I definitely think it’s the latter, because vast majority of people don’t really think about AI at all. It’s exactly as you say, there’s just an online bubble where people are eager to signal group membership to each other, and they just rally around talking about how much they hate AI. I also think there are a bunch of grifters using this as a low hanging fruit to grow their subscribers.

And breaking out of the liberal mainstream is no small achievement. We’re all products of our environment, and when everybody holds common beliefs around you, the process of questioning that is not easy. You often feel like you’re the one taking crazy pills when you start discarding mainstream beliefs. Learning is a continuous process, we all hold incorrect ideas in our heads, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The key is developing the ability to introspect, to self criticize, and to grow your understanding.

Very much agree, and have exact same view on the whole AI hysteria. Slop has been with us for a very long time already. In fact, I’d argue that a much better way to decide whether something is slop or not is by focusing on its purpose rather than the medium. Any piece of advertisement is inherently slop, even if it was painted by artisans using oils on canvas. It exists for the sole reason to convince you to buy something.

Yeah, that would be incredible to see.

This sort of stuff has to happen organically in my opinion. What the state can do is facilitate this kind of internet by providing people with free hosting for example. The tools for this already exist, I’d argue the Fediverse model is the perfect way to do this. The problem the original internet had was discoverability. If you had your blog, then people would have to find it through web rings or word of mouth. With the ActivityPub, you get organic propagation of content through the network. In my opinion, that’s the missing piece.

The two barriers that exist right now are hosting costs and technical know how to maintain your own server. And that’s the sort of thing that could be subsidized by the state. I think it would be absolutely fantastic if China or Vietnam gave everyone an option to spin up a personal site that was federated, and people could just do whatever there.

I very much agree, the kind of content we had before the internet was overrun by corps was just regular people putting things online because they wanted to express themselves, or share some idea they had. This is the most genuine type of human expression, the basic urge to connect with others for no other reason than to just communicate. People weren’t trying to gain followers, monetize their content, or become influencers. I think that type of internet is far more compatible with socialist principles.

Exactly, for the most part it’s as good as citizenship in practical terms. I was actually in HK for around a week just a little while back, and honestly it’s pretty great. If you have a job, it’s a very nice place to live. Everything is walkable, the weather is great, lots of fantastic food that’s really cheap, and the city looks amazing.

Getting HK residency is relatively straight forward too. You can get permanent residency by legally working and living there for a continuous period of 7 years. After that, you apply to the Immigration Department for verification. This grants you permanent resident status in Hong Kong.

Although, that does not make you a Chinese citizen, you would still have to go through a separate naturalization process for Chinese nationality.

That’s my view as well. And there’s also a personal cost to holding views outside the mainstream because you become a pariah in your social circles. So, the selection pressure is to just go with what other people around you believe.

It’s only when there’s a personal cost associated with having views that are at odds with the material reality that the calculus changes.

Incidentally, Sean Foo touched on this the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W927Y4Ot9E4

Here’s how I approach the argument https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10530205/7669396

If there are incorrect assertions in the post, then you should’ve clearly noted what they are and helped correct misunderstandings. Instead, you’ve spent a lot of energy complaining how you’ve been treated unfairly here, but haven’t actually made a single constructive comment that would help anyone. You could consider going back to the original thread you made your comment in, and instead write a new comment that’s actually helpful and informative. Explain what the incorrect assertions are and why they are incorrect.

If there was a problem with the information provided, or factual mistakes, then it would be perfectly reasonable to point that out and provide sources you prefer using. However, simply attacking the post for using LLM summary is not constructive or helpful. Misinformation is something being factually wrong not coming from a source you don’t like.

Meanwhile, it should be pretty clear that coming in to tell people that they’re posting slop is an attack on them. Somebody spent time learning something new, they wanted to share it. You came in and started berating them. If you don’t understand how that’s an attack then perhaps do a bit of self reflection.

Attacking people for learning things is frankly inappropriate behavior, do better.

You were given a reason for why your comment was removed. Making personal attacks or reactionary comments is not tolerated here. In general, this is a Marxist instance and we’re not free speech absolutists.

I’m also guessing he got sold out in the end. Making bribes and deals was probably what the US was doing this whole time and why they didn’t move in sooner.

I can highly recommend this article as a comprehensive intro https://dashthered.medium.com/marxism-for-normal-people-dialectical-materialism-deb5034685a4

yeah we could chat on matrix or something, or even just a lemmygrad thread could work, that way we’ll have an easy reference and meeting notes :)

It might be good to figure out who’s all interested in this idea, will likely have some ideas here too. :) Maybe all of us who are interested in this could get together and talk through the ways we envision models being used, and how to facilitate that.

There are basically three main aspects in my mind. First is education on why these tools are useful in general, why they shouldn’t be shunned, and how to apply them effectively. This is particularly important for people who aren’t developers themselves. Having good guides, and explanations. @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml has already been doing some great work on that front with the crush community.

Then there’s the aspect of how to apply these tools politically for effective agitation, making memes, writing essays, etc. This happens ad hoc right now, but it would be good to start building consistent Marxist messaging in general.

And finally, there’s the development of these tools which falls to technical people with the expertise to make that happen.

Starting a discussion about the direction we want to see would be very useful. Very much agree that we have to start working on this collectively, and we have to come up with a concrete vision for what we aim to build.

I’d argue that core principle should be that the models have to be open, doing what WSWS did with simply calling out to a proprietary service is not the way to go, these have to be tools that we own and control.

We should also aim to make models that can be run locally which means focusing on 32bln or less params. Figuring out how to improve the quality of output for these models would be really important.

The approach that petals is doing also needs to be explored, where they use torrent style distributed framework for training models. This avoids the need for big data centres for training new models.

And @haui@lemmygrad.ml already did a great job covering the content creation aspect.