#Artificial intelligence in the industry

[sugar-petals]

the problem with ai in kpop is that anything which takes off the inhumane average idol workload would be a good thing but if that thing mows down half the rainforest, steals, fools, dumbs us down, and drastically speeds up the comeback cycle (since you can pump out ai goop faster) so that idols end up working more anyway we are back to square one which is we gotta make even the most seductive ai content flop collectively for all it’s worth, and pressure companies to legally mark their products as such so we can avoid it.

i mean imagine. even if it rests him i don’t want to see lets say taemin copied to fake dance as “t-AI-min the carbon footprint criminal” in some elusive popup store wasting a gazillion gallons of water, and he doesn’t even get paid for lending his likeness. all training, fame, and skills in vain. i know it’s too late since companies use slop excessively now since it benefits only them and we consume it whether we want to or not but we can still refuse the obvious content. it just ruins fandoms, concert culture (!), the work of editors, fair salaries, privacy, and our perception of artistic excellence. 

in other words: in all possible lives i would choose yoongi rapping in person and not agust chatgpt ffs

[drferox]

There’s a couple of things happening on the information technology side of the veterinary industry at the moment:

Practice owners are increasingly aware that they need an online presence (website plus social media), but most of them have minimal interest in actually making one because they want to focus on patients. You know, the work they signed up for in the first place.

Various tech companies sell packages to most vet practices doing some or all of this, including ‘writing SEO optimised articles for your website’.

While many of those articles were copy-paste, now they are often ‘unique’ which looks more and more AI generated.

At best, this looks like shoddy articles written for a machine instead of for people. At worst it generates information which is not current or outright false. In the middle, you get articles reminding you to brush your bird’s teeth.

So I find myself wondering if it’s even worth the effort to write informative content and it mostly feels like it doesn’t. Not compared to how fast and easily AI stuff can be churned out. Seriously, there are so, so many articles and videos out there about how to use AI to automate content generation or digital shops… it’s depressing.

But it probably is still worth writing things because it’s always been worth trying to combat misinformation. It’s just that misinformation and weird information can be generated so much more rapidly.

And I realise that whatever I put out on the internet might be chopped up and rearranged in the AI blender, but somebody has to keep telling the internet that you don’t have to brush your bird’s teeth.

[ssnakey-b]

(Article is from The Verge)

I don't know why this is something we still have to explain: if your industry cannot exist without being destructive, then your industry shouldn't exist.

The entitlement from corpos, to say without shame "But we won't be making tons of money if we aren't allowed to exploit people!" like it's a normal, socially acceptable thing to say, is unbelievable.

[shinox]

These motherfuckers want to use COAL to power AI

As if I needed another reason to hate it and what it does to the environment they just handed that out for free

[nando161mando]

La nueva 'apropiación de tierras' para las empresas de IA, desde Meta hasta OpenAI, son los contratos militares

The new 'land grab' for AI companies, from Meta to OpenAI, is military contracts

[mouthtapedguy]

Why are you in jail: "I used humans instead of AI" :| :| :|

[mr-entj]

Hello Mr. ENTJ. I'm an ENTJ sp/so 3 woman in her early twenties with a similar story to yours (Asian immigrant with a chip on her shoulder, used going to university as a way to break generational cycles). I graduated last month and have managed to break into strategy consulting with a firm that specialises in AI. Given your insider view into AI and your experience also starting out as a consultant, I would love to hear about any insights you might have or advice you may have for someone in my position. I would also be happy to take this discussion to somewhere like Discord if you'd prefer not to share in public/would like more context on my situation. Thank you!

Insights for your career or insights on AI in general?

On management consulting as a career, check the #management consulting tag.

On being a consultant working in AI:

Develop a solid understanding of the technical foundation behind LLMs. You don’t need a computer science degree, but you should know how they’re built and what they can do. Without this knowledge, you won’t be able to apply them effectively to solve any real-world problems. A great starting point is deeplearning.ai by Andrew Ng: Fundamentals, Prompt Engineering, Fine Tuning

Know all the terminology and definitions. What's fine tuning? What's prompt engineering? What's a hallucination? Why do they happen? Here's a good starter guide.

Understand the difference between various models, not just in capabilities but also training, pricing, and usage trends. Great sources include Artificial Analysis and Hugging Face.

Keep up to date on the newest and hottest AI startups. Some are hype trash milking the AI gravy train but others have actual use cases. This will reveal unique and interesting use cases in addition to emerging capabilities. Example: Forbes List.

On the industry of AI:

It's here to stay. You can't put the genie back in the bottle (for anyone reading this who's still a skeptic).

AI will eliminate certain jobs that are easily automated (ex: quality assurance engineers) but also create new ones or make existing ones more important and in-demand (ex: prompt engineers, machine learning engineers, etc.)

The most valuable career paths will be the ones that deal with human interaction, connection, and communication. Soft skills are more important than ever because technical tasks can be offloaded to AI. As Sam Altman once told me in a meeting: "English is the new coding language."

Open source models will win (Llama, Mistral, Deep Seek) because closed source models don't have a moat. Pick the cheapest model because they're all similarly capable.

The money is in the compute, not the models -- AI chips, AI infrastructure, etc. are a scarce resource and the new oil. This is why OpenAI ($150 billion valuation) is only 5% the value of NVIDIA (a $3 trillion dollar behemoth). Follow the compute because this is where the growth will happen.

America and China will lead in the rapid development and deployment of AI technology; the EU will lead in regulation. Keep your eye on these 3 regions depending on what you're looking to better understand.

[iww-gnv]

Voice actors are taking to social media to criticize SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors and other entertainment professionals, for an agreement it struck Tuesday with an artificial intelligence company that would allow video game developers to use digital replicas of actors’ voices.

[callmeizukunotdeku]

Video Essay Recommendations

Going to preface this by saying that, while I watch a lot of video essays, I do tend to go back to the same channels a lot because those are the people who change the way I think the most, so you’ll notice a lot of repeating names.

All video essays are on YouTube. List organized alphabetically.

AI Wars: How Corporations Hijacked Anti-AI Backlash by Alex Avila

incredible analysis on the nuance in the pro- or anti-AI debate

before watching this, i was of the firm belief that generative AI is bad, full stop, but he does a good job explaining a lot of misinformation in the anti-AI realm

one minor critique is that at times, he starts talking about analytic AI (which I support and supported before I watched the video) but he doesn’t outright state this, so it can be kind of hard to catch

astrology has a colonialism problem by Dr. Fatima

very interesting commentary on colonialism and the view of colonialism as a thing of the past vs an ongoing project

specifically interesting commentary on the colonialism of the Hawaii Islands

Conspiracy by Contrapoints

incredible insight into the modern political realm and how a lot of conspiracy theories have become mainstream

talks about how conspiricism works and how why people get so attached to their beliefs (she doesn’t specify it in the video, but I will say that this goes both ways)

The Cult in a Boarding School by Nexpo

one of those videos that just made me go “oh, so we live in a dystopia”

genuinely went to fact check some of this shit after because I was like “hey, this can’t be real” but here we are

Envy by Contrapoints

i don’t even know how to go about describing this video

it’s like a fever dream that makes you question everyone’s motivations but like, in a neutral way? like, not an “everyone’s out to get you” type mindset; more of “i think i understand things a little better than i thought i ever would” sort of way

Hamilton and the Death of the Obama Era by Alex Avila

I think this might be the video essay that I go back to rewatched the most

changed the way I think about political movements and how we enact meaningful change

How Conservatives Invented Gender Ideology by Alex Avila

interesting analysis on gender and society

Is there a crisis of masculinity or is it just capitalism? by Alex Avila

good analysis on the effects of capitalism and patriarchy on masculinity and men

very entry level analysis but still a good watch

"If you come away from this video feeling like you found the right person or group to blame, you’re doing it wrong. And if you’ve come away from this video feeling as if there are persons or groups who’ve done nothing wrong, then I haven’t done my job."

"If we’re going to be feminists who want to challenge the root of patriarchy, we don’t want to just target the way that power is distributed. We want to challenge the way we socially define power and the ideal citizen."

Twilight by ContraPoints

incredible analysis on human sexuality

"…lust is inherently perverted, and society’s role is to channel it into outlets that minimize violence. And those outlets may include novels, and movies, and erotica, and “problematic ships,” none of which are to blame for “perverting” sexuality."

Who’s Right About Pluto??? by Dr. Fatima

interesting view on how we have a hard time accepting scientific change because of our tendency to view science as an objective, unchanging way to view reality

[disobedyent]

You're lost inside a lucid dream

Longing for a timeline that goes your way

Such a maladaptive drifter

Lusting for someone intangible

They're so close but out of reach

What does it mean to be alive?

You've turned yourself off, but you're not fading away

[river-taxbird]

The Four Horsemen of the Digital Apocalypse

Blockchain. Artificial Intelligence. Internet of Things. Big Data.

Do these terms sound familiar? You have probably been hearing some or all of them non stop for years. "They are the future. You don't want to be left behind, do you?"

While these topics, particularly crypto and AI, have been the subject of tech hype bubbles and inescapable on social media, there is actually something deeper and weirder going on if you scratch below the surface.

I am getting ready to apply for my PhD in financial technology, and in the academic business studies literature (Which is barely a science, but sometimes in academia you need to wade into the trash can.) any discussion of digital transformation or the process by which companies adopt IT seem to have a very specific idea about the future of technology, and it's always the same list, that list being, blockchain, AI, IoT, and Big Data. Sometimes the list changes with additions and substitutions, like the metaverse, advanced robotics, or gene editing, but there is this pervasive idea that the future of technology is fixed, and the list includes tech that goes from questionable to outright fraudulent, so where is this pervasive idea in the academic literature that has been bleeding into the wider culture coming from? What the hell is going on?

The answer is, it all comes from one guy. That guy is Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. Now there are a lot of conspiracies about the WEF and I don't really care about them, but the basic facts are it is a think tank that lobbies for sustainable capitalist agendas, and they famously hold a meeting every year where billionaires get together and talk about how bad they feel that they are destroying the planet and promise to do better. I am not here to pass judgement on the WEF. I don't buy into any of the conspiracies, there are plenty of real reasons to criticize them, and I am not going into that.

Basically, Schwab wrote a book titled the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In his model, the first three so-called industrial revolutions are:

1. The industrial revolution we all know about. Factories and mass production basically didn't exist before this. Using steam and water power allowed the transition from hand production to mass production, and accelerated the shift towards capitalism.

2. Electrification, allowing for light and machines for more efficient production lines. Phones for instant long distance communication. It allowed for much faster transfer of information and speed of production in factories.

3. Computing. The Space Age. Computing was introduced for industrial applications in the 50s, meaning previously problems that needed a specific machine engineered to solve them could now be solved in software by writing code, and certain problems would have been too big to solve without computing. Legend has it, Turing convinced the UK government to fund the building of the first computer by promising it could run chemical simulations to improve plastic production. Later, the introduction of home computing and the internet drastically affecting people's lives and their ability to access information.

That's fine, I will give him that. To me, they all represent changes in the means of production and the flow of information, but the Fourth Industrial revolution, Schwab argues, is how the technology of the 21st century is going to revolutionize business and capitalism, the way the first three did before. The technology in question being AI, Blockchain, IoT, and Big Data analytics. Buzzword, Buzzword, Buzzword.

The kicker though? Schwab based the Fourth Industrial revolution on a series of meetings he had, and did not construct it with any academic rigor or evidence. The meetings were with "numerous conversations I have had with business, government and civil society leaders, as well as technology pioneers and young people." (P.10 of the book) Despite apparently having two phds so presumably being capable of research, it seems like he just had a bunch of meetings where the techbros of the mid 2010s fed him a bunch of buzzwords, and got overly excited and wrote a book about it. And now, a generation of academics and researchers have uncritically taken that book as read, filled the business studies academic literature with the idea that these technologies are inevitably the future, and now that is permeating into the wider business ecosystem.

There are plenty of criticisms out there about the fourth industrial revolution as an idea, but I will just give the simplest one that I thought immediately as soon as I heard about the idea. How are any of the technologies listed in the fourth industrial revolution categorically different from computing? Are they actually changing the means of production and flow of information to a comparable degree to the previous revolutions, to such an extent as to be considered a new revolution entirely? The previous so called industrial revolutions were all huge paradigm shifts, and I do not see how a few new weird, questionable, and unreliable applications of computing count as a new paradigm shift.

What benefits will these new technologies actually bring? Who will they benefit? Do the researchers know? Does Schwab know? Does anyone know? I certainly don't, and despite reading a bunch of papers that are treating it as the inevitable future, I have not seen them offering any explanation.

There are plenty of other criticisms, and I found a nice summary from ICT Works here, it is a revolutionary view of history, an elite view of history, is based in great man theory, and most importantly, the fourth industrial revolution is a self fulfilling prophecy. One rich asshole wrote a book about some tech he got excited about, and now a generation are trying to build the world around it. The future is not fixed, we do not need to accept these technologies, and I have to believe a better technological world is possible instead of this capitalist infinite growth tech economy as big tech reckons with its midlife crisis, and how to make the internet sustainable as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, the most monopolistic and despotic tech companies in the world, are running out of new innovations and new markets to monopolize. The reason the big five are jumping on the fourth industrial revolution buzzwords as hard as they are is because they have run out of real, tangible innovations, and therefore run out of potential to grow.

[alyfoxxxen]

British musicians release a silent album to protest plans to let AI use their work | AP News

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Heated:

Energy experts warned only a few years ago that the world had to stop building new fossil fuel projects to preserve a livable climate.

Now, artificial intelligence is driving a rapid expansion of methane gas infrastructure—pipelines and power plants—that experts say could have devastating climate consequences if fully realized.

As large language models like ChatGPT become more sophisticated, experts predict that the nation’s energy demands will grow by a “shocking” 16 percent in the next five years. Tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet have increasingly turned to nuclear power plants or large renewable energy projects to power data centers that use as much energy as a small town.

But those cleaner energy sources will not be enough to meet the voracious energy demands of AI, analysts say. To bridge the gap, tech giants and fossil fuel companies are planning to build new gas power plants and pipelines that directly supply data centers. And they increasingly propose keeping those projects separate from the grid, fast tracking gas infrastructure at a speed that can’t be matched by renewables or nuclear.

The growth of AI has been called the “savior” of the gas industry. In Virginia alone, the data center capital of the world, a new state report found that AI demand could add a new 1.5 gigawatt gas plant every two years for 15 consecutive years.

And now, as energy demand for AI rises, oil corporations are planning to build gas plants that specifically serve data centers. Last week, Exxon announced that it is building a large gas plant that will directly supply power to data centers within the next five years. The company claims the gas plant will use technology that captures polluting emissions—despite the fact that the technology has never been used at a commercial scale before.

Chevron also announced that the company is preparing to sell gas to an undisclosed number of data centers. “We're doing some work right now with a number of different people that's not quite ready for prime time, looking at possible solutions to build large-scale power generation,” said CEO Mike Wirth at an Atlantic Council event. The opportunity to sell power to data centers is so promising that even private equity firms are investing billions in building energy infrastructure.

But the companies that will benefit the most from an AI gas boom, according to S&P Global, are pipeline companies. This year, several major U.S. pipeline companies told investors that they were already in talks to connect their sprawling pipeline networks directly to on-site gas power plants at data centers.

“We, frankly, are kind of overwhelmed with the number of requests that we’re dealing with, ” Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said on a call with analysts. The pipeline company, which owns the 10,000 mile Transco system, is expanding its existing pipeline network from Virginia to Alabama partly to “provide reliable power where data center growth is expected,” according to Williams.

[sacredleylinestar]

Antika cinayetleri ful film Türkçe dublaj (offical video)

[nando161mando]

"No Tech for Apartheid’s protest is as much about what the public doesn’t know about Project Nimbus as what it does. The contract is for Google and Amazon to provide AI and cloud computing services to the Israeli government and military, according to the Israeli finance ministry, which announced the deal in 2021.

Nimbus reportedly involves Google establishing a secure instance of Google Cloud on Israeli soil, which would allow the Israeli government to perform large-scale data analysis, AI training, database hosting, and other forms of powerful computing using Google’s technology, with little oversight by the company.

Google documents, first reported by the Intercept in 2022, suggest that the Google services on offer to Israel via its Cloud have capabilities such as AI-enabled facial detection, automated image categorization, and object tracking."