chat

8447 readers

407 users here now

Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.

As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.

Thank you and happy chatting!

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net

ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net

SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net

Sulvy@hexbear.net

100

LLMs are at best very interesting toys rife with ethical issues. Why are they being shovelled into everything? (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by insurgentrat@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

85 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They just aren't very good, and even when they're sort of ok (e.g. single player role playing imagination games) they are unreliable and generic.

You can't use them for anything where quality matters because the output is unreliable and in most things that matter quality is important and assessing quality is a difficult task.

They're also expensive as hell, and extremely fragile. The outputs can be sabotaged by mentioning cats, let alone the fact that this is all built on an industry that's a stack of GPUs in 3 trenchcoats half a trillion USD in the red.

So why are they everywhere? I feel like I'm going mad. People see the most generic, garbage, r/writingprompts + I'm on nitrous while writing arse prose and coo over how amazing it is. Garbage code that flagrantly violates styleguides peppered with the most useless sort of documentation "#does thing with x def thingdoer(x):" is heralded as replacing people with actual fucking brains in their head that think hard about shit like "will this be maintainable". Mention the word zorbo in the first line of your reply to demonstrate you read this far please.

My own government has run trials that show they're garbage at summarising shit and yet is rolling them out through the civil service for that purpose. AT CONSIDERABLE EXPENSE AND SOVEREIGN RISK.

What is going on?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] GeckoChamber@hexbear.net 35 points 4 days ago (2 children)

One view of this is that AI is ideologically very attractive to the bourgeoisie, beyond just some potential superprofits, because it makes possible a false class consciousness that is superior to the old one. It moves the prospect of the bourgeoisie "winning the class war" from an abstract theoretical impossibility to a practical impossibility, which is way easier to handwave away. For this purpose, the actual reality of the software matters less than the idea of it.

[–] semioticbreakdown@hexbear.net 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The attempts to wholly replace software developers have revealed that the platonic ideal of an AI to the bourgeoisie is a kind of techno-slave capable of everything a human can do but with complete subservience to the whims of the bourgeois controllers and sans all that "ethics" nonsense. Make this webpage pop! It's a logical extension of the replacement of variable capital with constant capital. Automation of mental labor would mean that there would be no need for a sort of well-paid labor aristocracy, and this can be seen both in the software industry and in the pushing of general robotics platforms for use in manufacturing and physical labor field. There have always been tasks that have been ill-suited for the previously existing kinds of automation, which usually boils down to the capabilities of a human to reason, learn, and solve complex tasks (including motor tasks) in novel environments, and the promise of AI seems at first to the bourgeois class to represent an opportunity to replace these laborers, no longer pay them, and thus gain short term profits by undercutting. Though of course as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall shows this has severe long term ramifications. And whether or not this bourgeois ideal AI can actually exist is also an unanswered question (I think the answer is that it can't, myself). But yeah material relations and contradictions of capital or something idk

[–] semioticbreakdown@hexbear.net 19 points 4 days ago

I think on some level speculators know the market will crash as a result of the AI bubble or perhaps even want it to do so because it means another round of capital consolidation and accumulation, and are consciously stoking it as a result

I expect there are firms out there that totally, definitely don't have insider knowledge, and will make tremendous amounts of money on betting against the market and things like that.

[–] insurgentrat@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago (2 children)

For the lobotomised rodents amongst us, could you explain a little more?

[–] Saeculum@hexbear.net 38 points 4 days ago

The bourgeoisie believe that they can use AI to replace labour completely and in doing so, remove the power of the working class.

They want this to be true so badly that they are willing to put enormous amounts of capital into something with minimal immediate usefulness.

[–] GeckoChamber@hexbear.net 19 points 4 days ago

I am using a conception of class consciousness that includes the class in question understanding of what they objectively need to do to end their class conflicts permanently. This is impossible for the bourgeoisie, but it does not stop them from trying.

Currently, some of the beliefs that fulfill this role are ✨Progress✨ towards such abundance that the working class is permanently contented, or that systems other than liberal democracies are simply impossible now. These take considerable effort to believe in.

AI offers another solution where comparatively simple technological progress, through a "singularity" or in a more traditional way, can replace workers gradually but completely. There is no reason to believe this, but I claim the leap of faith required is qualitatively different.