April 2024

Tech Doom

AI

This long read about the death of the internet is excellent. Some real great quotes in it:

Those who rely on generative AI to create are not creators any more than a person that commissions a portrait is an artist.

I am not saying that user-generated content will disappear, but that human beings cannot create content at the scale that automation can, and when a large chunk of the internet is content for robots, that is the content that will inform tomorrow’s models. The only thing that can truly make them better is more stuff, but when the majority of stuff being created isn’t good, or interesting, or even written for a human being, ChatGPT or Claude’s models will learn the rotten habits of rotten content. This is why so many models’ responses sound so similar — they’re heavily dependent on the stuff they’re fed for their outputs, and so much of their “intelligence” comes from the same training data.

It’s a different flavor of the same problem — these models don’t really “know” anything. They’re copying other people’s homework.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how you can argue against AI-assisted coding tools, or really any forced usage of AI-assisted tools for any creative endeavor, this piece by qntm helped solidify some of my thoughts and opinions into concrete reasons why these tools are not valuable. tl;dr: you’ll spend as much time validating and fixing their output as if you simply did the work yourself… and doing the work yourself is fundamentally more satisfying.

And as it’s currently positioned, AI coding assistance seems like an addition, but it actually removes the human from a part of the process where the human was actually extremely valuable. When a human writes code, we have the original programmer to vouch for their code, plus another person to review and double-check their work. With AI assistance, we don’t get that first “guarantee”.

And in the vein of providing you concrete arguments to use against AI proponents, this article about the similarities between psychic cons and how AI is pitched to people is a wonderful dive into common grifter tactics and how the tech community is using the same patterns with AI.

Rounding it out is another article from Ed Zitron who calls out that the AI boom, as it’s currently positioned, is entirely unsustainable. And just to prove it, here’s an article about Stability AI being unable to pay their bills.

Models like ChatGPT and Claude are deeply dependent on training data to improve their outputs, and their very existence is actively impeding the creation of the very thing they need to survive.

Ironically, OpenAI’s best hope for survival would be to fund as many news outlets as possible and directly incentivize them to do in-depth reporting, rather than proliferating a tech that unquestionably harms the media industry.

Boeing

I guess it’s a stretch to call it tech, but the way Boeing is being run into the ground is clearly the same pattern of every tech company so it counts. So have a chilling read about how Boeing’s been cutting corners, and then have a nice follow up where the primary whistleblower apparently committed suicide. And as a fun non-April edition, a second Boeing whistleblower died after a sudden illness.

Climate Doom

Global Warming

Who doesn’t love a new heat record right? Also, I should have assumed that increased heat would cause water to expand a notable amount, but I hadn’t considered what this would mean.

Of course, not everyone is sitting idly by, I just hope the people who are engaging in geoengineering experiments understand that the cost for a major roll out of geoengineering is always going to be a massive risk to human health.

One small win however is the European Court of Human Rights ruling that climate inaction has violated human rights. Would love to see more of this, and I’d love even more if this stuff ever had teeth. Time will tell I suppose, but I’m not holding out hope.

Fracking

If you know people from northern Alberta or British Columbia, you’ve probably heard stories about how bad things are up there with respect to oil companies and ecological damage. Well, the amount of earthquakes caused by fracking continues to increase.

Misc Nightmare Fuel

Have you ever looked at some tile and thought you saw a face? Maybe you did.

Please Distract Me From This Hell

Here’s a fun video where you get to see Brent Hinds continue to be a complete burnout while Bill Kelliher carries a presentation about Mastodon’s 11 heaviest riffs.

And here’s a wonderful solo fingerstyle folk album from a guy better known for extreme metal (Derrick Vella from Tomb Mold / Dream Unending).