[FRIAM] Cory Doctorow on AI hype vs Crypto Hype

[Steve Smith]

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-ai-hype-bubble-is-the-new-crypto-hype-bubble-74e53028631e

I *am* a fan of LLMs (not so much image generators) and blockchain (not 
so much crypto or NFTs) in their "best" uses (not that I or anyone else 
really knows what that is) in spite of my intrinsic neoLuddite affect.

Nevertheless I think Doctorow in his usual acerbic and penetrating style 
really nails it well here IMO.

I particularly appreciated his reference/quote to Emily Bender's "High 
on Supply" and "word/meaning conflation" in the sense of "don't mistake 
an accent for a personality" in the dating scene.

A lot of my own contrarian commments on this forum come from resisting 
what Doctorow introduces (to me) as "CritiHype" (attributed to Lee 
Vinsel)...  the feeling that some folks make a (a)vocation out of 
kneejerk criticism.   It is much easier to *poke* at something than to 
*do* something worthy of being *poked at*.   I appreciate that Doctorow 
doesn't seem to (by my fairly uncritical eye) engage in this much 
himself...  which is why I was drawn into this article...

I also very much appreciate his quote from Charlie Stross:

    /corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that
    consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally
    run them try to steer them in better directions:/

    /https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future
    <https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future>
    /


    //

I could go on quoting and excerpting and commenting on his whole article 
and the myriad links/references he offers up but will curb my enthusiasm 
and leave it to the astute FriAM readers to choose how much to indulge 
in.   It was a pretty good antidote for my own AI-thusiasm driven by 
long chats with GPT4 (converging on being more like long sessions 
wandering through Wikipedia after the first 100 hours of engagement).



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