This Never Post episode on the question of whether "AI" is the esthetics of American Fascism is great. Mike Rugnetta takes you on an enlightening stroll through media theory and the fucked up reality we live in. It's challenging but worth it.
Never Post
🆕 Never Post! A.I. and New American Fascism
Is a generated aesthetic the look of our times?
Falls jemand hier im Bereich Software Entwicklung / Prototyping unterwegs ist, in Berlin wohnt (oder wohnen wollen würde) und nen Job sucht, wir haben gerade openings. (Nicht nur die explizit ausgeschriebene Junior Stelle, auch Seniors könnten relevant sein) https://artcom.de/?job_description=junior-developer-creative-technologist-w-m-d
I read a lot of stuff (mostly on LinkedIn) about people getting 10x more productive through AI assistants (mostly for Code but also other work products). And I wonder how that works given that you need to doublecheck every generated line, phrase or paragraph for correctness. Like _how_ inefficient and unproductive were these people before?
The answer to "the AI systems that corporate overlords push everywhere are shit" is not "so we need open source AI". These systems are shit cause they structurally are. They are just being shoved everywhere to reduce labor power. "Open source AI" (if that even existed) is not changing that.
Things I had not expected to see today: Deutsche Bank making a numbers based argument that "AI" is a bubble and won't last
Futurism
Deutsche Bank Issues Grim Warning for AI Industry
Deutsche Bank is warning that AI spending won't "remain parabolic," or continue to increase exponentially, a dire warning for the future.
"Low effort, unhelpful AI generated work is having a significant impact on collaboration at work. Approximately half of the people we surveyed viewed colleagues who sent workslop as less creative, capable, and reliable than they did before receiving the output. Forty-two percent saw them as less trustworthy, " (Original title: AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity)
Harvard Business Review
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools ar...
"A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools: while workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value. [...] In collaboration with Stanford Social Media Lab, our research team at BetterUp Labs has identified one possible reason: Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers." "Unlike this mental outsourcing to a machine, however, workslop uniquely uses machines to offload cognitive work to another human being. When coworkers receive workslop, they are often required to take on the burden of decoding the content, inferring missed or false context. A cascade of effortful and complex decision-making processes may follow, including rework and uncomfortable exchanges with colleagues."
Harvard Business Review
AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools ar...
"Our government is being run by aggrieved elites who were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else in the 2010s, where they could finally read what we all think about them. And it caused them so much psychic damage that they have decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it will ever happen again." (Original title: Petty, powerful, and pathologically online)
Garbage Day
Petty, powerful, and pathologically online
Read to the end for an academic paper on puppygirls
Seriously that text goes so hard, I love it: "[My new license] is not following the OSI definition of open-source because i don’t give a damn how capital defines its needs."
tldr.nettime
tante (@tante@tldr.nettime.org)
"The Free Software Foundation has been sliding into irrelevance more and more by entirely failing to address its big Creepy Uncle problem. Open-Sou...
"The Free Software Foundation has been sliding into irrelevance more and more by entirely failing to address its big Creepy Uncle problem. Open-Source has turned into a form of unpaid internship to be hired to make shitty apps that bring more surveillance and ads to our world."
Introducing the Forklift Certified License—Aria’s Barks
It