brett on ai

brett scott on ai ness via tweet [https://x.com/Suitpossum/status/1965024139636273180]:

A message for every person working on AI in 2025

message from me.. ai we need: augmenting interconnectedness; nonjudgmental expo labeling; tech as it could be

There’s something slightly obnoxious about watching people who pioneered the Internet later crying tears at the fact that it’s now used for massive surveillance, data extraction and centralisation of power. So many of them are now very wealthy, but still tell stories about how they naively hoped that somehow the tech wouldn’t be weaponised to enrich small groups of elites while empowering increasingly authoritarian regimes

Those people were, in the 90s, in the same situation that you find yourself in now. You’re having fun developing AI, and you’re probably getting very rich off it, and you feel like you want to tell some positive story about this

Please don’t

mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh

Please don’t spin your naive feel-good tales about the wondrous things AI will do in future. Rather, it would be really refreshing if you’d just start from the assumption that by far the most likely outcome is for the tech to be used for massive enrichment and centralisation of power into an even smaller elite than before, with even more terrifying mechanisms of control at their disposal

problem is nothing to date has gotten to the root of problem

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do (aka: all the things we’ve been using tech/ai for)

ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)

the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. for (blank)’s sake..

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness

I don’t want to see you in some future documentary talking about how the promise of AI was betrayed blah blah. If you don’t start with the unrealistic perspective, you won’t be disillusioned when the obvious thing happens

Your mantra should be, I assume this thing will turn out bad, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t. That might sound bleak, but at least it puts you in a more realistic frame of mind, and a more authentic moral position, so that the rest of us won’t have to be subjected to your crocodile tears in future

warning ness et al

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