I don’t know the relationship between the two. It was obviously a harsh response. But it was defending himself as a CEO that apparently is not just a heartless and skillless CEO. If that’s untrue, that’s mostly a separate issue.
But their main point, as I understand, is that the generalising critique of CEOs was missing the point that CEOs who apparently know what they’re talking about can also be pro-AI.
Now I’m anti-AI, but that seems like a meaningful point to make at the moment (although it was done aggressively, as I said).
Honestly, one of the things worrying me at this moment with AI is just how much pro and anti-AI can’t speak the same language any more. And I think this is an example. AI can be good or bad irrespective of whether CEOs psychopaths.
In fact, I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly. For pro-AI peeps it’s easy. If it does a thing quickly and easily, and that’s your goal, then that’s a win. Talking about quality and the fate of humanity is a different kind of conversation.
With this Twitter exchange, yes CEOs can be psychopaths. But I’m not sure that’s the important point. A world run by Big Corpo is much more psychopathic while there will always be some CEOs in that system who aren’t all bad. Maybe a pedantic point. But in this case, I’m not sure Kenney win the argument, at least not for many of the readers we’d need to convince.
But their main point, as I understand, is that the generalising critique of CEOs was missing the point that CEOs who apparently know what they’re talking about can also be pro-AI.
Um, I guess? But do keep in mind, if there were a league of companies all dumping arsenic into a river, it would seem a little odd to me to insist that “some of them aren’t crazy.”
Like, I think that dumping arsenic into the water supply—at all—is sort of mentally disqualifying. Only anti-social, selfish, narcissistic psychopaths are capable of doing that. There’s no room for such a person to destroy public resources like that and be considered polite, if misguided company.
I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly.
Maybe. It’s a question that’s always worth asking. That said, though, is convincing them with reason really what we’re trying to do? Have you tried reasoning with a 9/11 truther, for instance?
Reason is a very powerful tool, but it only works if the people you’re talking to are interested in the truth.
Racists are not defeated because they are convinced that their welfare-queen idea doesn’t make any sense, or that it doesn’t bore out in the data. They are defeated when their sentiments are socially stamped out, when airing out one’s racism gets you publically flogged and discarded.
I just—in general, I don’t see the point in nit-picking people’s arguments against AI or CEOs when public disgust for it is what’s measurably important.
I feel like we’re more or less saying the same thing here. I think the initial argument was a fairly logical and dry one about what skills CEOs do and don’t have, not, as I think we both claim is more important, that they work for companies in capitalism, with all that that entails, such that the marketable qualities of the CEO as a person are a distraction.
I still don’t think you understand what I’m saying.
Tim Sweeney can say that he is skilled, actually, but 1), I don’t believe him, and 2) his use of AI is disqualifying. He can say “but I do value the craft of making things,” and I can say “no, he doesn’t; here’s the evidence: he uses AI.”
I get what you’re saying. But that’s your thoughts not those presented in the Twitter excerpt, and I’m talking about that excerpt.
Slightly more broadly, yes one can make the point that you are, and it may have been a more interesting exchange on Twitter if it were made from the top.
More broadly, I still have concerns about the nature of “the discourse”, because I just don’t think you’re going to win many hearts and minds with this line of thinking without some change in the framing, by, eg, focusing on the harms and “evils” of AI (with the disqualification of those indifferent to such issues being a natural corollary).
But even then, I fear still that that conversation is being lost, and these sort of ad hominem attacks as we see in the excerpt and even your summary just above of disqualified people are symptom of anti-AI not knowing what to say anymore. I see your point about shaming and all, but I look around the world and honestly think it’s a pipe dream. I hope it works for you, genuinely.
and these sort of ad hominem attacks as we see in the excerpt
But this is ultimately what I’m getting at: this is fine.
You have a period of natural discourse over the exact nature of the is and isn’ts, and at some point a truth is found, and any further disagreement is such you have to recognize is irrational and must simply be squashed.
It’s not a lack of things to say; the people we’re talking to are not listening. Targets like Tim Sweeney, anyway. Audience members actually like it when you dunk on bad people. It’s cathartic. It feels like action.
If I had any criticism for these people, it’s that this action tends not to metastasize into anything. We’ve had decades and decades of discourse over global warming, probably some of it mean, and yet nothing has really happened. Nobody wants to put in the work to bring these polluting companies to heel.
but I look around the world and honestly think it’s a pipe dream.
I don’t necessarily think that anything is going to happen either, but I also don’t think that tempering our tones to be more civil and hyperfactual is helping.
To effect change, you need energy. And stopping people from hurrah-ing so that you can correct them on the nuances of their speech—speech that isn’t even wrong, if I’m being perfectly honest—speech that is only idictable by some fractal of technicalities—stifles that energy. You lose momentum, naturally, by constantly stopping to check your shoe laces.
Anyway, I really don’t mean to drag this out. I don’t think you’re a bad guy or anything, I just see a tone-policing thing happening here that irks me.
In the end, I think we’re more or less in the same page. If you picked up on a tone policing vibe, I think I can see that, but that totally wasn’t where I was coming from. EG, going after all CEOs for being brain washed psychopaths who naturally use AI because they’re psychopathic would have been in line with what I was saying, at least to me.
But no need to drag this out. Appreciate your comments!
I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly.
Totally agree. At a certain point, simply calling out slop (deserved though it is) just becomes part of the background noise because it’s so commonplace.
I’m so sick of having to create more and more convincingly nuanced arguments to convince the thickest people that the most obvious shit is a problem. Can’t we just start beating them?
I’m totally with you. But I think that’s where we are. As I see it at the moment the big points are
“safety”, which is a lot like climate change (yay),
power and wealth concentration, which I’m surprised I don’t hear more about
enslavement of potentially conscious creatures (again more of a future problem thing but a serious one)
a human and even spiritual urge to not reduce ourselves to mere operators of machines, which is a pretty basic matter of taste but which gets Amish pretty quickly.
These are all big “what is life about” issues that are just hard to get penetration on. Only the second is material right now. Maybe it’s an issue with today’s society that we’ve forgotten how to talk about these sorts of things. But maybe we’re just wired to jump off of these sorts of cliffs. I don’t know.
I honestly don’t thing this will be the end of humanity. It could be, but I’d bet on some weird future first. Could it be better. Yea. But again, we’re a funny bunch.
Probably right that no one won any hearts and minds here, both sides of the debate saw the exchange and likely thought they were vindicated.
Always particularly the case in a “micro logging” format.
Good to emphasize “slop” rather than AI, that by volume most AI content inflicted on people is low quality. Likely as much due to the uninspired laziness behind the work as the AI tendencies itself. Turns out when someone barely invests effort, the result is typically crap. Going from a reality where it takes a great deal of passion to start to produce stuff to any casual interest can be manifested in a superficially consistent way results in “slop”.
Similar things in artisanal furniture. Artisanal furniture can be supremely interesting, and mass produced stuff is slop. Though at least some of it is quality from a functional perspective, it is pretty much slop from a creative perspective. However there were took the trade as there was more demand than artisans could satisfy because each time consuming piece could only serve one customer. In the digital realm, you can have arbitrarily many customers, so the pressure isn’t really there to make compromises for the sake of creative volume.
I don’t know the relationship between the two. It was obviously a harsh response. But it was defending himself as a CEO that apparently is not just a heartless and skillless CEO. If that’s untrue, that’s mostly a separate issue.
But their main point, as I understand, is that the generalising critique of CEOs was missing the point that CEOs who apparently know what they’re talking about can also be pro-AI.
Now I’m anti-AI, but that seems like a meaningful point to make at the moment (although it was done aggressively, as I said).
Honestly, one of the things worrying me at this moment with AI is just how much pro and anti-AI can’t speak the same language any more. And I think this is an example. AI can be good or bad irrespective of whether CEOs psychopaths.
In fact, I worry more so that the anti-AI side is struggling to express our side of things clearly and convincingly. For pro-AI peeps it’s easy. If it does a thing quickly and easily, and that’s your goal, then that’s a win. Talking about quality and the fate of humanity is a different kind of conversation.
With this Twitter exchange, yes CEOs can be psychopaths. But I’m not sure that’s the important point. A world run by Big Corpo is much more psychopathic while there will always be some CEOs in that system who aren’t all bad. Maybe a pedantic point. But in this case, I’m not sure Kenney win the argument, at least not for many of the readers we’d need to convince.
Um, I guess? But do keep in mind, if there were a league of companies all dumping arsenic into a river, it would seem a little odd to me to insist that “some of them aren’t crazy.”
Like, I think that dumping arsenic into the water supply—at all—is sort of mentally disqualifying. Only anti-social, selfish, narcissistic psychopaths are capable of doing that. There’s no room for such a person to destroy public resources like that and be considered polite, if misguided company.
Maybe. It’s a question that’s always worth asking. That said, though, is convincing them with reason really what we’re trying to do? Have you tried reasoning with a 9/11 truther, for instance?
Reason is a very powerful tool, but it only works if the people you’re talking to are interested in the truth.
Racists are not defeated because they are convinced that their welfare-queen idea doesn’t make any sense, or that it doesn’t bore out in the data. They are defeated when their sentiments are socially stamped out, when airing out one’s racism gets you publically flogged and discarded.
I just—in general, I don’t see the point in nit-picking people’s arguments against AI or CEOs when public disgust for it is what’s measurably important.
I feel like we’re more or less saying the same thing here. I think the initial argument was a fairly logical and dry one about what skills CEOs do and don’t have, not, as I think we both claim is more important, that they work for companies in capitalism, with all that that entails, such that the marketable qualities of the CEO as a person are a distraction.
No, what I’m saying is that being this into AI is mentally disqualifying. We can conclude the CEO is mental because his interests are mental.
Sure. Either way, that’s not the argument that was made in the tweet. It was much more specific and easily countered, which is my broader point.
I still don’t think you understand what I’m saying.
Tim Sweeney can say that he is skilled, actually, but 1), I don’t believe him, and 2) his use of AI is disqualifying. He can say “but I do value the craft of making things,” and I can say “no, he doesn’t; here’s the evidence: he uses AI.”
I get what you’re saying. But that’s your thoughts not those presented in the Twitter excerpt, and I’m talking about that excerpt.
Slightly more broadly, yes one can make the point that you are, and it may have been a more interesting exchange on Twitter if it were made from the top.
More broadly, I still have concerns about the nature of “the discourse”, because I just don’t think you’re going to win many hearts and minds with this line of thinking without some change in the framing, by, eg, focusing on the harms and “evils” of AI (with the disqualification of those indifferent to such issues being a natural corollary).
But even then, I fear still that that conversation is being lost, and these sort of ad hominem attacks as we see in the excerpt and even your summary just above of disqualified people are symptom of anti-AI not knowing what to say anymore. I see your point about shaming and all, but I look around the world and honestly think it’s a pipe dream. I hope it works for you, genuinely.
But this is ultimately what I’m getting at: this is fine.
You have a period of natural discourse over the exact nature of the is and isn’ts, and at some point a truth is found, and any further disagreement is such you have to recognize is irrational and must simply be squashed.
It’s not a lack of things to say; the people we’re talking to are not listening. Targets like Tim Sweeney, anyway. Audience members actually like it when you dunk on bad people. It’s cathartic. It feels like action.
If I had any criticism for these people, it’s that this action tends not to metastasize into anything. We’ve had decades and decades of discourse over global warming, probably some of it mean, and yet nothing has really happened. Nobody wants to put in the work to bring these polluting companies to heel.
I don’t necessarily think that anything is going to happen either, but I also don’t think that tempering our tones to be more civil and hyperfactual is helping.
To effect change, you need energy. And stopping people from hurrah-ing so that you can correct them on the nuances of their speech—speech that isn’t even wrong, if I’m being perfectly honest—speech that is only idictable by some fractal of technicalities—stifles that energy. You lose momentum, naturally, by constantly stopping to check your shoe laces.
Anyway, I really don’t mean to drag this out. I don’t think you’re a bad guy or anything, I just see a tone-policing thing happening here that irks me.
All good!
In the end, I think we’re more or less in the same page. If you picked up on a tone policing vibe, I think I can see that, but that totally wasn’t where I was coming from. EG, going after all CEOs for being brain washed psychopaths who naturally use AI because they’re psychopathic would have been in line with what I was saying, at least to me.
But no need to drag this out. Appreciate your comments!
Thanks!
Great post, and this especially:
Totally agree. At a certain point, simply calling out slop (deserved though it is) just becomes part of the background noise because it’s so commonplace.
I’m so sick of having to create more and more convincingly nuanced arguments to convince the thickest people that the most obvious shit is a problem. Can’t we just start beating them?
I’m totally with you. But I think that’s where we are. As I see it at the moment the big points are
These are all big “what is life about” issues that are just hard to get penetration on. Only the second is material right now. Maybe it’s an issue with today’s society that we’ve forgotten how to talk about these sorts of things. But maybe we’re just wired to jump off of these sorts of cliffs. I don’t know.
I honestly don’t thing this will be the end of humanity. It could be, but I’d bet on some weird future first. Could it be better. Yea. But again, we’re a funny bunch.
Probably right that no one won any hearts and minds here, both sides of the debate saw the exchange and likely thought they were vindicated.
Always particularly the case in a “micro logging” format.
Good to emphasize “slop” rather than AI, that by volume most AI content inflicted on people is low quality. Likely as much due to the uninspired laziness behind the work as the AI tendencies itself. Turns out when someone barely invests effort, the result is typically crap. Going from a reality where it takes a great deal of passion to start to produce stuff to any casual interest can be manifested in a superficially consistent way results in “slop”.
Similar things in artisanal furniture. Artisanal furniture can be supremely interesting, and mass produced stuff is slop. Though at least some of it is quality from a functional perspective, it is pretty much slop from a creative perspective. However there were took the trade as there was more demand than artisans could satisfy because each time consuming piece could only serve one customer. In the digital realm, you can have arbitrarily many customers, so the pressure isn’t really there to make compromises for the sake of creative volume.