[I literally had this thought in the shower this morning so please don’t gatekeep me lol.]
If AI was something everyone wanted or needed, it wouldn’t be constantly shoved your face by every product. People would just use it.
Imagine if printers were new and every piece of software was like “Hey, I can put this on paper for you” every time you typed a word. That would be insane. Printing is a need, and when you need to print, you just print.
I have found one use for it: getting information from behind login/paywalls.
It still feels gross to use AI at all though. It’s like putting my hand in toilet water.
The market flooding is a classic silicon valley strategy of free today charge tomorrow except they’re over invested in this one financially, in global supply for GPUs, and land with viable power infrastructure.
Not sure where you’re going with that analogy. The vast majority of text processors do have a button that lets you print the document.
He’s saying if printing was shoved in your face as much as AI, everyone would be skeptical of that also. AI is a bit much nowadays, I fucking hate hearing about it. I’m in IT.
Warning : I think AI in the current hype form, so commercial GenAI and LLM, is absolutely bullshit. The result is just bad and resources required is absolutely ridiculous, and maybe worst than those two combined (which is already enough to want to reject en masse) it is structured in order to create dependencies on very few actors.
Yet… (you saw that coming!) it’s not because 99.99% is bad that suddenly the average consumer leverages the less than .01% left properly.
What they (OpenAI, Claude, M$, NVIDIA, Google, Meta, etc) are looking for is a product/market fit. They do have a product (arguable) and a market (millions if not billions of users of their different other products) with even a minuscule fraction of people trying to use their new AI-based tool… and yet nobody actually knows what the “killer app” truly is.
They are investing everything they don’t spend on actual R&D or infrastructure in finding out … what it’s actually for. They have no clue.
It’s crammed for awareness so shareholders know.
That’s my take.
Because right now, the general populace thinks AI is some unicorn magic that will fix all the things.
I really love your analogy. I’m imagining early 90s Windows and AOL bombarding folks with pop ups that say ‘want to take this with you? Print it!’ and ‘Did you know you can print anytime you like with our new dedicated keyboard print button?’ and ‘Try our new cassette music player, now printer-powered to give you the best sound you’ve ever heard!’
It’s the only thing holding the US economy afloat now. Do you want to fight your neighbours for the last piece of hardtack?
Those trying to sell it are trying to figure out where it’s most useful. In one way, I think it’s an amazing technology, and I also wonder how it can be best used. However, I can’t stand it being pushed on me, and I wish I could easily say no. Acrobat Reader is particularly unbearable with it. Trying to describe a drawing?? Ughhh. Waste of space and energy like nothing else.
This was exactly my thought when MS finally decided to force Copilot to be licensed. They have literally inserted it into every nook and cranny they can so far and the only conclusion I can come to is that they royally f’ed up. Like they invested so much in it and likely aren’t seeing anything profitable. In a way, it satisfies me to see them act so desperate for something so futile but I don’t want it to continue. It’s clear what damages they have caused and it’s not worth it.
the plan is to automatically make money. spammers work on low percentages already. they get enough clicks to make it worth doing. never did understand some people click/buy anything. just shove in their faces
Dealers give drugs for free until you’re hooked…
More like; it’s cheap when you have no tolerance and no daily habit. You start paying if you let your consumption grow 50-fold.
In my nearly half century on this planet and having dealt with many a drug dealer in my younger days, absolutely none of them have been this pushy 😆
That’s actually really rare.
It’s pretty common here.
Instructions unclear fucked the drug dealer.
AI got tons of money from investors they will eventually want ROI… this why they are trying to force it down our throats
This is the correct answer. It’s all about money.
agreed
To be fair, the internet was fucking everywhere once the dotcom bubble kicked off. Everyone had a website, and even my mum was like “Don’t bother your dad, he’s on the internet” like it was this massive thing.
That’s the point though, you wouldn’t need it advertised to you 24/7 because your family and friends would already be all over it.
If this bothers you, stop using the products.
That’s not the problem, as long as one lives in a society, one is bound to participate in it, willingly or not.
If you do not use, someone else will, and sooner or later you will consume something made by said person.
Just “not using it yourself”, won’t cut it.
Uhh… I am sorry. What you said means nothing to me.
We all live in this world, yes. Society is unavoidable. However, you can choose to what extent you engage with it. There is a minimum, stop using tech ~ go out into the world and meet people, create physical things etc. – nobody will stop you when you act with integrity and love.
True, I don’t think that applies to a FOSS centric community like lemmy tho, nothing wrong with that, it’s just that I think that the wrong expectations are in place, I could be wrong ofc
Also “Just don’t use” iOS, Android, any Microsoft anything, any Apple anything, all social media, television, print, and most other media, Adobe software, Google products, even freaking DuckDuckGo…
How about these companies just learn what consent is and let me disable it forever without asking again every time I open something? “Yes” and “Maybe later” is not a choice.
(Yes I am aware of FOSS alts, that is not the discussion.)
eyup. this is basically the case for everything. if its usefulness is worth its cost and is affordable then it will quickly be taken up by word of mouth or example. This is why companies try to subsidize things until it dominates the market and then raises costs to the point normal folk are like fuck this. it was nice but not worth it anymore.
Most things are nothing more than smoke and mirrors to get your money. Tech especially. Welcome to end stage capitalism.
you hope this is end stage, but I fear there are 2 more stages to go.
The idea behind end-stage capitalism is that capitalists have, by now, penetrated and seized control of every market in the world. This is important because capitalism requires ever increasing rates of profits or you will be consumed by your competitor. Since there are no longer new labor pools and resource pool discovery is slackening, capitalists no longer have anywhere to expand.
Therefore, capitalists begin turning their attention back home, cutting wages and social safety nets, and resorting to fascism when the people complain.
This is the end stage of capitalism. The point at which capitalists begin devouring their own. Rosa Luxembourg famously posited that at this point, the world can choose “Socialism or Barbarism.” In other words, we can change our economic system, or we can allow the capitalists to sink to the lowest depths of depravity and drag us all down as they struggle to maintain their position.
Of course, if the capitalists manage to get to space, that opens up a whole new wealth of resources, likely delaying the end of their rule.
That’s the ticket, let’s send the billionaires and telephone sanitizer into space.
They will still require someone to fund their space luxury lifestyle.
Someone they can exploit from the safety of their space boxes.That someone will be the us that you hid inside the “let’s”.
We will be the ones sending them into space, where they will be even more unreachable, giving them more freedom to remotely exploit us as much as they wish.Imagine Elysian
Imagine Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy.
I’ll have to read it first, to imagine it :P
spoiler for HGTG
In the book, the doers and thinkers trick the middle men into getting into space arcs and fleeing the planet. Telephone sanitizers are included with the middle men. I will include the overly wealthy also.
I can’t see the current batch of robber barons going into space. The technology isn’t advanced enough and the infrastructure does not exist. They may risk sending other people there to work on these deficiencies.
Yeah, we aren’t all crouching naked in a muddy puddle, weeping and eating worms while the rich fly high above us in luxurious jets. Not yet, anyway.
I’d say it’s not end stage but instead a new dawn of “pure” capitalism which is probably worse.
