In which I declare my expert judgment on AI 2024

These days my social media experience is largely Mastodon. There's something to be said about a social network that's so irreparably geeky and so hard to work with that only a tiny slice of humanity can possibly participate (unless and until Threads integration actually works).

In my Mastodon corner of the "Fediverse', among the elite pundits I choose to read,  there's a vocal cohort that is firm in their conviction that "AI" hype is truly and entirely hype, and that the very term "AI" should not be used. That group would say that the main application of LLM technology is criming.

Based on my casual polling of my pundits there's a quieter cohort that is less confident. That group is anxious, but not only about the criming.

Somewhere, I am told, there is a third group that believes that godlike-AIs are coming in 2025. They may be mostly on Musk's network.

Over the past few months I think the discourse has shifted. The skeptics are less confident, and the godlike-AI cohort is likewise quieter as LLM based AI hits technical limits. 

The shifting discourse, and especially the apparent LLM technical limitations, mean I'm back to being in the murky middle of things. Where I usually sit. Somehow that compels me to write down what I think. Not because anyone will or should care [1], but because I write these posts mostly for myself and I like to look back and see how wrong I've been.

So, in Aug 2024, I think:

1. I am less worried that the end of the world is around the corner. If we'd gotten one more qualitative advance in LLM or some other AI tech I'd be researching places to (hopelessly) run to.
2. Every day I think of new things I would do if current LLM tech had access to my data and to common net services. These things don't require any fundamental advances but they do require ongoing iteration.  I don't have much confidence in Apple's capabilities any more, but maybe they can squeeze this out. I really, really, don't want to have to depend on Microsoft. Much less Google.
3. Perplexity.ai is super valuable to me now and I'd pay up if they stopped giving it away. It's an order of magnitude better than Google search.
4. The opportunities for crime are indeed immense. They may be part of what ends unmediated net access for most people. By far the best description of this world is a relatively minor subplot in Neal Stephenson's otherwise mixed 2018 novel "Fall".
5. We seem to be replaying the 1995 dot com crash but faster and incrementally. That was a formative time in my life. It was a time when all the net hype was shown to be .... correct. Even as many lost their assets buying the losers.
6. It will all be immensely stressful and disruptive and anxiety inducing even though we won't be doing godlike-AI for at least (phew) five more years.
7. Many who are skeptical about the impact of our current technologies have a good understanding of LLM tech but a weak understanding of cognitive science. Humans are not as magical as they think.

- fn -

[1] I legitimately have deeper expertise here than most would imagine but it's ancient and esoteric.

Fantasies of a tyrant: The Deshittification Corps

This morning on my Mastodon:

It’s possible that we have built an economical and technical environment that is too complex and treacherous for almost all humans to live in.

Perhaps the Neanderthals had similar feelings about the warmer buggier more diseased environment that came with the Skinnies (their name for us). 

I wonder who will inherit our world.

Yes, I'm Old. But the young are distressed and anxious, so perhaps they feel it too. To me many things feel frayed, fragile, buggy, and poorly maintained. As though there wasn't enough time to do it right before the next urgent thing. 

Apple is supposedly off trying to build Apple Intelligence -- and in the meantime Photos.mac is the shittiest software I've been obliged to consistently use [1]. For a small fraction of what Apple vaporized on autonomous vehicles and the Vision Pro thing they could have slowed the growth rate of their technical debt and maybe even implemented fucking Folder search in Photos.mac [3].

Which brings me to the Deshittification Corps. If I were a Tyrant, which is more than you deserve, I would create a Deshittification Corps (DC) to fight enshittification [2]. My Deshittification Corps would be a force of about 10,000 people who evaluated the services we rely on and gave them shittification ratings. Which they would be obliged to public post, a bit like cigarette carton notices. For example:

This service has a Shittification Rating of D. This is a really shitty service. We recommend everyone who works for this company seek new employment.

Companies that didn't improve their Shittification rating would be subject to a special tax that would start at 0.01% of gross revenue and double every day ... 

- fn -

[1] Ok, SharePoint is shittier. But now you're triggering me. Besides, one of the best things about retirement is no more SharePoint.

[2] Yes, Doctorow was talking about software and online services, but I'm bending the meaning more broadly to encompass government and other services.

[3] It would still be shitty software, but that would be the biggest improvement since iPhoto stabilized.