I have been in tech for 20 years. i researched, covered, produced analysis, written extensively about innumerable trends.
I have always done it with a grain of sane skepticism, but I have been wowed so many times.
And yet, for the first time, I see something like this and I can’t utter anything but “oh my effing God”.
It’s disturbing to me—to have this incredible technology available, the most incredible I’ve seen ever, and yet feel so empty about it.
I just feel a fundamental repulsion. A generation ago the nerds were quirky cool outcasts with enough of a humanistic background, an understanding of the value of culture, or the humility of those who don’t know enough. This enabled them understand that tech is only part of a broader set of values, even though many of them were certainly technological maximalists.
With AI another form of tech power has prevailed. It’s tech totalitarism, tech for tech’s sake.
The drivers are of course the usual suspects: money and power.
Yet there’s more. The resistance, even the most basic skeptical resistance, from the broader public isn’t there.
With gen AI the nerd found the gold in the mine: the sudden realization that millions of people just couldn’t wait for the moment a machine could alleviate the curse of thinking. So here they go, merrily and joyously deferring their mind process to a mimicry engine, running back into the warm womb of Plato’s cave.
So you ask me to imagine what the world would be like when everyone would have a GPU?
Are you serious? Where the fuck do you live?
alt Hacker News
I have been in tech for 20 years. i researched, covered, produced analysis, written extensively about innumerable trends. I have always done it with a grain of sane skepticism, but I have been wowed so many times. And yet, for the first time, I see something like this and I can’t utter anything but “oh my effing God”. It’s disturbing to me—to have this incredible technology available, the most incredible I’ve seen ever, and yet feel so empty about it. I just feel a fundamental repulsion. A generation ago the nerds were quirky cool outcasts with enough of a humanistic background, an understanding of the value of culture, or the humility of those who don’t know enough. This enabled them understand that tech is only part of a broader set of values, even though many of them were certainly technological maximalists. With AI another form of tech power has prevailed. It’s tech totalitarism, tech for tech’s sake. The drivers are of course the usual suspects: money and power. Yet there’s more. The resistance, even the most basic skeptical resistance, from the broader public isn’t there. With gen AI the nerd found the gold in the mine: the sudden realization that millions of people just couldn’t wait for the moment a machine could alleviate the curse of thinking. So here they go, merrily and joyously deferring their mind process to a mimicry engine, running back into the warm womb of Plato’s cave.
So you ask me to imagine what the world would be like when everyone would have a GPU? Are you serious? Where the fuck do you live?