They should advertise that. I pretty much reflexively avoid any mention of AI in interfaces because they usually mean "we're sending this all to openthropigoogosoft so I hope you don't have any secrets."
I've been a professional artist, designer, and developer. Mostly a developer, and working in academia throughout the late teens meant being privy to the development of neural networks into what they've become. When I pointed out the vulnerability of developers to this technology, the "well maybe for some developers but I'm special" stance was nearly ubiquitous.
When the tech world realized their neato new invention inadvertently dropped a giant portion of the world's working artists into the toilet, they smashed that flusher before they could even say "oops." Endless justification, people saying artists were untalented and greedy and deserved to be financially ruined, with a heaping helping of "well, just 'pivot'."
And I did-- into manufacturing because I didn't see much of a future for tech industry careers. I'm lucky-- I came from a working class background so getting into a trade wasn't a total culture and environment shock. I think what this technology is going to do to job markets is a tragedy, but after all the shit I took as a working artist during this transition, I'm going to have to say "well, just pivot!" Better get in shape and toughen up-- your years of office work mean absolutely nothing when you've got to physically do something for a living. Most of the soft, maladroit, arrogant tech workers get absolutely spanked in that environment.
... although it's a bit unfair to the many tech people who never wanted to throw artists down the loo or indeed anyone else. E.g. when I was fiddling with language generation during my MSc it never occurred to me that someone would want to use it to replace writing, let alone coding. What would be the point in that?
Yeah… there’s this “bro— do you even business?” vibe in the tech world right now pointed at any tech firm not burning oil tankers full of cash (and oil, for that matter,) training a giant model. That money isn’t free — the economic consequences of burning billions to make a product that will be several steps behind, at best, are giant. There’s a very real chance these companies won’t recoup that money if their product isn’t attractive to hoards of users willing to pay more money for AI than anyone currently is. It doesn’t even make them look cool to regular people — their customers hate hearing about AI. Since there are viable third party options available, I think Apple would have to be out of their goddamned minds to try and jump in that race right now. They’re a product company. Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model.
Something weird has gone wrong in the psyche of humans.
Why are we even talking about 'AI'? When I heat up food in a microwave, I dont care about the technology - I care about whether it heats up the food or not.
For some bizarre reason people keep talking about the technology (LLMs) - the consumers/buyers in the market for the most part dont give a hoot about it. They want to know how the thing fits in their life and most importantly what are the benefits.
Ive unfortunately been exposed to some Google Ads re. Gemini and let me tell you - their marketing capabilities are god awful.
>Nobody is going to not buy an iPhone because they’re using a third-party model.
You're right, and this is proven. Apple has fumbled a whole release cycle on AI and severely curbed expectations, and they still sell 200m iPhones a year and lead the market [0]
Easy enough. Most people abhor AI and want nothing to do with it. The only ones who actually love AI (or what's being sold to them under that banner) are clueless and/or greedy executives, propagandists, and a select few legitimate AI artists doing pretty nice remixes of Star Wars, Harry Potter and the likes in a quality not seen before.
It’s very location-dependent. I live in a very dense area with many Walgreens and competitors and they’re all about the same. When you drive out into the far suburbs or country, they’re not as bad.
Good independent pharmacies are the only way to go, IMO.
In my area of Portland, all other Walgreens shut down and all the CVS and Rite Aids shut down in the past few years - post Covid - because the shoplifting and almost weekly armed robberies were so rampant. It's frankly amazing that there's still one Walgreens open, but going there is kind of like walking into an insane asylum. Not that it's dangerous, just incredibly dystopian. The workers are traumatized and miserable. Every single item worth more than $5 is locked up, and even so, there are thieves with backpacks strapped to their chests roaming the aisles, literally every time I go in there, grabbing anything, while the employees just ignore them. Recently I went in to buy Mucinex. I found it in a locked plexiglass cabinet, in front of which was a junkie who was sitting on the floor with no shoes, his nose pressed to the glass, studying the boxes of Mucinex. I had to spend 10 minutes finding a worker to open the cabinet while gently moving the junkie out of the way.
This quarter of the city (inner Southeast) is down to basically 5 pharmacies serving a very densely populated 10 square miles, four of which are in supermarkets (Safeway or Fred Meyer... both terrible). Only one Walgreens is left.
There is a locally owned, independent pharmacy that's owner-operated, about 3 miles away from me, and I've started driving to it. It's the only one in Southeast. The Walgreens is only 5 blocks away from my house, easy to walk to, but I've decided it's worth getting in my car and sitting in traffic to get to the independent one.
The price isn’t the same, it’s more expensive, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. This particular project is slated to take a decade — the last nuclear reactor that the US built was also slated to take a decade. It just opened in 2024, and was approved for construction in 2009. This is a long-view solution to a right-now problem.
We should have been keeping up with this infrastructure stuff all along… but I’m really not convinced all of these companies are going to be using this shit in 5 years, anyway.
Now imagine how much more that sucks for artists and designers that were putting artwork out there to advertise themselves only to have some douchebag ingest it in order to sell cheap simulacra.
You might be surprised to find out how much of your motivation to do any of it at all was tied to your enjoyment, and that’s much more difficult to overcome than people realize.
Job insecurity while a bunch of companies claim LLM coding agents are letting them decimate their workforces is a pretty solid reason to feel like your code is being stolen. Many, if not most tech workers have been very sheltered from the harsher economic realities most people face, and many are realizing that labor demand, rather than being special, is why. A core goal of AI products is increasing the supply of what developer labor produces, which reduces demand for that labor. So yeah— feeling robbed when your donated code is used to train models is pretty rational.
And that’s the problem with a lot of chatbot usage in the wild: it’s saving you from having to think about things where thinking about them is the point. E.g. hobby writing, homework, and personal correspondence. That’s obviously not the only usage, but it’s certainly the basis for some of the more common use cases, and I find that depressing as hell.
In software (and business in general!), innovation is expected. If you built a building in San Francisco that couldn't handle a relatively minor earthquake you could argue it would be a 'stress test'.
If you’re right that AI’s impact on business is akin to a ‘relatively minor earthquake in San Francisco,’ a lot of investors are going to be really fucking bummed out.
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