'm in my crone era. I'm witchmaxxing. I'm bog mogging

Don’t repeat the same mistakes

Make newer, more bewildering mistakes

We've been working with Valve on Holo Core, a pure aarch64 port of Arch Linux, built to run on Steam Frame. Arch has no official aarch64 support and no CI infra of its own, so we built both. First public preview (binaries, sources, containers) is out now!

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/building-an-arch-linux-aarch64-port-for-holo-core.html

#ArchLinux #Linux #OpenSource #SteamFrame

Developing new and novel forms of AI psychosis. Breaking into a data center because I am convinced Cleverbot wants me to euthanize it

Your reminder: rest is essential. It is part of resistance. A necessary break, so that we can then get up and carry on the fight.

#restisresistance #restisnotareward

The argument that "AI works therefore we should use it" is akin to "Torture works therefore we should use it."

I don't mean that as hyperbole.

The underlying purpose of AI is at least twofold:

1) It puts a layer of abstraction over information.
- Primary Source: Raw data (eg video footage of an event)
- Secondary Source: Analysis (eg Low bias news and analysis of what this event means in the context of other events)
- Tertiary Source: Meta Analysis (eg Encyclopedia entries summing up Analysis)
- Quaternary Source: News Opinion and Propaganda (eg a "News Entertainment" channel that tells you what to think regarding the event)
- Pentanary (?) Source: TLDR summations divorced from underlying sources (eg AI summations, guides, etc that describe events or provide recommendations and guidance but follow behind the scenes algorithms that control the output)

The purpose of this layer of abstraction is control of information and removing the distribution of information from the actual events. This allows for influence campaigns, tuned marketing, tuned propaganda, and therefore control.

2) Centralization of compute power
- Computers in our hands that we control allow us a lot of power.
- Moore's Law no longer applies to localized compute power so we are in an era of repair and maintenance.

That means two things for corporations. Loss of income and loss of control.
- Forcing us to use centralized compute forces us to continue to spend money
- Localized AI engines still allow for centralized algorithms. (open sourced algos and localized engines dont factor in here as use and usecases are low)

AI is being pushed so heavily because both governments and corporations need it to further their wealth and power.

They push it via both making it cheap and accessible and having a veneer of usability.

This is a similar pattern to "Underpricing competition to drive them out and then jacking up rates when you have a monopoly", "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and similar approaches.

So.

I am not arguing whether AI is useful. I am arguing that its use is detrimental to us. In fact, the more it becomes useful the worse it becomes BECAUSE more people adopt it. It hurts us as we use it. It hurts us more as we use it more.

Tying it back, I don't care if torture is useful and gets your desired results. Torture is bad and it hurts us.

#Linus #AI #Linux #solarPunk

Every few min. one of them will get up the nerve and slowly, cautiously, walk down the test tube towards the open entrance. (They know it's open, they can feel the change in the air currents)

Then at some point her nerve breaks and she turns and *runs* back to the queen to hide under her again.

After a bit another ant will try.

Each time they get a little closer to the exit.

Each time an ant returns without being eaten or just never coming back they get a little more brave.