There are a nonzero number of highly-intelligent individuals capable of developing weapons tech AND AI/ML who are also 100% Dead Certain nothing could go wrong because they're super clever and would never fuck up and create skynet.
... I don't think it'll be a skynet situation, though. Less global domination and more "Someone activated the autonomous systems and [lost control, had control subverted, entered the wrong command, deployed ansible wrong, uploaded CCID ssh key to github], and now we have lingering munitions and angry turrets everywhere". What we have brewing is what happens when you upgrade "Minefield" on the tech tree too far.
Yeah, sorry, this feels like a strawman. The adblock issue is only the most recent and exciting of the multitudinous pile of suck Youtube has been generating the last 5 years or so.
The content discovery genuinely sucks. Being forcefed tiktok cancer content (shorts) and needing to install plugins to remove that shit from /my/ browsing experience is asinine. I just checked Blocktube, too: I have 1012 blocked channels, and the list constantly grows, because their "algorithm" is less competent than their search function somehow, and I'm constantly shown bullshit I'm not interested in. If blocktube couldn't programmatically block all videos with <1k views or <120 seconds of content, that blocklist would be at least twice as large.
So what is this delightful, friendly, relaxing experience worth to me?
Zero. $0. Nil. Nul. Null. 0. False.
I will pay them nothing and continue using their resources to the detriment of the multinational megacorp until it becomes more difficult than `yt-dlp $url`, after which I will replace their valueless time-wasting experience with something else.
Because their product (trying to recreate cable television) has no value beyond wasting my time.
And to head off the "But muh creators" argument:
I don't care. Between having to install plugins to remove ads AND being forced to constantly watched 2+minute inline sponsorship ads (which I tolerate a single time, after which they're skipped; I already know about the product and I'm not interested), I just don't care anymore. I will not be advertised to constantly. I will not comply. I haven't watched cable TV since 2006, and I'm not about to start now.
It has also been super gross to me to watch these infant technologies be thrown at removing humans from creative tasks. The whole point was supposed to be to automate the mundane, boring bullshit so we could do more things involving higher thought, not less.
This is how industrial factories work though. Instead of things like pottery, food and such being crafted it's now just bog standard and crappy. There are benefits in bog standard and crappy though.
There are no benefits to bog-standard, crappy replacements for genuine human-crafted creative products.
Period.
These tools should be applied to solving real problems. Instead, they're being used to solve nonproblems like "how can creatively-bankrupt but affluent parasites extract more money from human creativity while paying as few other human beings as possible?".
It's gross, and it's also pathetic, because the models aren't even /there/ yet. They're certainly gonna get there, but I can't help but feel my future is being robbed at the behest of people who want to remove humans from humanity, rather than remove humans from mundanity, and all we're going to end up with is a pile of statistically-average mediocrity.
Please explain in excruciating detail the need for an account to provide a single input box for zip code to just calculate fees? I need a serious breakdown of the logic behind this position, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me like you could determine someone's "country, county, even municipality" with that single piece of data and no more.
Zip codes aren't specific enough to determine tax rates. Zip codes are assigned by the post office to facilitate delivery of mail, not to determine which taxing districts an address belongs in. You really need the whole address sometimes. Because the city name on the mailing address often indicates the city, but not always. And some taxing districts don't follow city boundaries anyway. And you need a process to handle exceptions, because boundaries are complex and sometimes mistakes are made.
I'm still not seeing why that experience requires an account, so while this response is academically interesting, it doesn't actually address the purpose of my comment. Any reason why these calculations can't be performed without an account? Any reason why needing to enter the street address is functionally different from needing to enter the zipcode for this functionality, or were you just attempting to add detail/nuance?
Yeah, you'd need someone on the network to be doing something like browsing the internet and coming across a malicious website capable of making requests to other nodes on the local network, or downloading something that gives an attacker userspace access to scan the local network.
Those situations strike me as super rare, unlikely, and unrealistic, too.
"Unsecured AI" is the "Ghost Gun" of AI control now, I guess? We're inventing new terms for the AI models people can run on their own without the involvement of a megacorp? Nice narrative.
Sorry, IEEE, but just putting a disclaimer about it being a guest post doesn't reduce the amount of respect I've lost for you.
I don't think it's just the internet. Covid was a very (ahem) masks-off moment for people realizing just how shitty things are and deciding they don't want to put up with /anything/. I think culturally, we're experiencing burnout, and at least in the US, stuff has gotten a lot rougher economically. People have less emotional bandwidth, and that translates to less self-filtering. Over that same span of time, it's gotten more dangerous to drive where I am, more drive-by shootings, more robberies...
Individuals are /angry/. Societies are /angry/. Our entire species is pissed right now.
There are a nonzero number of highly-intelligent individuals capable of developing weapons tech AND AI/ML who are also 100% Dead Certain nothing could go wrong because they're super clever and would never fuck up and create skynet.
... I don't think it'll be a skynet situation, though. Less global domination and more "Someone activated the autonomous systems and [lost control, had control subverted, entered the wrong command, deployed ansible wrong, uploaded CCID ssh key to github], and now we have lingering munitions and angry turrets everywhere". What we have brewing is what happens when you upgrade "Minefield" on the tech tree too far.