#tech hype

[stevensavage]

The Money In Cleanup

I have an acquaintance that helps migrate businesses off of ancient and inappropriate databases onto more recent ones. If you wonder how ancient and inappropriate let me simply state “not meant for industry” and “first created when One Piece the anime started airing” and you can guess. Now and then he literally goes and cleans up questionable and persisting bad choices.

In the recent unending and omnipresent discussions of AI, I saw a similar proposal. A person rather cynical about AI mused someone might make a living in the next few years backing a company’s tech and processes OUT of AI. Such things might seem ridiculous, until you consider my aforementioned acquaintance and the fact he gets paid to help people back out past decisions. Think of it as “migration from a place you shouldn’t have migrated to.”

It’s weird to think in technology, which always seems (regrettably) to be about forward motion and moving forward that there’s money in reversing decisions. Maybe it was the latest thing and now it’s not, or maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time (it wasn’t), but now you need someone to help you get out of your choice. Fortunately there are people who have turned “I told you so” into a service.

I find these “back out businesses” to be a good and needed reminder that technology is really not about forward. Yeah, the marketing guys and investors may want it, but as anyone who’s spent time in the industry knows, it’s not the case. Technology is a tool, and if the tool doesn’t work or is a bad choice, you want out of it. The latest, newest, fasted is not always the best - and may not be the best years later. Technology is not always about forward, even if someone tells you it is (before they sell you yet another new gizmo).

Considering the many, many changes in the world of tech, from social media to search to privacy, I wonder how much more “back out businesses” might evolve. Will there be coaches to get you to move to federated social media? How can you help a company get out of a bad relationship with a service vendor with leaky security and questionable choices? For that matter can we maybe take a look at better hosting arrangements and websites that aren’t ten frameworks in a trenchcoat?

I don’t know, and the world is in a terribly unpredictable state. But I’m amused to think that somewhere in my lifetime the big tech boom might be “oops, sorry.” Maybe we can say “moving away is really moving forward,” get some TED talks, and make not making bad immediate choices cool.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[bravecrab]

[gwydionmisha]

Debunking the Tech Hype Cycle with Dan Olson

[swagliostro]

Every Chip needs a decent cuddle!

[valdevia]

You make AI gen abominations? You make fake MRIs and xrays. What else do you make with AI?

You got it the other way around you tech bro weirdo. It's AI who makes abominations using the work it stole from me. Now kindly fuck off :)

[here-comes-the-moose]

Hunter: Okay we’re going out tonight but no funny business. *looks pointedly at Crosshair and Wrecker*

Crosshair: Relax, we won’t even drink that much.

Wrecker: Yeah! What Crosshair said!

*later in the evening at about 2am*

Crosshair and Wrecker on karaoke: 🎶WHEN YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO HIM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WITH YOUR HEAD IN YOUR HANDS, YOU’RE NOTHING MORE THAN HIS WIFE🎶

Hunter:…

Echo:…

Tech:…

Hunter: *face-palms and sighs*

[brandyy0moss]

[halfling-myth-lady]

How tf have I ricocheted into two Greek mythology fandoms that have no business being this good while still unfinished that I have also joined in the most convenient time plausible.

[butchhansolo]

ok it goes like this hunter has cake wrecker has cake echo and tech are average and crosshair's ass would break your hand if you tried to slap it

[billfinarts]

Techchosis

He's fine y'all.

[cornleypolytechnicgoeswrong]

More of my favourite low effort CPDS Members as my screenshotted tiktok comments memes for you as an apology for being so inactive and proof I am still around hehe <33

[darkopsiian]

witch one of ur oc's would be the most voilent, like im talking universe tearing, god illing war machene typa crazy goobious violent bi-

her.

[charliejaneanders]

I don’t see how else to make sense of it. 2022 was the year the 20-year tech bubble finally burst. 2023 was still bad for startups, and was full of bad headlines for the big platforms. And yet, in the markets, tech investors just took a deep collective breath and started inflating the next bubble, as though the previous year had never happened.

Silicon Valley runs on Futurity

[deputychairman]

THIS guy gets it. AI won’t go rogue and press the nuclear button, but it probably will make your boss richer and you poorer because it’s developed by multinational tech companies under capitalism and that’s its stated goal! 

“A former McKinsey employee has described the company as “capital’s willing executioners”: if you want something done but don’t want to get your hands dirty, McKinsey will do it for you. That escape from accountability is one of the most valuable services that management consultancies provide. Bosses have certain goals, but don’t want to be blamed for doing what’s necessary to achieve those goals; by hiring consultants, management can say that they were just following independent, expert advice. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. has become a way for a company to evade responsibility by saying that it’s just doing what “the algorithm” says, even though it was the company that commissioned the algorithm in the first place.

The question we should be asking is: as A.I. becomes more powerful and flexible, is there any way to keep it from being another version of McKinsey? The question is worth considering across different meanings of the term “A.I.” If you think of A.I. as a broad set of technologies being marketed to companies to help them cut their costs, the question becomes: how do we keep those technologies from working as “capital’s willing executioners”? Alternatively, if you imagine A.I. as a semi-autonomous software program that solves problems that humans ask it to solve, the question is then: how do we prevent that software from assisting corporations in ways that make people’s lives worse? Suppose you’ve built a semi-autonomous A.I. that’s entirely obedient to humans—one that repeatedly checks to make sure it hasn’t misinterpreted the instructions it has received. This is the dream of many A.I. researchers. Yet such software could easily still cause as much harm as McKinsey has.”

[tariah23]

Well…..