Don't Push AI Down Our Throats
Postedabout 1 month agoActive28 days ago
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If your blog/host/post delivery site attempts to force me to be tracked and execute code against my will you are no better than the AI pushers.
You either comply of face unnecessary roadblocks. OP has complied by sharing the link. My right to choose tracking cookies and script execution is parallel to my right to not utilize or be forced to utilize AI. This issue has to be addressed universally as is not simple "no ai" on the web; it's freedom to use the web or compliance with violation of that freedom
Benefit of the doubt: this person wants to get their word out and it's more energy than they had to track down a pristine, pure, sparkling blogging engine.
Last week, they pushed an update that broke all of the features on the watch unless I agreed to allow Google to train their AI on my content.
I'm in, but let's have it in October or something when I'm less busy.
I assume the main point would be getting the attention of politicians who would step in and intervene. Especially if it’s a situation where the courts are truly overwhelmed.
I'm new to Android, so maybe I can somehow still preserve some privacy and have basic voice commands, but from what I saw, it required me to enable Gemini Apps Activity with a wall of text I had to agree to in order to get a simple command to play some music to work.
I might switch back to my iOS device, but what I'd really like to do is replace the Andriod OS on this Motorola with a community oriented open source OS. Then I could start working on piping the mic audio to my own STT model and execute commands on the phone.
Microsoft pulled the this crap with Windows, you once they stop caring about their you’ve already lost it’s time to stop paying their game.
There are few things AI is truly very good at. Surveillance at scale is one of them. Given everything going on in the world these days it's worth considering.
It's a step back to not be able to do it by voice but if you're concerned enough about your privacy, stopping once or twice during a ride doesn't sound like the end of the world.
I'm not saying it's fine that Google took away functionality but, from a practical perspective, it seems like OP was acting like there's no other option available to change tracks. There is and it's really not that inconvenient.
This reply demonstrates you don't understand the problem. Please don't contribute to the enshittifacation of everything by being an apologist for unethical behavior.
https://support.google.com/gemini/community-guide/309961682/...
I don't think it's asking too much to not make my product worse after I buy it, and I think we need legislation to prevent companies from doing that. I'm not sure what that would look like, and the government is bought and paid for by those same companies, so it's unlikely we will see that. But we do need it.
How can such law be written and how can a lawyer litigate that in court? The way you've phrased it is very subjective. What is an objective measure that a court can use to determine the percentage of quality drop in a product against a timeline?
Do you want to work on Oracle Database [1]?
By the way, I also don't want the software I use to suffer from quality drop due to new forced "features". I just don't think the way suggested here works well.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
I'm aware people are annoyed with big UI overhauls that seemingly do nothing, but I don't think you understand what it would take to support what you wrote. You're describing something that gets exponentially harder to maintain as a product ages. It's completely prohibitive to small businesses. How many UI changes do you think are made in a year for a young product? One that is constantly getting calls from clients to add this or that? Should a company support 100 different versions of their app?
I understand a small handful of companies occasionally allow you to use old UI, but those are cases where the functionality hasn't changed much. If you were to actually mandate this, it would make a lot of UIs worse, not better.
As much as people want to act like there's a clear separation, a lot of UI controls are present or absent based on what business logic your server can do. If you are forced to support an old UI that does something the company cannot do anymore, you are forcing broken or insecure functionality. And this would be in the name of something nobody outside of Hackernews would even use. Most people are not aware there is an old.reddit.com.
1) Have this law only apply B2C.
2) Stop having rolling feature updates except on an opt-in basis. It used to be that when I bought an operating system or a program it stayed bought, and only updated if I actively went out and bought an update. Rolling security updates are still a good idea, and if they break UI functionality then let the end customer know so that they can make the decision on whether or not to update.
For hosted software, such as Google office, is it really that much more difficult to host multiple versions of the office suite? I can see issues if people are collaborating, but if newer file formats can be used in older software with a warning that some features may not be saved or viewable, then the same can be done with a collaborative document vis-a-vis whatever version of the software is opening the document.
My wife recently went 0patch and some other programs to cover her Win10 when Microsoft stopped updating it. She still got force updated two updates having to do with patching errors in Windows' ESU feature that blocked people from signing up for the 1-year of ESUs. She let those updates happen without trying to figure out a way to block them as they have no other impact on her operating system, but it would have been nice if Microsoft have been serious about ending the updates when it said it was.
I am not a programmer, but come on. This was done in the past with far less computational ability.
You can add them, you can even move them, but you don't get to take back something you already sold me, unless I also get to take back the money I gave you.
Really not super interested in excuses and whining. Either support the features you sold me, or refund my money. It really is that simple... and it really should be the law.
But the question is how do you define what a feature is in networked apps? If you play an online game with a sniper rifle that one-shots people, and the developers nerf it, have they taken a feature from you? But everyone else loved the nerf? How do we support you and the players? Let you continue one-shotting them?
If the app you're paying for could message other users, but now they can block you, is the company supposed to give you a refund because now you can't message some users?
> Have this law only apply B2C.
I don't think limiting it to B2C changes much. Now instead of business customers calling and asking for features, you have swaths of people asking for a feature on the internet.
> I am not a programmer, but come on. This was done in the past with far less computational ability
If by computational ability you mean the actual power of our hardware, this isn't really a computational problem, it's a manpower problem. We have faster computers, but our velocity as developers has been relatively stagnant the past 20 years, if not worse.
Believe me, I'm totally sympathetic to the idea that web apps could support older versions. I have thought of doing it myself if I were to get out of contract work. But I'm aware of how much extra work that is, and it would be something I do for fun, not something that most people would appreciate.
> Stop having rolling feature updates except on an opt-in basis. It used to be that when I bought an operating system or a program it stayed bought, and only updated if I actively went out and bought an update
Having an opt-in doesn't really change what I'm talking about. This is lumping different kinds of software together, and it would be helpful to separate them. There are apps that do local work on your computer, apps that communicate with a network, and the OS itself.
Apps that work locally and don't need to talk to a server can have multiple versions, and they often do. That's a solved problem. I have not been forced to upgrade any third party app on my computer. But I have had AI crammed into Microsoft apps and I hate it.
Apps that communicate with a server, and other users, are the source of a lot of issues I'm talking about. Maintaining versions for these creates cascading problems for everyone.
For OS: I'm all for not being forced to upgrade my OS. But if I don't upgrade, the reality is I will miss security updates and won't be able to use newer apps. That was the case in the 90's, and it's the case now.
> Rolling security updates are still a good idea
That's doing some heavy lifting. It's a good idea, sure, but you can't just sprinkle security updates onto older versions. You're just multiplying how long each security fix takes for all users.
> For hosted software, such as Google office, is it really that much more difficult to host multiple versions of the office suite
In Google's case, it's difficult to maintain one version of an app. They kill apps left and right. You're referencing software from the biggest companies in the world. Reddit manages just one other version, and that's because the core of their app has stayed the same since 1.0. If we required all B2C to always support older versions, we'd essentially make it illegal for small companies to make networked services.
Here's how it plays out for a small company:
- Every security fix has to be backported to every version of the app. This is not free, this is extra work for each version. What if it's discovered Google Docs has a vulnerability that could leak your password and has for 20 years? That's a lot of versions to update.
- If the app interacts with other users in anyway, new features may need to support old versions anyway. How do you add a permissions system to Google Docs if the old version has no permissions? What should happen on the old app when they access a doc they couldn't access before? You have to program something in.
- Support staff has to know 10 different versions of the app. "Have you tried clicking the settings icon?" "What settings icon?"
- Internet Guides? YouTube tutorials? When you Google how to do something, you'd need to specify your version.
- Because we are doomed to support older versions in some capacity, companies will just not work on features that many people want because it's too hard to support the few people on older versions.
This is why apps with "versions" usually have support periods, because it would be impossible for them to support everything.
And that's fine. Just leave it that way and stop with the rolling feature updates that a person can't block because the only way you sell your software is as SaaS.
Second, it’s not exactly about whether the change constitutes a drop in quality but whether it renders the product unfit for its ordinary purpose. The argument would essentially be that the change is a deliberately introduced defect.
It’s a little weird but a plausible claim given the right facts.
It should be illegal for you to change a product you sold me in a way that degrades functionality or impairs usability, without offering me the option of either a full refund or a software rollback.
If that causes pain and grief for server-based products, oh, well. Bummer. They'll get by somehow.
And even with the ability of rolling back somewhere hidden in the settings, forced UI changes are annoying at best - they should always come at a time chosen by the user (including "never") and not any other time.
you rented/leased a watch for an undefined amount of time.
Do the terms allow YouTube/Google to use the data collected for any purpose
this is pretty much everything everywhere right now. except local linux mostly.
This is counterproductive. Believing as this person appears to that AI is “ripping off” “creators” is completely orthogonal to sparkling “use AI” buttons in apps being really annoying. Almost everyone agrees with the latter, the former is a niche position that makes the overall essay completely unpalatable to many.
Pick you battles, if you care about software being less annoying, focus on that without tacking on riders about other political causes.
Did that single sentence in this relatively short, 36 sentence post really make you flip the table as hard as you imply? That's surprising if so.
i support this but the Smarter Than Me types say it's impossible. It's not possible to track down an adequate number of copyright holders, much less get their permission, much less afford to pay them, for the number of works required in order to get the LLM to achieve "liftoff".
I would think that as I use Claude for coding, it would work just as well if it didnt suck down the last three years of NYT articles as if it did. There's a vast amount of content that is in the public domain, and if you're ChatGPT you can make deals with a bunch of big publishers to get more modern content too. But that's my know-nothing take.
maybe the issue is more about the image content. Screw the image content (and definitely the music content, spotify pushing this slop is immensely offensive), pay the artists. My code OTOH is open source, MIT licensed. It's not art at all. Go get it (though throw me a few thousand bucks every year because you want to do the right thing).
Adobe has been training models on only licensed media. I'm not sure if it's all their models or just some of them, and I haven't seen the results, but someone's doing it.
If you don't mind the oligarchs stealing your code, that is your prerogative. Many other people do mind.
Pretty much my sentiment too.
Your favorite services are adding “AI” features (and raising prices to boot), your data is being collected and analyzed (probably incorrectly) by AI tools, you are interacting with AI-generated responses on social media, viewing AI-generated images and videos, and reading articles generated by AI. Business leaders are making decisions about your job and your value using AI, and political leaders are making policy and military decisions based on AI output.
It’s happening, with you or to you.
Visa hasn't worked for online purchases for me for a few months, seemingly because of a rogue fraud-detection AI their customer service can't override.
Is there any chance that's just a poorly implemented traditional solution rather than feeding all my data into an LLM?
Traditional fraud-detection models have quantified type-i/ii error rates, and somebody typically chooses parameters such that those errors are within acceptable bounds. If somebody decided to use a transformers-based architecture in roughly the same setup as before then there would be no issue, but if somebody listened to some exec's hairbrained idea to "let the AI look for fraud" and just came up with a prompt/api wrapping a modern LLM then there would be huge issues.
https://successfulsoftware.net/2022/04/14/verifone-seems-to-...
For all the talk in the early days of Bitcoin comparing it to Visa and how it couldn't reach the scale of Visa, I never thought it would be that Visa just decided to place itself lower than Bitcoin.
Kind of the same as Windows getting so bad it got worse than Linux, actually...
At least it had a sense of humor. I told Copilot this install was taking too long and I was bored. It responded with essentially: "if you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean. You might as well sweep up the kitchen during this install."
It writes a narrative of success even if it's embellished. Managers respond to data and the people collecting the data are incentivised to indicate success.
we’ll force you to come back to justify sunk money in office space.
We don't talk enough about how the real estate industry is a gigantic drag on the economy.
Perhaps… the right balance is actually working only 4 days a week, always from the office, and just having the 5th day proper-off instead.
I think people go through “grinds” to get big projects done, and then plateau’s of “cooling down”. I think every person only has so much grind to give, and extra days doesn’t mean more work, so the ideal employee is one you pay for 3-4 days per week only.
But that's a tall order, so maybe we just need managers to pay attention. It doesn't take that much effort to stay involved enough to know who is slacking and who is pulling their weight, and a good manager can do it without seeming to micromanage. Maybe they'll do this when they realize that what they're doing now could largely be replaced by an LLM...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096603
It's a sort of pushiness that hints not even the people behind the product are very confident in its appeal.
I’m not opposed to any of the above, necessarily. I’ve just always been the type to want to adopt things as they are needed and bring demonstrable value to myself or my employer and not a moment before. That is the problem that capital has tried to solve through “founder mode” startups and exploitative business models: “It doesn’t matter whether you need it or not, what matters is that we’re forcing you to pay for it so we get our returns.”
Gas companies said electricity was a fad. Some doctors said electric light harms the eyes. It's too expensive for practical use. Need too much infrastructure investment. AC will kill people with shocks. Electrification will destroy jobs, said gas lamp unions. It's unnatural, said some clergy. And on and on and on...
Even the block chain comparison isn't valid because it didn't consist of an "AI" button getting crammed into every single product and website, turned into a popover etc.
For example, I'm not a big fan of blockchain. In fact, I think crypto is just 99% scam.
But big data led to machine learning and LLMS right? Cloud led to cheaper software with faster deploy times right? In fact, cloud also means many browser based apps replacing old Windows apps.
None of these were fads. They are still tremendously useful today.
As I'm seeing from the multitude of folks scrutinizing my clearly exhaustive list of every single technology fad ever (sarcasm, for those unclear), they're missing the forest for the trees and therefore likely to hit every single rung when they fall down a ladder. I'm not saying X or Y wasn't valuable, or wasn't useful, only that they way they're shoved into every single orifice by force is neither of those things to those taken advantage of in the quest for utility.
The point isn't that advancements are bad, the point is the way we force them down the throats of everyone, everywhere, all the time creates a waste of skill and capital for the returns of a very select group of people. The point is that fads are bad, and we should let entities (companies and people) find use in what's offered naturally rather than force-feeding garbage to everyone to see what's actually palatable.
Unbeknownst to me that there was an issue. It pointed out multiple signs of slow leaks and then described what i should do to test and repair it easily.
I see a lot of negative energy about the 'AI' tech we have today to the point where you will get mass downvoted for saying something positive.
What startups are doing earning calls?
Which then nobody will ever read, they'll just copy it into the AI bot to summarize into a few bullet points.
The amount of waste is quite staggering in this back and forth game.
Which more often than not will lose or distort the original intention behind the first 5 bullet points.
Which is why I avoid using LLMs for writing.
Round trip through recall and OCR, here's your "text" or image for pasting.
Sounds dumb. I know.
Then again, a friend sent a screenshot of a contact and I asked AI to convert that to a vCard I could import (impressively saved time and was less error-prone).
You need to push slop, because people don’t really want it.
AI really needs R&D time, where we first figure out what it’s good for and how best to exploit it.
But R&D for SW is dead. Users proved to be super-resilient to buggy or mis-matched sw. They adapt. ‘Good-enough’ often doesn’t look it. Private equity sez throw EVERYTHING at the wall and chase what sticks…
Plus the general economy outlook is negative, AI is the bright spot. They are striving to keep growth up amid downward pressure.