F
This is so bizarre to me.
I remember in the early days of the internet if you found out a company had a high speed connection at the office or if they gave you a nice laptop you might want to go work there more.
I somehow don't think young people are feeling the same way about companies who buy AI services for everyone.
Maybe I'm just old. But ... I don't think so.
"People imagine that code is written for the computer to run, but really it's always been written for the programmers to understand."
Say it again. Print it out and post it on the wall.
Carve it into a granite pillar and put it in the town square.
Have you had a workshop, memo or other pressure to use AI at your work or school?
I'm defining "pressure" as either training or other work events designed to get you to engage with AI when you might not have bothered otherwise.
Of course any mandate that you MUST use it would count too.
What do you call the leafy vegetable that looks like a Radicchio but is shaped like an endive?
Our CSA box had one and this thing is awesome but I don't know how to call it.
UPDATE: it's just a long Radicchio I didn't know they could be long like this.
People are so lazy. Just research the companies and decide if they will be able to make money or not. Invest for five years minimum. Or get in a fund if you don't know what you are doing.
It feels like the great push to make this into a moment of technical disruption has reached a new low of self reference. Because the other advantage of an "all AI" app is that none of the people who dislike AI will show up and be ... inconvenient.
But how long can the jewel-toned wobbly hallucinations keep those who like them engaged? Where will the video generation engine get fresh images to keep it from growing stale?
Which brings me back to "meta vibes" ... normally a platform where people post original content can allow the platform owner to monetize advertising and data collection.
With Vibes there is no new content, just recycled images generated by the platform itself. Will that really produce large audiences?
Maybe for a moment at best, but it's very limited.
The more consequential impact would seem to be getting more people to use AI to generate video keeping the servers humming. Making noise.
And it's a little sad. Because it's not like there aren't a few dozen exciting use cases for LLMs and image generation engines.
For example speech to text. Using an LLM to clean up dictation, which tends to be horrible, is pretty effective. What LLMs do well is find the most obvious answer, produce what is typical. Good for when you want to guess what someone said.
But something so practical and modest isn't the imagined role for this tech.
No. You must agree it will change everything.
This is making me feel crazy, kind of like the crown of Saint Wenceslas. Which I keep finding people saying is "so beautiful" and I'm just like: no. no that is not true.
But, hey, at least the crown of Saint Wenceslas is old. It's a real object from the distant past and that is a little glamorous and interesting.
I keep saying "but it doesn't really work" and that keeps on ... not being an issue. But, for technology, "working" is kind of the whole point.
Part of the push is alarmism. So, even "anti-AI" ... "concerns" can overplay the usefulness of this set of technologies.
And, I hate saying it but these are not totally useless bits of tech. It's just not the revolution we are being told it is. It's not good enough at doing what it claims for this to be true.
If "vibes" is still around in two years I will be SHOCKED.
I don't think "vibes" will be all that popular. It has a novelty to it if you've never seen this kind of video before but after about 5min it all looks the same. It's boring.
Disruptive technologies ... disrupt by changing the way people do things.
And there are a lot of people who desperately want AI to be very disruptive.
But, I've never seen so much top-down pushing to try to make this happen.
Forcing people to use it at work. Adding it to applications.
If people wanted an AI word possessor they would stop using google docs to have it, and THEN those apps would be forced to add it.
We skipped that step.
You know... the one where it's organically popular.
If AI was really the wonderful creative tool it's sold as people would line up to pay for it. You wouldn't need to push it, you wouldn't need to give it away to boost up the usage numbers.
Imagine if it could really make, say a video that was what you wanted. Not something that's kind of like what you wanted that gives you motion sickness, but work of a quality of a master animator working with you for a month to get it right.
But it can't deliver.
This is what I keep coming back to.
That said, I think this is a lot like when a celebrity runs a "charity auction" but you can only participate using the obscure crypto currency they are vested in.
It's a kind of pumping scam. Not enough people are using AI to make videos so here is a way to try to make people use AI to make videos. On "vibes" you have no choice.
The desperation propping up the bubble keeps becoming more and more visible.
Meta Vibes is a new facebook AI video "creation" tool and tiktok like short form video feed.
I think it's just a way to create more demand for those data centers. People who really want to make content have found limited uses for AI, but have also experienced backlash from their audiences.
"Vibes" skips this problem by eliminating this segment of the audience. Everything in vibes is AI and anyone can be a "creator" ... wow.
Will we see "viral vibes?" (this new jargon is destroying my soul)
Ant mimics look like AI generated ants. Both of the following photos made my "is that AI" sense twitch, but these are both real photos of ants along side a rove beetle mimic in the first and a spider mimic in the second.
Maybe the way that AI is adjacent to mimicry is part of what makes it creep me out so much.
*angry old lady noises*
You'd hardly think it to look at me
that a cat like me could be so hungry
But it's time it is said.
I have never been fed.
never been treated right!
Not once in my life.
You'd think, for a cat like me,
life would be so free and easy!
I'm loved and praised
but you'll be amazed.
When you see my bowl so bare
there isn't any food there
I've never been fed.
I've never been fed.
And soon I'll be DEAD.
Because I've never been fed.
Replacing every search engine with a 30s paper boy who doesn't really listen to what you ask for, runs off to get it before you get done explaining, and always gets waylaid by flimflam men who pay him a nickel to bring back something other than what you asked for along the way.
"Bugsey said yous might like to read this paper better miss, aw wontcha least take a look miss??"