Agency is now the most valuable commodity in Silicon Valley. In tech interviews, it’s common for candidates to be asked whether they’re “mimetic” or “agentic.” You do not want to say mimetic. Once, San Francisco drew in runaway children, artists, and freaks; today it’s an enormous magnet for highly agentic young men.
Slightly older piece now, but a real banger for examining the modern Silicon Valley psychopaths. These people are evil and their brains are entirely rotted by AI
I spend a lot of time on Bluesky, for which reason my soul will surely meet oblivion in the jaws of Ammit; but while I'm there I see a lot of AI boosterism. Here's a taxonomy.
It’s just so bad, in so many different ways, on so many different levels. Trying to ignore or excuse any one of the points against it will still leave you with dozens more.
“Tech-forward” should have no place in how we think about the future. There is not a single axis. Things are not either forward or back, accelerating or retreating, primitive or modern, fast or slow. If we are having debates about who owns global compute, what AI infrastructure sits on the interconnection queue, who is paying for rate increases, who signs NDAs or negotiates the terms of data center projects, it becomes painfully obvious how shallow this framing is.
On Taylor Lorenz, AI, the Right, and the tech industry. Of course, I disagree on one point put forth in the article: There is a future vision of tech-collaborative socialism, and it is ("as much as you may not like it") the People's Republic of China.
Upon reflection, I've come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it. There's an ineffable aspect to my favorite pieces of software where I don't think of it is as feature matrix but rather as an interface made by a human for humans that's a joy to use. And when you build software with AI, it leads to worse software.
Well-written and sobering. I know I always say this but it is ridiculous how common this feeling is within tech. I feel like I am having conversations like this on a nearly daily basis. It's fucking rough out here
So what is the best way out of that uncomfortable, untenable space? We think one key step is disaggregating the (non-coherent) set of technologies sold as "AI". If you don't fall for the marketing gimmick telling you all this stuff you work with is "AI", you aren't saddled with trying to defend any of the rest of it.
Another banger piece from Emily Bender, probably the world's foremost authority on LLM-based technologies. I highly recommend this if you are often saddled with talking to people who believe "AI" is a magic future device that will save us all. Or whatever the hell they are saying these days
Maybe Iovine and Dre are correct in this respect: AI is no drastic change from what we have experienced these last couple decades, while they and their colleagues at the top of the music/tech industry made billions. AI is simply more of what they practiced all along: the marginalization of labor in music, to the point where capital now imagines labor is entirely irrelevant to its continued growth.
Dre being pro-AI is one of those things that is disappointing but not surprising -- old people be old -- but I still found this piece short and insightful. The underlying issue here is the disappearance of human labor from the larger music industry, as would be expected as capitalism continues its imperialist march toward profit.
Should I just let things slide? Would I become known as a “difficult” coworker for pushing back on AI use? Does any of it really matter? Does anyone really care?
Brutal and all-too-familiar.
This assistant provides the most important benefits of LLM assistants without the associated environmental costs, privacy risks, and economic brinksmanship.
The world is full of people who insist that "AI is changing everything" but who – when pressed – have to admit that what they mean is that they're pretty sure that AI will change everything. Eventually. After we allow it to consume all the planet's energy, carbon, water and financial resources.
Maybe.
The reality is thus: the people in charge either have no plan, or see no path forwards other than keeping their heads down. [...] The world’s organisations have been captured by people in the throes of frothing excitement, and saner people who now live in a state of constant commingled fear and frustration.
Not much to say here other than "yeah, I have felt the same for quite a while now."
Executives that tell the press that their company has gone insane will quickly find themselves removed from their positions. Employees who are honest will find themselves fired in short-order, or “randomly” selected for a round of layoffs. In fact, it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects. Many publicly traded companies are putting out announcements about their AI productivity gains when I know for a fact that the businesses have done nothing other than purchase Copilot licenses and declare victory.
A long read but extremely worth your time.
It has become outright dangerous to even raise the possibility that AI might not be the solution to a problem, let alone be the sole focus of a company’s entire strategy.
In every sufficiently large business we have observed (say, with 500+ employees), we have noted that continued advancement, and increasingly continued employment, has started to require repeated professions of belief in the transformative power of AI for said business. I am not talking about providing ideas about how to use AI in the business – I mean religious profession, declarations of faith.
The final section of the essay -- "Navigating AI Mania" is, imo, crucial reading in this era of, well, AI mania. Funnily enough, I'd call a lot of this pretty bog-standard labor organization tips, but tailored for the AI regime. It's good reading -- if you don't want to read this whole thing, at least read that final bit.
Child labor is very “useful” if you want cheap labor. It’s 100% deplorable to use it or accept it. Child labor is a monstrosity. But if “useful” is enough, do we need to accept child labor? [...] Usefulness is a very weak argument in support of something.
Once you notice a ChatGPT flyer, you will see them everywhere if you keep your eyes open.
These have been fucking destroying me. They are EVERYWHERE. They are EVIL
Instead of a one-size-fits-all block, all customers can now easily distinguish and manage Search, Agent, and Training bots, alongside the new ability to protect ad-monetized pages.
Not a bad move from Cloudflare, honestly.
A new book claims that Mystery, who teaches awkward men how to hit on women, had sex and smoked weed with an AI chatbot named Miss Shira Always.
Mystery has fallen in love with Grok!
"It's like being in an abusive marriage... I'm sitting here dealing with somebody that isn't living in reality."
I truly believe this is happening on a level greater than we would imagine. The boss/executive classes are getting their brains absolutely fucking fried by this shit.
Climate action is increasing its reliance on completely avoidable new fossil fuel infrastructure, and what it gets in return is more lies, less trust and direct participation in big tech’s attempt to destroy access to reality.
Turns out that recent "Bezos quote" about humans drinking too much water was entirely made up, likely an AI hallucination, and reported by an Indian news outlet as fact. Never underestimate the lack of care of the modern overworked/underpaid journalist.
Perhaps pro-AI developers didn't want to talk to me or I just didn't run into any during my survey, because I heard an overwhelmingly negative assessment of generative AI's origins, capabilities, and risks. By the end, I'd heard dozens of developers make a case against using gen AI at all.
Surprise surprise, no one wants this shit who actually works in games.
AI "assisted" Code is still generative AI and it's weird how people try to justify that it's not.
Good breakdown of a current messy situation regarding SpryFox and generative AI.
Readers really despise and distrust articles that seem shaped by AI. They not only stop reading, but also block and punish the author. Non-native English speakers get little mercy. Readers overwhelmingly prefer imperfect-yet-authentic writing over LLMified prose.
Good!