🤔
Recommended listening from me. Let me know what you think if you find time to listen to the talk.
May 29, 2025

Comments (2)

Make an account to reply.
image
I just got Karen's new book and can't wait to read it! This stuff is very pseudo-religious, and I couldn't pinpoint why it all felt so weird until I heard her make that point. It's the worst impulses of the crypto/NFT fad but with an air of holiness
Jun 3, 2025
1
image
@THECLACK I haven't got the book yet but I bet it's fascinating. The funniest thing, though, I recollected that a few years back I was interested to learn how sects operate and... you know what? Some tech companies seem to follow the same guidelines lol. For example, sects want you to visit their "office" constantly because it gives them more control over you. Also, sects try to make you feel exceptional for belonging to a sect, better thab other humans – I get this vibe from some of tech companies and people too.
Jun 3, 2025
1

Related Recs

recommendation image
🪞
Shannon Vallor, a virtue ethicist and philosopher, has been studying the ethics of emerging technologies for nearly 20 years. In this book she challenges the simplistic tech optimist and doomer viewpoints of the future of AI technology. She believes that these polarized media narratives act as a distraction from other pressing issues, from the powers that already control us, and from the genuine existential risks of AI. She posits that creating the illusion of AI as an all-powerful godlike force and de-emphasizing the role of human input in its proliferation/development benefits corporate interest, leaving individuals feeling disempowered and as though they are without a choice. Vallor uses the metaphor of the physical properties of mirrors to paint a picture of artificial intelligence as a reflection of human intelligence. She demystifies AI technology, explaining its realistic capabilities and its limitations, and offers a radical path of grassroots resistance that puts us back in the driver‘s seat to reclaim our humanity and shape our future. I linked a one-hour podcast episode where she talks about the ideas she explores in the book. I highly recommend listening at the very least if you‘re interested in hearing her perspective!
Oct 5, 2024
🤖
nah, i wouldn't use it like that, and i'd strongly recommend that no one does. there have been various pieces written about AI inducing what is essentially religious/spiritual psychosis in people, some of which have even lead to divorce. but, even aside from that, replacing human interaction, companionship or therapy, with a hyper-advanced predictive text chat bot will do nothing but further alienate people, especially under capitalism. i think using it to talk to someone that's deceased isn't quite as bad as the latter, but is still very bad. understanding and coping with mortality is something that humans have been doing the entire time we've existed, and a key part of the way we process death involves not being able to talk to the deceased person anymore. aside from completely removing that aspect of the experience of losing a loved one, what are the ethical implications of this, and how would one even feasibly "get their loved one into the LLM?" would you have to upload their all of their diaries to some cloud based AI service? would you have to painstakingly write their biography into the prompt field yourself? i think a lot of people are using "AI" (i hate that its even called that) for things that it should never have been used for. use it as a tool to summarize your emails and make lists, not as a therapist or girlfriend.
Jun 12, 2025
🤖
My #official take is that AI art generally on the whole fucking sucks. 90% of it is uninteresting slop content by brain dead techbros who have no knowledge of art or why we value it. HOWEVER!!! There is one use case where I think using AI in your art can actually elevate the work, and that’s if the art itself is in some way trying to say something about AI. Luckily, there’s actually a lot of things to say about AI – referencing it in your work pretty firmly places it in the current cultural landscape in super powerful way. Some examples (note that these all have pretty nihilistic / downright dystopian outlooks on modern society, maybe that’s also imporyant): - Vegyn’s album under the Headache pseudonym - some of the scenes in Conner O’Malley’s 103 fever short
Jan 16, 2025

Top Recs from @marina_agl

recommendation image
♣️
It's some sub-brand of Marks&Spencer that existed in the 1990s. I thrifted it under $8 because the thrift store had a sale huh. I'm proud of all my thrift finds but I don't have pics of all of them.
May 26, 2025
recommendation image
🌱
There are a lot of movies that have impacted me in this or that way. I used to spend days in a movie theatre with my elder sister. I'm naming 2, though. The Tenenbaums helped me to accept that my family was imperfect. The original Mulan helped me to be much less hesitant about not following the stereotypes of what a woman should be.
Jun 9, 2025
recommendation image
💖
I think this moth looks like an anime character.
May 26, 2025