We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed while reading the politics of the io domain, seeing the real people who’s voice is used for AI misinformation and Tiktok misinformation advertising under the microscope.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“
You are seeing aspects of this with wider Fediverse interest, more research why companies should be owned by employees and Rushkoff’s program or programmed rewritten for the AI future.
The lack of privacy behind those AI input prompts
Ian thinks: Another look at the uncomfortable side of AI, but this video outlines the problem and also offers some solutions beyond running your own LLM; including Venice.ai and Brave’s Leo LLM.
Could webarchives be more distributed?
Ian thinks: The internet archive and wayback machine has been a solid part of the internet for so long, the shock of many when it was taken offline recently has visceral. There are other web archives but this has shone a light on the absolute importance of archives and maybe more cooperation between archives to boost resilience.
Watch out for the nostalgic trap!
Ian thinks: Nostalgia gives a lot of people a fuzzy warm feeling even when you never actually experienced it as GenZ have demonstrated. It is very hard to explain how problematic nostalgia can be when thinking and writing policies for the future. The very notion of commercial nostalgia jacking, being used to weaponize nostalgia against ourselves is even more dangerous. The video shows talks through all this and how it was a commercial tactic for decades.
Why Surveillance Watch? The creator explains in depth
Ian thinks: This interview is full of interesting points about privacy and the problems we all face when attempting to protect our privacy. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to explain why I don’t use Whatsapp for example.
Embedding repair culture by looking at Berlin
Ian thinks: The rise of right to repair is exciting. However could paying people to repair their old goods be a mixture for something more sustainable? Or could make things more complex as other studies have shown in the past.
Where we are going, we don’t need environmental limits?
Ian thinks: I think Schmidt’s statement is very irresponsible to say the least, But he’s not the only one, following their Silicon values (Which was coined and written by Julian York) and the absolute push for revenue with complete dominance over human life; is shocking. However worst still is the belief the problem will be solved by emerging tech, is short term thinking and gambling with all our lives. In this case Gen AI, is clearly part of the problem and won’t save us.
What are the environmental costs of gen AI in real terms?
Ian thinks: Schmidt and all of the AI industry really need to take a serious look at the environmental impact. However those figures can be quite dry and difficult visualise. The Washington post have made the environmental damage more tangible using resources we use everyday.
Data vampires only respect Silicon Values
Ian thinks: This mini-series by Paris Marx is a powerful reminder of how little to zero care or attention is paid to democracy, the environment and humanity in the Silicon corps. I kept thinking about those Silicon values across the episodes, and its very clear across this 4 part series [2] [3] [4].
Publishers should decentralised now?
Ian thinks: There is a number of journalists and news publishers who have switched their business models to one focused on supporting journalism by going direct to the reader. The podcast post outlines how the fediverse can support direct community relationships and sets out why it could signal the future of news.
Find the archive here