New piece from Brian Merchant: Yes, the striking dockworkers were Luddites. And they won.

Pulling out a specific paragraph here (bolding mine):

I was glad to see some in the press recognizing this, which shows something of a sea change is underfoot; outlets like the Washington Post, CNN, and even Inc. Magazine all published pieces sympathizing with the longshoremen besieged by automation—and advised workers worried about AI to pay attention. “Dockworkers are waging a battle against automation,” the CNN headline noted, “The rest of us may want to take notes.” That feeling that many more jobs might be vulnerable to automation by AI is perhaps opening up new pathways to solidarity, new alliances.

To add my thoughts, those feelings likely aren’t just that many more jobs are at risk than people thought, but that AI is primarily, if not exclusively, threatening the jobs people want to do (art, poetry, that sorta shit), and leaving the dangerous/boring jobs mostly untouched - effectively the exact opposite of the future the general public wants AI to bring them.

Not a sneer, but I saw an article that was basically an extremely goddamn long list of forum recommendations and it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

The Internet Archive’s been hacked and had a data breach

I don’t think our collective consciousness was aware of the “what if it was just utterly stupid and incompetent” possibility.

Its a possibility which doesn’t make for good sci-fi (unless you’re writing an outright dystopia (e.g. Paranoia)), so sci-fi writers were unlikely to touch it.

The tech industry had enjoyed a lengthy period of unvarnished success and conformist press up to this point, so Joe Public probably wasn’t gonna entertain the idea that this shiny new tech could drop the ball until they saw something like the glue pizza sprawl.

And the tech press isn’t gonna push back against AI, for obvious reasons.

So, I’m not shocked this revelation completely blindsided the public.

I think a couple of people noted it at the start, but this is truly a paradigm shift.

Yeah, this is very much a paradigm shift - I don’t know how wide-ranging the consequences will be, but I expect we’re in for one hell of a ride.

The purpose of this project is not to restrict or ban the use of AI in articles, but to verify that its output is acceptable and constructive, and to fix or remove it otherwise.

Wikipedia’s mod team definitely haven’t realised it yet, but this part is pretty much a de facto ban on using AI. AI is incapable of producing output that would be acceptable for a Wikipedia article - in basically every instance, its getting nuked.

Online art school Schoolism publicly sneers at AI art, gets standing ovation

And now, a quick sidenote:

This is gut instinct, but I’m starting to get the feeling this AI bubble’s gonna destroy the concept of artificial intelligence as we know it.

Mainly because of the slop-nami and the AI industry’s repeated failures to solve hallucinations - both of those, I feel, have built an image of AI as inherently incapable of humanlike intelligence/creativity (let alone Superintelligence^tm), no matter how many server farms you build or oceans of water you boil.

Additionally, I suspect that working on/with AI, or supporting it in any capacity, is becoming increasingly viewed as a major red flag - a “tech asshole signifier” to quote Baldur Bjarnason for the bajillionth time.

For a specific example, the major controversy that swirled around “Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In… SPRINGTRAPPED!” over its use of AI voices would be my pick.

Eagan Tilghman, the man behind the slaughter animation, may have been a random indie animator, who made Springtrapped on a shoestring budget and with zero intention of making even a cent off it, but all those mitigating circumstances didn’t save the poor bastard from getting raked over the coals anyway. If that isn’t a bad sign for the future of AI as a concept, I don’t know what is.

In other news, Hindenburg Research just put out a truly damning report on Roblox, aptly titled “Roblox: Inflated Key Metrics For Wall Street And A Pedophile Hellscape For Kids”, and the markets have responded.

Every AI spring brings an even harsher AI winter.

Oh, I expect a real harsh AI winter once this spring comes to a close - the public isn’t just overtly disappointed about AI’s failure to deliver, but outright angry at the nasty shit AI’s unleashed upon them.

2026

Not soon enough. I’d be happy if they were forced to list it right the fuck now.

evidence of wider continued rising of the tide against saltman’s bullshit grows

Precisely when that rising tide will drown Altman I’m not sure, but I feel safe in saying it’ll probably drown the rest of the AI industry (and potentially “AI” as a concept) as well - Altman is pretty much the face of this AI bubble, after all.

The rising tide was likely also helped along by OpenAI going fully for-profit, which shattered the humanitarian guise it spent the last decade or so building, and, to quote myself, “given the true believers reason to believe [Altman would] commit omnicide-via-spicy-autocomplete for a quick buck”.

Mark Zuckerberg says the quiet part out loud:

In other news, AI can now falsify cancer tumours, because even the slight sliver of hope that it could help with cancer treatment had to come with a massive downside

Personal opinion:

(I know I’m probably going too harsh on AI but my patience has completely ran out with this bubble and touching grass can no longer quell the ass-blasting fury it unleashes within me)