pizza_the_hutt

Data has the drip.

They don’t need to outlaw it. They just need to make computing hardware too expensive for the average Joe to buy, which is currently the case.

I feel like this was true maybe 10-20 years ago, but any semi-recent desktop or laptop can run KDE or Gnome fine. If you are running an SBC with limited RAM, then maybe you should look at another desktop GUI.

Why does this look like an album cover?

I don’t have time to get into the nitty-gritty with this, but there’s a lot more going on behind-the-scenes than just running simple queries. I could see a future in which individuals and businesses are running open LLMs on their own hardware at cost for very specific purposes, with the understanding that relying on LLMs for everything will knee-cap them in the long-term. I’m not entirely against the technology itself, as long as people use it responsibly. However, that’s not what’s happening.

What is happening is a handful of AI companies, backed by tech giants and VC funding, are committing gross amounts of copyright infringement and intellectual property theft in an effort to monopolize all human knowledge and sell it back to us at a subscription. In order to do this, they are spending billions of dollars on influence and marketing to the public, government, and businesses. On the public side, they are trying to get everyone addicted to using their LLM chatbots and replace everything from search engines to genuine human interaction with LLMs. On the government side, they are trying to get the military to use LLMs in their war machine and domestic surveillance to identify and target anyone against the regime, while simultaneously cozying up to political leaders to convince them not to regulate them for fear of losing some kind of imaginary AI race with China. On the business side, they are trying to convince every executive and manager that AI is the future and can replace most if not all of their workers, even if it requires the current workers to train their model-powered replacements prior to being laid-off.

As a side note, the inability for regular users to purchase computing hardware at reasonable prices (RAM, GPUs, etc), thus being unable to run open models on their own hardware, is considered a benefit by these AI companies. Similarly, it benefits the AI companies for users to switch from simple queries to agents for basic tasks, because agents consume far more tokens.

The monopolization of this technology by a handful of tech companies, along with the build-out of data centers, hoarding compute hardware, and marketing of it to the public, government, and businesses, is unprofitable at the current prices. The market projections to achieve profitability are somewhere between laughable and insane. Almost all users of the technology, including individuals, government agencies, and businesses, are being heavily subsidized by a combination of dwindling VC funding and increasingly convoluted financing deals. Eventually, the free money is going to run out for the AI companies and their companions (data center builders, AI startups, etc), and they will be forced to raise prices, assuming they don’t immediately go under when the bubble bursts, which is looking increasingly likely. Businesses will be forced to have a serious discussion on ROI for LLM subscriptions, as well as the long-term effects of over-dependency on LLMs for core tasks, such as unmaintainable infrastructure, knowledge loss due to layoffs, and cult-like mindsets driving poor business decisions.

I really hope I’m not right about this, because when the bubble pops, it’s going to be bad, and the repercussions are going to be felt everywhere. I’m reminded of the scene from the Big Short:

You just bet against the American economy. If we’re right it means people lose homes, jobs, retirement savings, pensions. These aren’t just numbers. For every point unemployment goes up, 40 thousand people die. Did you know that?

Do we have a list of desktops that ban AI?

Can’t the local police just arrest them all for trespassing?

If you get one with a Snapdragon chip (Adreno GPU), you can run most Switch and Steam games, so you will be able to play new releases, within reason.

Endeavouros is great! Just use Flatpack before the AUR. AUR is basically the Wild West and should only be used as a last resort.

That won’t hide your IP at all.

This is the way, although I use a different VPN.

There is no technological pathway from LLMs to AGI. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or selling you a lie.

After reviewing the universal rules, I have two main concerns.

The first is the reliance on Canadian law. I understand that these instances are subject to Canadian law, which makes sense, but I would rather there be explicit rules or values written down, with the preference toward those rules over Canadian law, as laws can change. For example, what would happen if Canada has a MAGA-style wave and removes LGBTQ people from its list of protected classes? I imagine that we would still want to protect such people. Or, perhaps more likely, Canada strengthens its ties with China and regulates certain criticism of China as a result. Canada could also enact laws similar to those of the UK, which classified support of Palestine Action as support for terrorism and outlawed such speech. In summary, I want to make sure that these Lemmy instances protect marginalized groups while also allowing for free discussion and criticism of foreign nations and political groups, regardless of the current sway of Canadian politics and laws.

The second is a more concrete example which reveals an inherent contradiction between universal rules 1 (Violence and Threats) and 2 (Hate and Discrimination). There are currently multiple real-world examples of political groups using bogus victim-hood narratives, astro-turfing, whataboutism, and other means of misinformation to deny or downplay human rights abuses, including genocide. While I am glad to see a rule about misinformation, certain interpretations of universal rules 1 and 2 could shield bad actors from necessary criticism. In other words, should we tolerate the intolerant? Is it OK to say we should punch Nazis? What if I claimed Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza - a fact that many Canadian politicians are unwilling to admit themselves? What about the humans rights abuses in the USA and China? Would it be OK to use these Lemmy instances to stage opposition to such abuses, including sabotage of the encroaching surveillance state? The answers to these questions may seem obvious to some, but I would rather have explicit rules in place than kick the can down the road.

Well, shit. I didn’t know it was that bad. I apologize for my ignorance. You are right about him.

That’s such a disingenuous reading of the above comments.

He did two things, neither of which qualify as sexual assault, IMO.

1. He masturbated while talking to some women over the phone.
2. He masturbated at a party after asking for consent. No one said no.

I’m not saying what he did was appropriate, but he really is at the far side of the “me too” spectrum compared to someone like Harvey Weinstein. The negative press and other consequences he experienced and continues to experience feel very much like an overreaction.

Cocaine and cigarettes.

Those millions of people using AI for general search are currently getting it for free, which is going to end when the bubble bursts and the companies providing it go under, if not sooner when said companies try to make a profit. This is exactly what’s happening to corporate AI customers now. They are realizing there isn’t a good ROI now that OpenAI and other AI providers are being forced to charge proper costs for queries and tokens, rather than the teaser or “adoption” rates they charged before.

Like I said above, I think there will be some very specific cases where running an LLM makes sense. Think along the lines of querying lakes of scientific data. This won’t be something of value to the average Joe or the average company. My experience with using LLMs for general search has been very hit or miss. I always end up using a general search engine, even for internal data sources.

It will if it is too expensive to generate a positive return on investment. That’s not to say that there aren’t (very) specific use cases where running an LLM makes sense, but the general use case of attempting to replace human workers with AI will likely be recognized for the pipe dream that it is. Companies are already realizing this with the AI bills coming due now, and this attitude will compound once they start having major failures and no one is still around who can fix the problems.