Hit Pieces Suck
I recently spotted this article: Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live by some dipshit at The Verge.As you know I enjoy shitting on things. I'm particularly happy and feel justified to shit on people shitting on other people.
As Elizabeth Lopatto takes a massive shit on Zuck's head with her title, I hope she is prepared for having her own bullshit criticized.
Here we go. If you don't like having what someone says ripped to shreds, you might head to a different post.
The subtitle of the article is: "An AI future of sleek, streamlined, and totally empty relationships."
Okay, so I guess she hates AI and thinks it is ruining relationships. I fail to see how. It has improved my relationships and interactions with people, so I'm already dubious.
Well before I continue let's see what AI has to say about OP. It says she studied English and Philosophy in uni, and writes about various things including crypto. I'm already not looking forward to what she has to say, because as you might know I think crypto is a pile of shit that existing to assist criminals.
I also really doubt she is going to come at the topic of AI from a neutral view since most people who think they are good writers really hate AI. So basically anyone who is a professional writer is going to be shit at being neutral when discussing AI.
AI says she employs lots of sarcasm and "colorful language." Great. So she won't mind if I curse when talking about her and the crap she wrote?
Apparently she is fond of shitting on Musk also. That's a pretty easy target so I'm not sure what the point of that is...
Oh hey. I asked AI about her writing about crypto and supposedly she is against crypto as well at least to some extent.
AI gave me this quote from her: “Crypto is a grubby, speculative industry full of scams, bad incentives and criminal uses.” So... I guess I'll have to accept that she might be reasonable about some things. Bummer.
The first actual bit in the fucking article is a story about a guy who made his own motivational poster with AI. She basically mocks it by calling it "art" in quotes. She then immediately doubles down referring to it as slop.
We don't get to see the poster to judge whether this is reasonable. We are left with the description of a bear crossing a slackline with the text title of "Do cool shit." Sounds fun enough. Yes ridiculous, but come on now. Every single fucking motivational poster I've ever seen is garbage. Being made by AI doesn't make those damned things any worse.
Perhaps people dismissed the poster because it was a cheesy motivational poster NOT because it was made by AI.
She then says "no one made it ( the poster )". But actually AI generally does remix styles of fragments of what is was trained on, so we could argue that people did make the components that AI used to build the poster. You can't dismiss art made by AI so easily like she is trying to do.
Then she triples down and says that even bad art is better because it was made by a person and required effort.
Fuck that.
Art, in my view, stands or falls on its own. I don't typically give a damn what process or who made a piece of art. I judge each piece of art itself. There are exceptions where I'll respect effort, but largely no. If you exert insane effort and time and the result is shit, I'm going to call shit on the resulting piece and your effort be damned. That's harsh reality. Being an artist requires backbone because of this if you are going to show your art to anyone else.
If a piece of art is cool, it's cool whether it is made by Nancy, an alien, or AI.
The next thing she does before going into the Zuck manifesto ( at least that is what she calls it ), is to immediately dismiss it as "possible written by AI." Criticize the fucking article on its own merits, not on speculation of "I bet AI was used." Attacking the method is a cheap shot.
She then does this weird ass thing where she critices that if AI was great it wouldn't need an article defending it, but then proves that she is wrong and she knows it by immediately admitting that AI gets bad press. You can't have it both ways. People defend AI because shitheads like her diss AI as a concept without acknowledging the merits of it.
She then mentions data centers, as if that somehow matters. I'd argue it doesn't in the particular discussion because it's an implementation detail not the only way AI can be done. Certainly there are bad things about how data centers are being deployed and the drain on memory availability, but I think that is actually a different conversation than "is AI good or not overall and does it have a bright future?"
I believe she just brings up data centers to draw people to her anti-AI stance.
She says next that Zuck fails to be soothing. Okay. :shrug: Perhaps. I haven't read the Zuck stuff yet. I'll need to do that. :groans:
The thing she calls the Zuck "manifesto" is this: The Future is for Everyone
Yuck. It's so long. Bleh. Aside to shit on that before I return to defending it and shitting on the shitting on it. Confused yet? I'll be confused in a moment. Here goes my dive into Zuck babbling.
Zuck starts out claiming superintelligence is coming. Not. But ok...
"beyond human capacity". Hmm no. Faster maybe.
"new concepts". Also no. It just remixes imo.
"who will have access". Obviously whoever pays the bigcos for this stuff...
"all new tech is [great]". Or just fucks us all...
"[the ai outlook] is filled with doom". Yes it certainly is and for good reason.
"every time in history things work out". What about the dark ages buddy?
"each person will become more able". That's unclear. Right now our careers are getting fucked. Who cares if we can do a ton if we can't get fucking paid?
"new drugs [from AI]" I'll believe it when I see it.
"as intelligence becomes more abudant" Lulz. It's making people dumber and AI itself is pretty fucking dumb if you really tear what it says apart.
"[we believe in] delivering superintelligence". And I believe in getting filthy rich and being ruler of the universe. Oh wait no I don't because that's delusional bullshit.
"[everyone will have an AI that understands everything about them]" Damn. So my AI will be a crazy S.O.B. Look out world. An AI that understands me is going to be fucking terrifying.
"my 8 year old daughter can already code [with AI]" Ugh.
"everyone can create new business". Uh, but currently AI is fucking all small business so I'm not buying that.
"I predict [AI] will lead to greater economic growth" After it crashes the global economy??
"Everyone will have their own [AI] coach with a PhD". Lulz. Check out the "AI can't jump" writeup.
"Everyone will benefit". After we all get completely fucked and half of humanity starves as it wrecks human society?
"Everyone will have free access to [AI]" Uhh. Good good. When will you make all your commercial interests into non profits Zuck? Oh wait. You're full of shit. I'll accept Zuck sending me a 5090ti alternatively.
Oh. Fuck. I've had enough. The Zuck writeup is delusional quackery to an extent it is easy to rip to shreds.
Let me give an attempt now at somehow defending the Zuck crap and shitting on the critical article.
I think the best line of attack I can do is "Why on earth didn't you just mock the idiotic shit Zuck said instead of shitting on AI as slop?"
Her next statement is that she will accept that superintelligence is possible. Tf? That's the most delusional part and the core problem with the whole fucking thing by Zuck. Why accept that? Grr.
She then mentions "pervert glasses."
Yes. I'll go there.
Sexuality is a human thing. People love seeing nude and private stuff. The world is full of this. Having sexual desires, wants, lust, etc etc is actually healthy and not "being a pervert." I'd argue that it isn't perverted to do whatever you want with what you can see in public actually.
What's wrong is hurting people. Your actions. If you want to masturbate to recordings of cute people from your glasses, then who cares. It remains idiotic that people freak out about being seen sexually imo. Grow up. Accept reality. Sure sure you can have a stick up your ass if you want, but for the love of fucking please just let people enjoy their own fantasies.
"[pervert glasses] are indefensible". I'm happy to have a debate live with OP about this. Bring it. I will defend the damn things widly. Maybe I'll get off to it. Happy to. Because it's very defensible.
She immediately then dismisses AI as being unable to help with personal relationship, and I'm not getting why. The argument seems to be "if AI is saving me effort in scheduling that means I'm not being as loving because it is less effort." Or maybe makes us contact our loved ones more often?
She then craps on Zuck saying AI could reccomend a recipe, saying Zuck should have instead figured it out himself. Not buying it. Who cares where the recipe comes from if it is valuable time cooking with his daughter? She jumps into the idiotic "more effort and humanity is the meaningful bit." No... spending time doing stuff with your loved ones is what matters. Where the fucking recipe came from matters zero, so long as it is safely edible at least.
Then she immediately fucking admits "the point of a hobby is that you do it". Exactly. Only the cooking matters. Using AI to assist your hobby doesn't cease you engaging in the hobby.
"AI cannot read a book for me" But damn can is summarize it to help me get something out of it rather than ditch the whole book because it is boring as fuck.
"AI cannot assist the soothing knitting of a scarf" Actually I can easily imagine how AI would be very helpful in creating plans and teaching how to knit etc.
Then she fucking admits again that AI probably can assist in accomplishing more! Shooting her own attack down. Uh...
Skimming from here. This is getting boring.
She craps on the metaverse a bit further down. Just because the metaverse failed means nothing about whether Zuck is right about AI! She argues he has no room to talk about enabling humanity when he couldn't succeed with the metaverse. I don't think that is fair. Many startup founders fail over and over then succeed. This is normal. A failure does not indicate always failure.
She says a bit further that computerized learning failed. Many schools using ipads and/or laptops throughout all schoolwork. That hasn't failed. Many aspects have failed, but computerized learning as a whole has not yet failed. ( and I don't think it will; tech is useful in learning )
She claims that you essentially have to learn through social interaction and can't without it. That's just false. Maybe that is how she wants people to learn, but it's clear people CAN learn while actively hating humanity and avoiding social scenarios. That may be bad if everyone does that, but it's false that you can't learn that way.
First damned point she makes that I agree with is that AI access is unequal and will remain that way. The rich will have the better hardware and model access.
She rants a bunch then mentions that what she values is "experiencing other people's minds". Interesting, because I think AI assisted us in doing exactly that more rapidly and effectively.
She attacks all AI creations as meaningless if they were easy to make. We don't have cohesive logical defense of such a position. If a creation is awesome and useful, it remains so regardless of how it was made.
She says "What does it mean to love ourselves?" Hmm. Makes me think back to her shitting on "pervert glasses." I'm fairly certain she isn't pro sexuality and doesn't approve of masturbating fantasizing about others. So I don't think she should be using the phrase "love ourselves." Just my opinion of course...
She closes out by shitting on the guy who made the motivational poster. If the dude likes it, awesome! Why the need to shit on him both to start and close this article? Damn.
I've done it. I've crapped all over the article. And now I'm just as dirty as Zuck and OP having done so. Yay? Good job pulling us all into the dirty wrestling pit...