
2025-08-28 15:31:39
Cory Doctorow @… on #AI:
[T]he AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into…
"Today's #AI bubble has absorbed more of the country's wealth and represents more of its economic activity than historic nation-shattering bubbles, like the 19th century UK rail bubble. A much-discussed MIT paper found that 95% of companies that had tried AI had either nothing to show for it, or experienced a loss" -- @…
Here's my new Human Meme podcast episode about AI and AGI and the future of us!
#ai
🤑 Introducing pay per crawl: enabling content owners to charge AI crawlers for access
#ai
Just saw this:
#AI can mean a lot of things these days, but lots of the popular meanings imply a bevy of harms that I definitely wouldn't feel are worth a cute fish game. In fact, these harms are so acute that even "just" playing into the AI hype becomes its own kind of harm (it's similar to blockchain in that way).
@… noticed that the authors claim the code base is 80% AI generated, which is a red flag because people with sound moral compasses wouldn't be using AI to "help" write code in the first place. The authors aren't by some miracle people who couldn't build this app without help, in case that influences your thinking about it: they have the skills to write the code themselves, although it likely would have taken longer (but also been better).
I was more interested in the fish-classification AI, and how much it might be dependent on datacenters. Thankfully, a quick glance at the code confirms they're using ONNX and running a self-trained neural network on your device. While the exponentially-increasing energy & water demands of datacenters to support billion-parameter models are a real concern, this is not that. Even a non-AI game can burn a lot of cycles on someone's phone, and I don't think there's anything to complain about energy-wise if we're just using cycles on the end user's device as long as we're not having them keep it on for hours crunching numbers like blockchain stuff does. Running whatever stuff locally while the user is playing a game is a negligible environmental concern, unlike, say, calling out to ChatGPT where you're directly feeding datacenter demand. Since they claimed to have trained the network themselves, and since it's actually totally reasonable to make your own dataset for this and get good-enough-for-a-silly-game results with just a few hundred examples, I don't have any ethical objections to the data sourcing or training processes either. Hooray! This is finally an example of "ethical use of neutral networks" that I can hold up as an example of what people should be doing instead of the BS they are doing.
But wait... Remember what I said about feeding the AI hype being its own form of harm? Yeah, between using AI tools for coding and calling their classifier "AI" in a way that makes it seem like the same kind of thing as ChatGPT et al., they're leaning into the hype rather than helping restrain it. And that means they're causing harm. Big AI companies can point to them and say "look AI enables cute things you like" when AI didn't actually enable it. So I'm feeling meh about this cute game and won't be sharing it aside from this post. If you love the cute fish, you don't really have to feel bad for playing with it, but I'd feel bad for advertising it without a disclaimer.
"As AI becomes part of everyday life, it brings a hidden climate cost"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Climate
"the #AI bubble is driven by monopolists who've conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector...
when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone&q…
In the ZIRP era, #UX was evangelized as a magic wand to 10x value — and after that bubble popped, UX found a niche as a delivery function. Unfortunately, optimizing our process for faster outputs over outcomes meant that #AI came and ate our lunch with instant outputs/no outcomes.
But this was no golden…
Security measures for Gen #AI seem to increase all around, which is overall good.
It's just sad to think about WHY statements like "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image does not currently support editing images of children" are necessary in the first place.
#nanobanana
#AI #programming assist has been helpful for me. But I'm not losing my job anytime soon. Here's a simple example of why.
I have a script with
`cmd1`
I prompt GPT-4.1 to "now invoke cmd2 and cmd3 at the end". Good:
`cmd1`
`cmd2`
`cmd3`
"Add a 15 second pau…
Amazing #supercut of various pieces on #AI from #TheDailyShow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s20CbtHP6fs - hilarious and frightening at the same time ...
I really can't emphasize strongly enough how much I detest AI-generated images. I get physical discomfort having it shoved into my face *everywhere*. Even people here in the #FediVerse post #AIslop or use AI generated profile pictures. And all the non-human voiceovers on
Measuring #EnergyConsumption in #ProgrammingLanguages for #AI Applications
Been pondering today whether or not someone has already created an #AI version of ismy.blue
You'd have data points like:
* Skynet
* HAL
* Lt. Cmdr Data
* Generic chess playing program
* DeepBlue
* AlphaGo
* Inference engine
* Some machine learning example
* ChatGPT
* Voice recognition
* Siri
* Roomba
* Object recognition …
"The [Wall Street Journal] writers compare the #AI bubble to other bubbles, like Worldcom's fraud-soaked fiber optic bonanza (which saw the company's CEO sent to prison, where he eventually died), and conclude that the AI bubble is vastly larger than any other bubble in recent history" -- @pluralistic
#LLMs
How much energy does your AI prompt use? It depends.
“[…]grid operators are freaking out. Tech companies can’t just keep doing this. Things are going to start going south.”
www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-energy-carbon-emissions-chatgpt mobile_share=true
#ai #aienergyconsumption
Want to run AI models on your laptop/PC but don't have an NVIDIA card? No problem.
#AI
#Github #copilot now supports an instructions file.
Here's mine:
"Go Away!"
#ai #programming
Have you had an "AI error in your favor" yet?
I just got done slogging through Amazon customer support chat, where while talking to the bot it promised an item was returnable within 90 days, even though it actually was only eligible for the normal 30 days policy. When I finally got through to a human, they were able to let me know why the return actually wasn't eligible, but when I quoted them what the bot had promised, they made an exception and let me do the return. I didn't even really try to push the bot to make any promises, though that should be easy.
#AI
The PR machine powering big tech’s AI energy story #AI boom depends …
An eyecare foundation model for clinical assistance: a randomized controlled trial.
#ai
"I firmly believe the (economic) #AI apocalypse is coming. These companies are not profitable. They can't be profitable. They keep the lights on by soaking up hundreds of billions of dollars in other people's money and then lighting it on fire. Eventually those other people are going to want to see a return on their investment" -- @pluralistic
They won't get to see that retu…
If #AI is allegedly so good for worker productivity and improving efficiency across organizations, why are the AI companies making their own employees work 72 hour workweeks?
If the tech actually helped them get more done faster, wouldn’t they have SHORTER workweeks? Why aren’t they using their own tools to help their employees?
Context: #Anthropic earlier this year, and they told me that this is a job with far longer work hours than any other place they’ve worked at.
They are also pulling 60 hour weeks there, they have zero tolerance for remote work, because the culture is “you don’t want to be left behind”. This person basically disappeared from social life once they took this job. I had never seen them so tired before.
At #AIED2025 we are getting a preview of the report of the #EuropeanDigitalEducationHub, providing practical examples of how XAI-Ed could be used
うん、じわじわくるな……
※今日のDoodleはGoogle 創立 27 周年キャンペーンだそうです
#AI生成 #AIGenerated
Honest Disclaimer about #AI in #Excel:
#Microsoft specifically warns not to use it for "any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility," like numerical calculations. Microsof…
"Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Future of Information Privacy: Expert Viewpoints"
#AI
It struck me recently that, for all the hype, in the 18 months since I first wrote about AI agents I’ve yet to see one ‘in the wild’.
https://www.computing.co.uk/feature/2025/where-are-all-the-ai-agents
syslog-ng statement on #AI shortly after rsyslog AI announcement: https://fosstodon.org/@PCzanik/114856221034797034
This week's ISE 2025 lecture was focussed on artificial neural networks. In particular, we were discussing how to get rid of manual feature engineering and doing representation learning from raw data with convolutional neural networks.
#AI #ArtificialNeuralNetworks
@…
A recommendation from my side:
A full stack #AI launchkit (docker based) for selfhosting with many apps including supabase, ollama, n8n, flowise, etc.
Have you ever clicked a suspicious link and prayed afterwards? 👀 Or scrolled past T&Cs without a thought?
At #TNC25 we asked our community some tough (and funny) questions about #cybersecurity, #AI
Very interesting origin story of Scipy/Numpy which is the foundation of so much #ML stuff and why Python became the dominant language for ML / #AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xhai2iu_QY
Geeky question: is anyone thinking or working on adapting #accessibility and #i18n #web standards to the impending avalanche of bad #AI translations that we'll have to deal with as users?
I'll be more specific, one example: I can prefer Spanish texts over English ones... as long as they are written by a human being and are not a terrible automated translation made by an AI, in which case I'd prefer to read the original English text. But... as of today, I have no way to specify that through my browser settings.
Is there a free, privacy friendly AI like duck.ai from #duckduckgo that can create images? No registration, just using it?
#ai #imagecreation
Oh no it happened - client for a research project I’m working on got upset that we’re doing manual data analysis of survey responses, and complained about why we are so slow when their internal team working on a different report got “everything done in a couple of days with #AI tools”
And then they told us that waiting for proper human analysis is a “waste of time” and that we need to just chuck our dataset into AI and “get it over with”
I really don’t know what to do right now 🥲
Trying to do this properly on their expected timeline will mean very little sleep for multiple days, but giving up on the project quality and dumping it into AI is will make this entire project a waste of time. (As I wouldn’t be able to trust the output of the analysis, or be proud of it to showcase the final report as an example of our work, and not to mention that I don’t want to support this expectation to rush everything at work with these AI models)
The new =COPILOT() function in #Microsoft #Excel enables users to easily leverage AI directly within their spreadsheets to quickly populate cells with data or analyze columns with #AI. For a 5min tutorial, v…
From #AI to #AGI? If humans had general intelligence, blind people would be learning to see with sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVugtxWmW4E
#AI is a marketing term; before we discuss "AI is fake" vs "AI is real" we need to unfold what we *mean* by AI.
For example, "artificial general intelligence" is fake and can't hurt you. Layoffs excused by "AI efficiency" are real and can hurt you.
Linkedin discourse is fake - but it CAN hurt you.
please give this issue a 👍 - PLEASE ‼️
#ai #coding
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-c
I listened to a podcast interview with #PeterThiel on #AI,
Upgraded image editing in Gemini is jaw dropping ,
#ai
🦾 People use AI for companionship much less than we’re led to think
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/26/people-use-ai-for-companionship-much-less-than-were-led-to-think/
"Can AI Slash Pollution? Fossil Fuel Industry Is Investing in Boosting Oil Production, Profits Instead"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #FossilFuels
AI is transforming the cybersecurity landscape, but human insight remains critical.
As part of our ongoing #GEANTCybersecurity campaign webinars, Dr. Maria Bada will explore how #AI is being used on both sides of the conflict: to automate attacks as well as to detect threats faster.
She’…
Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 #AI on Experienced Open-Source #DeveloperProductivity
https://
How much of my children's future is AI going to burn up? That depends on how much we feed the hype beast. *That* is why "don't use AI at all without mentioning the drawbacks & a very good reason" is my stance (and I'm an AI researcher, technically).
Local models that run on your laptop: acceptable if produced by ethical means (including data sourcing & compensation for data filtering) & training costs are mitigated. Are such models way worse than the huge datacenter-scale models? Yes, for now. Deal with it.
ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, even DeepSeek: get out. You're feeding the beast that is consuming my kids' future. Heck, even talking up these models or about how "everyone is using them so it's okay" or about "they're not going away" I'd feeding the beast even if you don't touch them.
I wish it weren't like this, because the capabilities of the big models are cool even once you cut past the hype.
#AI
🎨 Perfect for #AI agents needing grounded web context and research tools demanding trust and freshness
🚀 Enables custom products where developers want complete control over how search data is used
📊 Structured response format eliminates need for complex data parsing and preprocessing steps
🌐
At #AIED2025 we're being told that the current #publicDiscussion at https://ailiteracyframework.org is going to shape t…
"AI Can Help Limit the Spread of Misinformation During Natural Disaster, Study Finds"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence
🦾 Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions
#ai #seduction
[OT] Wall Street's #AI bubble is worse than the 1999 dot-com bubble, warns a top economist https://gizmodo.com/wall-streets-ai-bubble-is-worse-t…
I Asked #AI to Build an App. It Made a Database Roasting Bot. We're All Doomed.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-asked-ai-build-app-m…
Interesting use of NotebookLM.
I used NotebookLM to learn a new programming language, and it actually worked #ai
No one has ever convinced anyone with "data" and "facts." A stakeholder will always have more confidence in their existing assumptions than in your findings.
The only way to change minds is through gradual influence that nurtures a sense of ownership.
#AI tools promise to accelerate the pace of research, but they do so only by skipping this process of sense-making. Res…
"Al: Five charts that put data- centre energy use - and emissions - into context"
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology
🤖 #CodexSubagentsMCP creates file-based sub-agents for #CodexCLI via a minimal #MCP server with just one tool and maximum auditability
Good article, regardless your opinion about GenAI , it will change society.
#ai
"As we approach the coming jobs cliff, we're entering a period where a college isn't going to be worth it for the majority of people, since AI will take over most white-collar jobs. Combined with the demographic cliff, the entire higher education system will crumble."
This is the kind of statement you don't hear that much from sub-CEO-level #AI boosters, because it's awkward for them to admit that the tech they think is improving their life is going to be disastrous for society. Or if they do admit this, they spin it like it's a good thing (don't get me wrong, tuition is ludicrously high and higher education absolutely could be improved by a wholesale reinvention, but the potential AI-fueled collapse won't be an improvement).
I'm in the "anti-AI" crowd myself, and I think the current tech is in a hype bubble that will collapse before we see wholesale replacement of white-collar jobs, with a re-hiring to come that will somewhat make up for the current decimation. There will still be a lot of fallout for higher ed (and hopefully some productive transformation), but it might not be apocalyptic.
Fun question to ask the next person who extols the virtues of using generative AI for their job: "So how long until your boss can fire you and use the AI themselves?"
The following ideas are contradictory:
1. "AI is good enough to automate a lot of mundane tasks."
2. "AI is improving a lot so those pesky issues will be fixed soon."
3. "AI still needs supervision so I'm still needed to do the full job."
"ChatGPT psychosis": Experts warn that people are losing themselves to #AI https://futurism.com/expert-people-losing-themselves-ai Does getting too rich and powerful have the same effec…
is AI real life
is it just fantasy
caught up in the hype
no escape from reality
#ai #llm #vibecoding
🪩 HUSH: Holistic panoramic 3D scene understanding using spherical harmonics
#ai
It should surprise no one that AI watermarking is not going to work.
#ai
🔍 #Perplexity launches Search #API - direct access to real-time web index powering their answers without generative layer #AI
Good explanation of MCP and A2A.
#ai