> Xcancel scrapes and then competes directly with X, whereas LLM labs scrape the internet to make an agentic intelligent bot, a transformative use of the scraped content.

It seems unreasonable to stop there though; the agentic bots are designed and marketed as able to compete with the initially-scraped sources.

I'm not convinced that a competitive use at one remove should be treated as not competitive.

I think that's more true in image generation than in text? At least, all the money is in LLMs that write code, not LLMs that write O'Reilley-style coding books.

If you have a websites that offers guides, how-tos or tutorials, LLMs directly compete with you. StackOverflow would also have a really good case

After all LLMs don't just code, they also answer questions and give step-by-step instructions. In terms of total userbase those features are used a lot more than writing code

I thought LLM-authored books were rampant in Amazon, though?

> those who learn to use AI effectively are seeing massive benefits

The massive benefits should be visible to outside observers as well, but where are they?

Yes. People see orgs tackling more problems and resolving bugs faster.

Even if we just look at public markets: manufacturers and hyperscalers stocks are through the roof, while they finance private model providers that are ever pushing their IPO into the future.

Doesn't look very much like growing prosperity as much as vacuuming value into the core of the corporate world system.

I don't agree that people do see that, and if they do, it's hardly an overwhelming trend.

I see my org delivering twice as many features and implementing way more tools that actually solve problems.

The issue is that doesn’t necessarily mean that customers will pay more, as most of the features of software are not actually core.

Would that really count as a 'massive benefit' then?

For the customers? Yes. For engineers building tools that increase their quality of life? For sure. For removing legacy cruft? Absolutely.

AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors.

We’ve essentially reduced the cost of being a prick to zero.

There’s some great thinking on this topic from Nicklas Lundblad in this Hannah Fry video on AI Agents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzR5aOElvw

He talks about how agents/delegates extend the agency of the people who operate them. And “almost all of society is premised on the fact that agency is scarce”. But software agents grant vastly more agency.

The thing that stops the worst people from annoying the hell out of you is that they lack the agency to do so. But now…

Wasn’t that was social media?

The risk of being punched in the mouth for your word choice dropped to zero, and suddenly all of these opinions were being shouted at anybody that would listen.

I suppose we can automate that sharing better now.

Yeah, the whole rise of the web has had that unfortunate side effect, but no one had treated it like a positive until now. Hell, Meta is showing off how to use their AI to jam up phone lines and bother call centers without having to spend time on the phone!

It’s unfortunate he seems to have gone around the bend, because there is so much that happens in our current unreality that reminds me of Mike Baron’s Nexus comic from the 80s. The “Trade War” storyline has the two competing marketplaces, run by Vooper and the other by a robot named Honest Crocus, get into an audio advertising war so all-consuming it winds up drowning out 911 calls and coming out of the plumbing when you’re in the toilet. Now we finally have the tools, we are going to make that happen along with a million other bad ideas.

It's not just that. Several social medias have evolved to the point where being a prick is mandatory or is rewarded. Chief example is X, where you get rewarded for agreeing with Elon; but see also the stereotypes of Reddit and Discord mods.

We have a ways to go before we hit zero, since we are inventing entire new ways to be a prick.

I think we are a year or so away from the first tik toks of humanoid robots walking up to people and punching them for views.

You could avoid it. AI slop is everywhere.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/images/content2x/ai-slop-everywh...

"AI can be very helpful in lots of ways, but I think it's fair to say that it is most powerful as an enabler for bad actors."

Yes, the effects can be seen all over the Oscars.

Does anybody insist the Oscar winners can't be (pun intended?) bad actors? As I recall, it's been widely criticised for a long time but the mass media shoves it down our throats anyway.

Sounds a lot like crypto.

Crypto always felt similarly cynical to me, but it was still somewhat niche.

Now everyone must support AI because the entire economy is tied to it. Everyone's bonus depends on implementing it. Everyone's job search depends on cheering for it. It's like a virus.

Two crypto billionaires have just given one of the most cynically manipulative political parties in British history the largest donations received by any political party in British history.

The US president has crypto investments and shitcoins. His wife has a shitcoin. His weird sons have crypto businesses. (His former opponent's wisecracking prodigal-failson has an ironic shitcoin, for goodness' sake.)

The functioning of the US government and its international aid had a chainsaw taken to it by the richest man in the world, who named the entire endeavour ironically like a crypto memecoin.

One of the two biggest AI companies is run by a guy who also has a shitcoin-for-your-iris-scans company. And much of the long-tail of the AI industry is former crypto/NFT bros just wearing different turtlenecks. The big incubators and VC firms have moved smoothly from one niche to the other along with them.

These dead-eyed people are not niche at all. They are now the whole game.

> The statement is so sterile they don't even mention who solved it.

Possibly because of the ongoing debate about who actually deserves credit.

If the query is just 'python', then both you and your neighbour should get some links for the language and some for the animal.

If it only gives you the one you already know about, it's a useless tool.

> I do think that for the atypical user that is "information-hungry,"

> Prior to AI, I would have just... not spent the time looking them up.

You're putting yourself in the group of people who are 'information-hungry', but your own evidence suggests that's not the case.

I know you’re trying to be clever and critical (boy am I tired of this trope on HN) but no, I don’t agree.

Being curious about a lot of things doesn’t mean you’re willing to invest 15 minutes every time you have a question.

AI makes the cost of asking these questions functionally zero. Previously I’d ask maybe 1/10 of them on Reddit, get a smartass negative answer, if I get an answer at all. Now I have an assistant that answers an infinite number of questions on demand.

I suspect that a lot of AI-hostility from tech/nerdy people is because they don't have the ability to display their expertise as easily as they did on Stack Overflow/Reddit/etc. A huge percentage of comments on HN are still just people trying to display their knowledge. (And I'm very guilty of that as well.)

That's a lot of leaping to conclusions based on a small criticism.

I'm rather tired, personally, of the HN trope of people saying that AI is bad for/mis-used by everyone except a carefully-defined group that consists of exactly them.

If you're curious now only with AI, I'd say that makes you less curious--"intellectually hungry"--than the people who were curious before, without AI. It's great that you feel you can be more curious now, but I wouldn't be so quick to declare yourself superior to others with no more evidence than that you use AI the same amount.

I don't think that's a reasonable read; you can't dismiss a specific criticism on the (unsupported) ground that the person making it would totally have dismissed anything at all.

wartywhoa expresses an opinion that I find intellectually lazy and spiritually prideful. Refusing to engage with an idea because it was dimly echoed in a statement made by an evil man is just intellectually lazy.

It's a spectacular bit of pride in oneself to try to silence someone's opinion because you found an abstractly-similar statement made by an evil man. Why probe the idea when you could just assign Hitler's evil intentions directly to them?

It's gross. It's tired. I wish people cared more to engage in good faith.

You're engaging in worse faith; dismissing all criticism because it draws a parallel you don't like isn't reasonable.

Sometimes, it will be fascism. "It's never fascism" is not a good heuristic.

Re-read what I said, specifically, I'm addressing the reflexive hand-wave of fascism as an all-too-common way to suppress thoughts we find distasteful rather than actually engaging.

That's what wartywhoa did to a commenter who was in no way suggesting a fascist view.

That's not worse faith, that's simply pointing out that aligning your ideological opponents with Hitler is intellectually dishonest.

In this you and I agree: "dismissing all criticism because it draws a parallel you don't like isn't reasonable."

There's nothing more thought-suppressing than dismissing all equation to fascism as thought suppression.

If we actually agreed on the principle, you wouldn't be engaging in the behaviour.

> feel no need to differentiate themselves from other anti-technology arguments

Why should they? Other "anti-tech" arguments include

- Concern about global warming/pollution

- Resistance to nuclear/chemical warfare

It's not just, or even primarily, that anti-tech arguments are the equivalent of 'cameras will steal souls'.

The smartest minds in advertising convinced everyone they were in tech.

They've done similar things with similar risks repeatedly.

Example?

These examples aren't really similar. None of those situations involve harming and lying to their own customers.

Nonsense; the claim was that they wouldn't do anything that would mean they'd be

> risking massive lawsuits and a total loss of trust

Evidence of the massive lawsuits and lack of trust seems pretty relevant.

By "loss of trust", I meant that this is something they would risk losing a lot of users over, which isn't the case with the other lawsuits. There is a massive distinction between fighting third parties in a legal grey area and committing blatant fraud against your own users. Even if you have no regards for ethics, intentionally shipping a noop "do not train" toggle offers negligible upside for a massive downside.

They're being sued for several issues that resulted in the deaths of users; that's not fraud, but it is against their users.

The parallel still holds, and the information is still on the page I linked.

From OpenAI's point of view, the risks are not comparable at all:

1) Extreme edge case affecting a handful of users, vs millions of users using the data sharing opt out.

2) The deaths are unintentional.

3) They probably won't lose any users over this.

4) They will likely win the lawsuits. Even if they lose or settle, the financial impact will be immaterial.

I answered your initial question in good faith, but it's increasingly clear each time you shift the goalposts that you're more interested in JAQ than discussing.

As before, despite your prevarication, I've provided examples of

- Massive lawsuits

- Risks to consumer trust

That's what was asked for; your assertion that it will totally all be fine doesn't invalidate that.

I know you are excited to quibble endlessly over this, but it's transparently disingenuous each time you jump to a new point and pretend it was there originally.

Consider: if your point was defensible, you would have been able to make it honestly.

Those examples aren't really comparable in scale, especially regarding risk to consumer trust. How many users did they actually lose from wrongful death lawsuits? I guess very few.

Shipping an intentionally fake privacy toggle is fundamentally different. That is deliberate, active deception targeted at the entire user base. The resulting fallout would be far more damaging to them than settling an isolated lawsuit. That could even potentially cross the threshold into criminal fraud. I'm genuinely incredulous you believe they'd take so much risk for so little reward.