Brian Eno: “The biggest problem about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people”
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That's... just not true? Current frontier AI models are actually surprisingly diverse, there are a dozen companies from America, Europe, and China releasing competitive models. Let alone the countless finetunes created by the community. And many of them you can run entirely on your own hardware so no one really has control over how they are used.
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Techno-Feudalism
I'll say it, yet again. It's just feudalism. "Techno-Feudalism" has nothing different enough to it to differentiate it as even a sub-type of feudalism. It's just the same thing all over again, using technological advances to improve the ability to monitor and impose control over the populace. Historical feudalists also leveraged technology to cement their rule (plate armor, cavalry, crossbows, cannon, mills, control of literacy, etc).
Attaching "tech" to everything makes it more palatable. Desirable even. It masks the fact that feudal lords are reinventing everything but with "tech".
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Eno is more a traditional algorist than "AI" (by which people generally mean neural networks)
I could see him using neural networks to generate and intentionally pick and loop short bits with weird anomalies or glitchy sounds. Thats the route I’d like AI in music to go, so maybe that’s what I’m reading in, but it fits Eno’s vibe and philosophy.
AI as a tool not to replace other forms of music, but doing things like training it on contrasting music genres or self made bits or otherwise creatively breaking and reconstructing the artwork.
John Cage was all about ‘stochastic’ music - composing based on what he divined from the I Ching. There are people who have been kicking around ideas like this for longer than the AI bubble has been around - the big problem will be digging out the good stuff when the people typing “generate a three hour vapor wave playlist” can upload ten videos a day…
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He's not wrong.
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My biggest gripe with AI is the same problem I have with anything crypto
crypto: It's out of control power consumption relative to the problem it solves or purpose it serves.Don't thrown all crypto under the bus.
Only bitcoin and other proof of work protocols are power hungry. 2nd and 3rd generation crypto use mostly proof of stake and ZKrollups for security. Much more energy efficient.I'm aware of this, but it still mostly just something for people speculate on. Something people buy, sit on, and then hopefully sell with a profit.
Bitcoin was supposed to be a decentralized money alternative, but the amount of people actually buying things with crypto are highly negligible.
And honestly even if was actually used for that the power consumption would still be something to discuss.
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Here we are using recycled bags, banning straws, putting explosive refrigerant in fridges and using led lights in everything
lol, sucker. none of that does shit and industry was already destroying the planet just fine before ai came along.
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My biggest gripe with AI is the same problem I have with anything crypto
crypto: It's out of control power consumption relative to the problem it solves or purpose it serves.Don't thrown all crypto under the bus.
Only bitcoin and other proof of work protocols are power hungry. 2nd and 3rd generation crypto use mostly proof of stake and ZKrollups for security. Much more energy efficient.Sure, but despite all the crypto bros assurances to the contrary, the only real-world applications for it is buying drugs, paying ransoms and getting scammed. Which means that any non-zero amount of energy is too much energy.
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yes. we are cancer. i live on as little as possible but i don't delude myself into thinking my actions have any effect on the whole.
i spent nearly 20 years not using paper towels until i realized how pointless it was. now i throw my trash out the window. we're all fucked. if we want to change things, there's only one tool that will fix it. until people realize that, i really don't fucking care any more.
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For some reason the megacorps have got LLMs on the brain, and they're the worst "AI" I've seen. There are other types of AI that are actually impressive, but the "writes a thing that looks like it might be the answer" machine is way less useful than they think it is.
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yes. we are cancer. i live on as little as possible but i don't delude myself into thinking my actions have any effect on the whole.
i spent nearly 20 years not using paper towels until i realized how pointless it was. now i throw my trash out the window. we're all fucked. if we want to change things, there's only one tool that will fix it. until people realize that, i really don't fucking care any more.
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That article is overblown. People need to configure their websites to be more robust against traffic spikes, news at 11.
Disrespecting robots.txt is bad netiquette, but honestly this sort of gentleman's agreement is always prone to cheating. At the end of the day, when you put something on the net for people to access, you have to assume anyone (or anything) can try to access it.
You think Red Hat & friends are just all bad sysadmins? Source hut maybe...
I think there's a bit of both: poorly optimized/antiquated sites and a gigantic spike in unexpected and persistent bot traffic. The typical mitigations do not work anymore.
Not every site is and not every site should have to be optimized for hundreds of thousands of requests every day or more. Just because they can be doesn't mean that it's worth the time effort or cost.
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brian eno is cooler than most of you can ever hope to be.
Dunno, the part about generative music (not like LLMs) I've tried, I think if I spent a few more years of weekly migraines on that, I'd become better.
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My biggest gripe with current AI is the same problem I have with anything crypto.
It's out of control power consumption relative to the problem it solves or purpose it serves.Here we are using recycled bags, banning straws, putting explosive refrigerant in fridges and using led lights in everything, all in the name of the environment, while at the same time in some datacenter they are burning kwh’s by the bucket loads generating pictures of cats in space suits.
That's, #1, fashion and not about environment, #2, fashion promoted because it's cheaper for the industry.
And yes, power saved somewhere will just be spent elsewhere. Cheaper. Cause that means reduced demand for power (or grown not as fast as otherwise).
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The biggest problem with AI is the damage it’s doing to human culture.
Not solving any of the stated goals at the same time.
It's a diversion. Its purpose is to divert resources and attention from any real progress in computing.
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Sure. I worked in the game industry and sometimes AI can mean 'pick a random number if X occurs' or something equally simple, so I'm just used to the term used a few different ways.
Totally fair
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Do you know someone who's read a billion books and can write a new (trashy) book in 5 mins?
No, but humans have differences in scale also. Should a person gifted with hyper-fast reading and writing ability be given less opportunity than a writer who takes a year to read a book and a decade to write one? Imo if the argument comes down to scale, it's kind of a shitty argument. Is the underlying principle faulty or not?
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Attaching "tech" to everything makes it more palatable. Desirable even. It masks the fact that feudal lords are reinventing everything but with "tech".
Exactly. And it makes it seem more special or at least a new idea. It's not. We already have historical knowledge of what has worked in throwing off the shackles of monarchy and what hasn't.
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Oh it's the same shit as Feudalism, but with technology... Thanks for letting me know that's what Techno-Feudalism means. So glad we had this enlightening conversation to figure out those two words.
Oh it's the same shit as feudalism, but with technology... Thanks for letting me know that's what Techno-Feudalism means.
Understanding the meaning and context of terms is very important.
... I guess we could add "global" to the front of it so you know it's not just happening in a castle in 14th century Europe, but all across the planet.
I find "neo-feudalism" more appropriate. The previous incarnation already spanned the known world at the time.
Like, how many castles were in Europe? Okay, compare that to how many Amazon's there are? It's not the same thing at all
That's really a comparison that makes me think that, perhaps, learning more about feudal history would do us all good. A more apt comparison would be "how many Vaticans were there?" (depending on the time period, two).
Rome was the seat of power through much of feudalism in the Common Era in Europe. Castles were extensions of the theocratic empire centered there, providing physical and visual/psychological enforcement of that power. Despite all of the war and megalomaniacal bickering, the feudal lords and kings all had the same boss.
There's less difference than you apparently think.
Sorry, I don't have time for this mind dulling discussion.
I'm sorry that you don't know enough about history to understand how nearly identical the two are and didn't mean to cause distress, not knowing how attached to the term you were.
G'luck.
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I'm aware of this, but it still mostly just something for people speculate on. Something people buy, sit on, and then hopefully sell with a profit.
Bitcoin was supposed to be a decentralized money alternative, but the amount of people actually buying things with crypto are highly negligible.
And honestly even if was actually used for that the power consumption would still be something to discuss.
And honestly even if it did serve it's actual purpose, the cumulative power consumption would still be a point of debate.
Yeah, but at that point you'd have to consider it against how much power the traditional banking system uses.
