The other solution is political. There's a reason that governments regulate and define economic rules of the road. This is a good example of where governments need to step in. The link between generative AI and the data it is trained on needs to be carefully thought through and properly handled especially given the capitalist nature of our economy.
Emergence of machine intelligence* and its control by Capital was not foreseen by Karl Marx, and the intervening period between heat death of Capitalist system and the Workers Utopia has been indefinitely extended.
There's an awful lot of very smart people who have studied economics for the majority of their lives who disagree with this. There are also alternatives to capitalism that don't entirely involve govt control.
Came to say just this. There's no profit sharing here. Mods don't get a cut of any proceeds off the traffic their communities generate. "Landed gentry" is exactly the wrong phrase.
The CEO is the landed gentry. The mods are the sharecroppers who have had enough.
I'm backing the effort by not even landing on reddit. And it's odd. I have found reddit to be helpful over the (now many) years.
I'm coming to the conclusion that capitalism destroys social media for me by causing the business to make it unpalatable to me. Oh well. I'm sure I'll survive without it.
I legitimately think it's possible that a properly managed "for the profit of the investors" social media company will always follow this path.
It's why I think the right future for social media is non-profit. None of this is amazing technology anymore. This would also have the benefit that it would take the question of "how do we avoid doing harm while still making profit off the table." Could write a statement of values and intent that legitimately puts well being of users and society ahead of everything else. (Which no for-profit with externally raised capital is able to do today.)
I'm coming to the conclusion that capitalism kills all interesting social media for me. The founders build something. It's pretty good. I engage. They decide they need to make more money. They make a change that I find annoying or unacceptable. I leave the platform.
Facebook, Twitter, .... now reddit? Might be.
And it's never advertisement. Advertise away. It's usually one of two things: encroaching on privacy or pushing "engagement." I'd have left reddit years ago except that I could opt out of the re-design.
IMO, we need some well funded and user focused non-profits to provide social media. Capitalism and the drive for growth is destroying these platforms from within.
Capitalism does not mandate growth, thats just pure investor greed. I hate capitalism as much as the next person but lets not forget its the greed that ruins it for everyone, not the basics of the system. I would acknowledge that it seems like capitalism actually facilitates greed more than other systems as it gives a single KPI to track what you have.
They are going to make me have a second computer. One for gaming. One more browsing. I'll just never open anything but Steam on my windows computer. Given how small and cheap Linux boxes can be, I guess I'll get on this pronto.
To be fair, there is always someone on the bottom. It just historically hasn't been people we cared about. That really says more about us than it says about AI. The time to complain about these power asymmetries was prior to them affecting us. Now it just sounds like garden variety sour grape hypocrisy.
Not saying there aren't good points. Only pointing out that many, many people can all view the consequences of this dynamic differently.
The only people who view this favorably are people at the top. People near the bottom perhaps feel disdain for people in the middle but that is misdirected because people at the top always were the ones in control. AI hasn't changed that dynamic.
I am replying to the parent comment, but I too get that this petition is being signed onto by people at openAI specifically because they already made it with GPT-4. They definitely would not sign on to it if their (arbitrary) threshold for what to stop doing AI research with was a tool at a GPT-3 or GPT-3.5 level or higher or it included GPT-4 in their threshold, and not merely beyond it.
I seriously hope that the people asking the government for a bailout revisit their past policy positions and offer the same empathy to others going forward that they are asking for themselves right now.
The tech sector has made themselves one of the most hated groups in the country, behind Congress, telecom providers, and the media. Doubt they're going to find much sympathy from the folks in "flyover country" that the tech sector has gleefully been shitting all over for a decade. Perhaps the tech sector will have enough political capital to ensure they get to dump their losses on the public they loath, but it's going to come at a great political cost for those who go along with it.
> "flyover country" that the tech sector has gleefully been shitting all over for a decade
I'm a founder of an Indiana based tech startup. What people in flyover states don't like is seeing stuff like Theranos. They also don't understand operating businesses for 10 years that lose billions. People here do not see the "tech sector" as evil: every flyover state has programs to attract and create tech sector companies. If anything there is a bit of envy combined with a simmering rage when we get bus-rolled for not having a great high-tech workforce, when Purdue, Notre Dame, IU, and other Midwest universities are cranking out fantastic engineering and business management talent that gets pulled to the coasts for big starting salaries.
> Perhaps the tech sector will have enough political capital to ensure they get to dump their losses on the public they loath,
I don't think that is what is being asked for at all. It's more of a "fix this before it hurts everyone". The Fed raising interest rates too quickly is the root cause of SVBs problems, and those rate changes may be doing the same thing with the small, community banks that flyover country agriculture and manufacturing relies on heavily. Hopefully SVB is the end of it... but this situation is not a "tech sector" issue. It's a banking problem caused by the Fed changing the rules to quickly.
> it's going to come at a great political cost for those who go along with it.
Not doing everything that can be done to fix this quickly will be politically un-affordable.
I suspect hating on Twitter/FB/etc is a tech industry thing. Most people don't hate big tech. They buy iPhones/Androids to keep up on their family and friends on Facebook, watch Netflix, find things on Google and buy stuff on Amazon.
As a Purdue grad who spent a decade in Silicon Valley and who currently works remote for a FAANG in a state adjacent to yours: Didn't go to the coast for the big starting salary. Went for the interesting job, the flexibility to move to another job without renting a new apartment, and the career growth. Best career choice I made.
Good for you starting a tech company outside the tech meccas, it's a hard road. Remote work might help you. In an remote work world, you are on a level playing field.
As it relates to the SVB bailout. There's a strong libertarian streak in SV. While it might be entertaining to watch the hypocrisy unfold, I'm pretty certain these folks read hackernews and I'd like them to have a bit of self reflection about the role of government now that SVB has imploded.
> Good for you starting a tech company outside the tech meccas, it's a hard road.
Thanks. I think the hard road is getting easier every year. Access to capital is getting better, and as you said, remote work has been a game changer for talent.
> I'd like them to have a bit of self reflection about the role of government now that SVB has imploded.
What is remarkable is how much government intervention went into creating SV. You'd never know from listening to the scene. Regardless, I hope that the SVB situation ends well for everyone and we can get back to work building things that matter.
