Well this thread is certainly more depressing than I remember leaving it. I see the small piece of optimism I tried to sow early on did not take
I donāt think all of this nihilism is going to change anything.
Programmers have been blessed with more leverage than any trade in history. There is little barrier to entry and no cost of distribution. Consider using this power to change things for the better while you still can. There are a lot of bad computer programs out there (we all know this). Spend your time writing better ones.
The web is still open and free, for now. There is a window. Could be the last chance.
I am generally an optimistic person however I think itās also important to be a realist, especially on matters like this. Plus depressing situations can actually spark meaningful change and I think if the choice is between blissful ignorance (and doing nothing about it) or uncomfortable truths that lead to tangible change I think the latter is more likely to benefit humanity.
But yes, enough of the doom and gloom, letās switch things up and focus on being proactiveā¦
The web still being open and free may be debatable given the increasingly draconian laws being passed - at least here in the UK. Weāve had the snoopers charter, compulsory age verification checks (online safety act), anti-encryption backdoors and the new Digital ID set to come in soon, all of which may begin to get mirrored across the world as often is the case. I very much agree with you however that there is a window in which we have a limited time to act. In fact you reminded me of something @joeerl once saidā¦ Iāll post it as a separate thread as I think it could make for a good independent discussion
It frustrates me that a lot of the push in the AI world is being done in the name of progress and efficiency. But I personally find very hard to find anything progressive or efficient on:
Defense contracts for surveillance or test beds for ongoing conflicts.
The use of land and natural resources like clean water to power up data centers.
The capacity of AI to generate misinformation, making records and evidence meaningless.
And while Iām sure LLMs can be used for good, I donāt think the big companies are really trying to āsolve climate changeā, rather they want a chunk of the money that comes from government and defense contracts. Practices that Iām finding truly despicable making me not want to support in any way this technology and industry.
In my view, the idea of AGI or super intelligence is just a comic goal post for allowing the infinite growth and spread of data-centers. Which again, governments will allow in the name of progress. Poor communities (primarily on the global south) are going to be the ones most affected by this with the shortage of essentials like water and energy. An extraction economy.
I guess my 2nd part of the frustration is if AI brings any real value into our lives. For me its irrelevant how much code or documentation I can get done on an evening. As long as I learn, understand and eventually know how to tackle the problem at hand.
Just to bring again the climate change exampleā¦ weāre not solving climate change by generating a list of bullet points, we do so by acting on knowledge and practices harvested over years.
Iāve been born to USSR in 70s. I met the draconian laws first in my second grade. During the last year in college, Iāve been to jail twice (several days in total, but still.) To be reading George Orwell in public transport I got rid of its paperback, let alone it costed me the amount I was almost to trade my kidney for. I mean, I have sorta clue about what draconial laws are.
And yet, since my 15, I had next to zero issues with the law. We live in parallel realities. I do not tell them how to handle the regime crisis in Somalia, and they do not tell me how to use Java instead of Elixir. Thatās a win-win.
What I am trying to tell, is draconian laws is a malformed excuse. We are smarter and faster than these fellows from govt. They would have never caught our next step (as well as five previous ones.) There is no need to be breaking laws (or obeying them) when the law lives in the reality that does not exist anymore.
MELBOURNE, Australia ā MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) ā Deloitte Australia will partially refund the 440,000 Australian dollars ($290,000) paid by the Australian government for a report that was littered with apparent AI-generated errors, including a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment and references to nonexistent academic research papers.
The issue is not 12000 employees of Deloitte Australia faked it until they could make it. The issue is the court ruled to compensate the fee partially instead of bankrupting the swindlers.
Thatās the real world implication. Not the trolley problem or other mental experiments of white-collar dudes in the internets.
Completely agree. Failing an outright world-wide ban, I think anyone who supplies, creates, or works on AI powered weapons that murder human beings should be treated as though they pulled the trigger themselves.
If the accusations against Palantir are true then Theil and his enablers should be imprisoned for crimes against humanity:
The following is a bit off-topic so posting in a separate post in case we need to split the thread (or move it to the the other thread) at some point.
Are you saying you were arrested for reading George Orwell in public?
It (being arrested for questioning authority) is happening here in the UK right now. Old age pensioners, veterans, and even disabled people have been dragged away and arrested for simply sitting down holding a placard in silence (you couldnāt get a more peaceful protest if you tried - most of those arrested are in their 60s/70s/80s and 90s). They are protesting against an activist group being proscribed as a terrorist organisation, even tho the group has not carried out any acts of āterrorā (they threw some red paint on some planes - which is criminal damage, not terrorism). Those protesting arenāt necessarily protesting in favour of the group, but that the law has been abused.
I have a feeling this is what they want us to believe Aleksei - because itās been the same old story for hundreds of years - in fact if we look around things are worse, the 1% have gotten significantly richer and everyone else poorer.
There does seem to be an awakening and a shift in public opinion now though, however as Garrison said earlier there is only a small window for change and so this makes the situation feel dire, why? Perhaps because we can safely assume:
The planet cannot sustain humanity as we are currently living (and many would argue we are only living like this because of the greed of the 1%)
The 1% are going to do everything in their power to protect their own survival (so to hell with the rest of us?)
It is quite depressing when you think about it, but I would rather think about these things now rather than when itās too late, especially because we may well be some of the very people who are in a position to do something about it.
Well, not for reading per se, but for quoting it in public places (and for recitation of some poetry,) in general for being louder that itās allowed for controversial opinion
Yes, Iāve read about it. Once I have grown up, I decided for myself I donāt fight unfightable. I am not sure if itās ethically perfect, but it definitely keeps the entropy where it belongs (not growing up.) Fighting authorities (which is now more about the richest 1% not about presidents and governments) does not make any sense, unless you are ready to dedicate/sacrifice your life to/for it, like Che did, for instance. I mean, yeah, in my 20s I was all about helping the humanity, now I am more about helping people in particular.
You can always count on me. Revolution is something I might join, unlike peaceful protests and other zero-effect activities.
I feel there is an important place for protests that are within the constraints of the law tbh - because revolutions are usually only possible because of what precedes them, and the more peaceful protests help build public support. Plus, it only takes 3.5% of a population for meaningful changeā¦ if we believe this:
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts ā and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
I have my doubts given recent events tbh - but still, I think staying within the constraints of the law is a good place to start
Absolutely. I understand that. I just donāt participate, as I donāt participate in election. As a civil institution itās extremely important. But I have a math degree and I cannot forget about my personal vote makes zero change.
Sadly this is the āofficialā statement from Microsoft regarding their partnership with the military of a state which the UN has found to have committed a genocide:
As Iāve said to you in recent weeks, Microsoft is not a government or a country. We are a company. Like every company, we decide what products and services to offer to our customers.
ā¦ grounded in Microsoftās longstanding protection of privacy as a fundamental right ā¦
I just canāt stomach how cynical any company has to be to admit it did a contract like that and expect the technology to not be misused. Iām not entirely hopeful that such a ban will come forward unless a big chunk of the political landscape changes.
It is a bit disappointing that most recent AI talks I have watched usually have the āwill put the morals on the sideā disclaimer. Very few really go and thoroughly address the moral and social implications. All I can think of right now is a call to action to go and tackle the hard topics on social venues.
IIRC the French united ther nation state with a single language instead of the multiple dialects which were spoken within the area (also one currency if I am not wrong).
There is a quote which comes to my mind,
āA language is a dialect with an army and a navyā
Mario Pei
Regarding āWhat can Elixir do to make the internet a better placeā, I do see a parallel here.
Bluntly spoken: get rid of all the Java ****, make Elixir the lingua franka of the internet and conquere it all
Well sure but sadly Elixir is not universally applicable. As much as I like it to be. Memory management of binaries is a sticking point that IMO should be fixed once and for all at one point because when people get to the point of needing to fix GC cycles of >64 bytes binaries, their apps regularly fall over with out-of-memory.
This story got posted today which echos the above, and also highlights the difference between new/old money which was also brought up in this thread:
Zuckerberg is said to have started work on Koolau Ranch, his sprawling 1,400-acre compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, as far back as 2014.
The Windsors (aka the British āroyalsā, i.e old money) have an estate in Scotland called Balmoral - guess how many acres it is? Twice as much as zucker? Ten times as much? Nope, just this single specific estate (which is just one of many they āownā) is 50,000 acres! Thatās bigger than the size of the capital city of Wales and many other cities here in the UK!
Thatās exactly what I donāt like about LLM discussions
Everybody is talking about every topic they like (from scifi skynet machines waging wars with humans future? LLMs taking every job possible making everyone but the rich people jobless, etc) except the discussion about real and already present implications of LLMs, ethics of LLMs and their applicability.
I mean, @AstonJ is even bringing up topics about building some protest websites or rebuilding the internet. I personally think that this topic needs to be cooled down, maybe moderated or even made readonly, since its clear that this thread has gone far from itās original topic (which was already offtopic for this forum)
Sorry for the delay replying, I wasnāt expecting a whole thread to spawn from my original comment and am just catching up now.
Actually those are my worries too. I left them out as āpragmaticā issues and only posted the ethical ones extracted from a toot I wrote earlier:
Yes, this is true - and maybe itās part of the reason why the thread went in the direction it did. Most of us developers have likely spent our lives benefiting from the exploitation of others, but this time it affects us negatively, so weāre now concerned with ethics.
Whether we like it or not LLMs are a legitimate concern and now widely regarded as something that will, probably sooner rather than later, directly impact all of us. They are a valid topic of discussion not just because of the impact on us as a community, but the potential impact on the language itself.
Both topics are related to Elixir and do not contravene any rules.
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So itās like plain old business, nothing new under the sun since the āFirst exploitation of manā ā¢?
If so, GenAI is like the Oracle of Delphi but with vast more powers. But I still feel there is an āitās only a tool and it can be used in both directionsā moment here.
I was recently introduced to Drew DeVaultās thoughts on this: 
As much as I like it to be. Memory management of binaries is a sticking point that IMO should be fixed once and for all at one point because when people get to the point of needing to fix GC cycles of >64 bytes binaries, their apps regularly fall over with out-of-memory.
