An important piece in my opinion. Obviously with my political leaning it all feels to me like it was just a question of time before we got there. Still it's valuable to read this kind of insider views.
Interesting opinion piece on how autocracies benefit greatly from the current AI arm race. But the short term benefit will also create new weaknesses.
Kind of an unusual read. But I think the message is powerful. We should definitely favor community over tools controlled by the new robber barons.
Yes, the preposterous statements from the tech moguls have a use. They allow them to gauge how obedient you are. This is thus a political function and a way to check their power. Maybe it's time we collectively start to say the Emperor has no clothes?
This essay is fairly US centric but since other countries used the US surveillance apparatus as a blueprint for their own it's widely applicable. It's 25 years of failures and constitutional hazard, maybe it's time to finally respect the right to privacy? Or are our governments too hooked to controlling the population and hunting dissent?
Or why it's stupid to judge people on their non virtuous behavior while at the same time fostering the structures which ensure that virtue does not pay. So indeed, some people read the odds properly and act accordingly...
The argument presented is maybe a bit too mechanical for my taste. That said there's indeed something to be said about the decline in literacy and its consequences on our societies.
Build a good enough echo chamber and you won't know you're toast before it's too late.
There's no "apolitical" projects. Claiming the contrary is just trying to hide your agenda. While our engineer culture keeps falling for it, really bad actors are benefiting from it...
Don't be fooled by the click-bait title. It's a good piece looking at history and game theory. It gives some lessons about how civilizations collapse... or not.
Clearly there's a political project behind the design of those tools. Clearly our industry is lacking enough class consciousness to push back against the "AI overlords" agenda.
Or a reminder that no system can be made to be completely safe and secure. When the political pressure or violence gets in the equation it's hard to not simply falter and satisfy the demands.
Very important opinion piece from Cory Doctorow again. The trend was clear of an epistemic crisis brewing and generative AI basically put it on steroids. This is a real blow to our civilisation.
Excellent piece. I'm feeling unease at this widespread confusion between european ownership and digital freedom. What we collectively need is the latter. There's no sovereignty to be had in a proprietary ecosystem, be it owned by an European company or not.
No the technology we use isn't neutral... In that case it directly fund fascists. Whatever the technical merits from the Mullvad VPN it disqualify them to be used.
If you still don't think data centres have a water consumption problem, especially since the LLM weapon race... Think again.
An illustration of the political and ethical acumen being low in our profession in general and in some (most?) Open Source projects in particular...
Some of it is probably a bit too cynical (often the case with this author), and yet it has good advice on how software engineers influence the organisation around them.
Not what I signed up for years ago, but it's the political and social landscape we inherited... Surveillance is being on steroids now, so definitely need to fight it at every turn.
Excellent piece, where are the netizens who should be fighting back those bills? Looks like we became very complacent and passivity reigns this time around. Didn't think it was related to the pervasive centralisation already in place... but indeed that might be a strong contributing factor.