alt Hacker NewsI appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think that calls for generic revolt are likely to get us anywhere. It's gotta be targeted and meaningful and executed with a measure of a restraint. It needs to be clear we can be reasoned with.
So what kind of revolt are you calling for? Are we dumping GPU's into the ocean like we did with tea in Boston that one time? Are we disconnecting datacenters from the internet? Are we all gonna change our profile picture? Specifics please.
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:-D I do love the image of hurling GPU’s into the sea!
My suggestion was much more modest. Put down the phone and delete your socials. Disengagement is the ultimate act of rebellion.
I'd love to lobby for "the right" to opt out of AI features.
When I google search "why is the sky blue" , it spins up an LLM. This is incredibly wasteful for simple, known answers.
When my friend googles the same thing, it spins up the LLM again. Google was a pioneer of search indexing, and now it seems like we don't attempt to index answers at all. They're spinning up an LLM every time because they're trying to run up the AI "adoption" metrics.
I'd love to be able to ask for simple things, like the address of the local restaurant 3 blocks away, without firing up a GPU in an AI data center.
I don't always want to "talk with" a computer. Sometimes I just want to "use" a computer. Maybe that makes me a fool. Or an old man yelling at clouds.
I think it’s easier than that. We can literally start the revolution from our beds:
1. For every social media account you have: post “I’m leaving. You should too”
2. For every social media account you have: close it.
3. Profit
Dump advertising into the ocean. The motivation for maximizing engagement on social media is to maximize ad impressions for revenue. Every algorithm, every dark pattern, every UX tweak, is aimed toward that sole end. The issue cannot be fixed by regulating social media itself; it is the enormous monetary incentive that is the root of the problem and until the flow of money is choked off, corporations will still doggedly pursue that revenue.