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from the achieving-reason-progress-and-freedom-by-dispensing-with-humility-and-nuance dept.
The theoretical promise of AI is as hopeful as the promise of social media once was, and as dazzling as its most partisan architects project. AI really could cure numerous diseases. It really could transform scholarship and unearth lost knowledge. Except that Silicon Valley, under the sway of its worst technocratic impulses, is following the playbook established in the mass scaling and monopolization of the social web:
Facebook (now Meta) has become an avatar of all that is wrong with Silicon Valley. Its self-interested role in spreading global disinformation is an ongoing crisis. Recall, too, the company’s secret mood-manipulation experiment in 2012, which deliberately tinkered with what users saw in their News Feed in order to measure how Facebook could influence people’s emotional states without their knowledge. Or its participation in inciting genocide in Myanmar in 2017. Or its use as a clubhouse for planning and executing the January 6, 2021, insurrection. (In Facebook’s early days, Zuckerberg listed “revolutions” among his interests. This was around the time that he had a business card printed with I’M CEO, BITCH.)
And yet, to a remarkable degree, Facebook’s way of doing business remains the norm for the tech industry as a whole, even as other social platforms (TikTok) and technological developments (artificial intelligence) eclipse Facebook in cultural relevance.
The new technocrats claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but in fact they are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal movement.
[...] The Shakespearean drama that unfolded late last year at OpenAI underscores the extent to which the worst of Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mentality has been internalized and celebrated in Silicon Valley. OpenAI was founded, in 2015, as a nonprofit dedicated to bringing artificial general intelligence into the world in a way that would serve the public good. Underlying its formation was the belief that the technology was too powerful and too dangerous to be developed with commercial motives alone.
Related:
- Tokenomy of Tomorrow: Envisioning an AI-Driven World
- Making AI Stand The Test Of Time
- The Internet Enabled Mass Surveillance. A.I. Will Enable Mass Spying
- AI Breakthrough That Could Threaten Humanity Might Have Been Key To Sam Altman’s Firing
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday February 05 2024, @09:10PM (3 children)
I don't recall that. Instead, I recall the Democrats making everybody feel ashamed if they expressed their desire to vote for Trump. Then they took polls, not factoring in that people might answer differently even if the poll claimed to be anonymous, because that's human nature. Then they took the results of those polls at face value and assumed they had the Rust Belt locked up. They didn't bother to campaign there very much, and the rest is history.
The Democrats have a knack for losing close ones.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2024, @04:02PM (1 child)
Well it definitely happened, but I can't find some of the stuff I'm looking for (which predates 2016 Trump's win). Maybe already removed or Google etc aren't making such stuff easy to find. There's smoking gun stuff AFTER Trump's win where Google shows their bias FWIW ( https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ [breitbart.com] ). But that's not the one.
But before Trump's win there was definitely a pro Clinton bias from the tech companies:
https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/23/technology/hillary-clinton-tech-fundraisers/index.html [cnn.com]
https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ [observer.com]
https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/ [time.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday February 07 2024, @08:13PM
You mean there was a pro-sanity, pro-humanity bias in big business before the Trump win?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2024, @04:22PM
There was lots of talk about Facebook helping Trump win AFTER Trump won. But before Trump won there was this:
https://nypost.com/2016/04/12/zuckerberg-lays-out-facebooks-future-takes-subtle-jab-at-trump/ [nypost.com]
And this: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-employees-asked-mark-zuckerberg-if-they-should-1771012990 [gizmodo.com]
So it did seem a bit strange to later see accusations that Facebook (and the Russians) helped Trump win, when before that they seemed more likely to be biased against Trump from employees to Zuck himself.