This reads a bit naive and “assume good intent”-y for me. Look at what’s happening outside of AI for a decade: everyone’s eating data like a compulsive hoarder. Not just Google and Facebook who are actually using it in their core products, but everyone. Today I discovered that a mini-site of Swedish traditional recipes I’ve been using for Christmas has added autoplaying videos, dark-pattern cookie consent banners, the usual. Almost every new app/site is oriented around this economic axis.. and then the sudden coordinated lockdown of 3p APIs right around when LLMs starts getting strong.
And now we have ChatGPT/OpenAI and their competitors.. if the other players eat data like a secret midnight snack, current-gen AI is like zombies (the fast and twitchy variants) starving for blood and brains. Both because data serves a more direct role in the product, but also because of the typical hype-train-race psychology of tech VCs has been woken from slumber by the first potential paradigm shift in decades.
All circumstances point towards zombie apocalypse/ gold rush / ask for forgiveness later / etc etc. I strongly believe that’s why they’re (all of them) doubling down on the safety/responsibility rhetoric now, before the inevitable reputational PR crises (plural). Get ammo to muddy the waters early.
Meanwhile we techies are lulling around like we didn’t deeply just experience the last 10 years and thinking it’ll be different this time because.. AI is rooted in academia? Flashy new companies? The safety rhetoric? Edgy Twitter takes from “down-to-earth” founders?
I don’t pretend to know exactly what goes on behind the scenes but I’ve been around long enough to know how people work. And they haven’t changed for the better.
> Meanwhile we techies are lulling around like we didn’t deeply just experience the last 10 years and thinking it’ll be different this time because.. AI is rooted in academia? Flashy new companies? The safety rhetoric? Edgy Twitter takes from “down-to-earth” founders?
These companies have already stolen everyone's data and techies are bitching about IP law and saying they don't need to ask permission to use anything on the public internet. That might be the legal reality but you still look like tech douchebag for doing it.
More than looking like a douchebag, that sort of response is a big part of why the tech industry has lost so much trust. It's the response of someone who wants to continue to abuse people, not the response of someone who wants to act in a trustworthy manner.
And now we have ChatGPT/OpenAI and their competitors.. if the other players eat data like a secret midnight snack, current-gen AI is like zombies (the fast and twitchy variants) starving for blood and brains. Both because data serves a more direct role in the product, but also because of the typical hype-train-race psychology of tech VCs has been woken from slumber by the first potential paradigm shift in decades.
All circumstances point towards zombie apocalypse/ gold rush / ask for forgiveness later / etc etc. I strongly believe that’s why they’re (all of them) doubling down on the safety/responsibility rhetoric now, before the inevitable reputational PR crises (plural). Get ammo to muddy the waters early.
Meanwhile we techies are lulling around like we didn’t deeply just experience the last 10 years and thinking it’ll be different this time because.. AI is rooted in academia? Flashy new companies? The safety rhetoric? Edgy Twitter takes from “down-to-earth” founders?
I don’t pretend to know exactly what goes on behind the scenes but I’ve been around long enough to know how people work. And they haven’t changed for the better.