• 1 Post
  • 182 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: July 14th, 2023
  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What search engine do you use?English
    20·
    9 days ago

    I wouldn’t say Kagi has “moved to become an AI company”.

    They host some open weight models, which you can use with your subscription (which hasn’t increased in price or dropped features since they added AI access), but you’re not forced to use AI ever, and they’re not collecting your searches or prompts to feed into training.

    They’ve taken a pretty skeptical stance on AI from the start. You can disable AI features completely, so you don’t even accidentally use them. But even if you leave them enabled, you have to opt into invoking AI by ending your query with a question mark.

    Edit: Also, they downrank content that has been flagged as AI generated: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Should I go into freelance web development in 2026 in high-cost country?English
    3·
    10 days ago

    Well, “should you”? Only you can decide that. You only get the one life, you know. It would suck to spend it only doing things because they’re “prudent”.

    It seems like you’re asking for market predictions here, based on the AI and outsourcing aspects. Nobody knows what the future holds. But we can look at the past and present.

    Historically, companies — both individually, and the industry as a whole — tend to oscillate between:

    • “oh my god, knowledgeable people are so expensive, I don’t need someone with deep understanding, I just need more output” and
    • ”oh fuck, I am drowning in output that nobody understands, I desperately need knowledgeable people”

    For all the AI corpos’ talk about a revolutionary change in the way we think about work and employment, it all looks very familiar right now.

    Historically, these moments, where everyone seems to agree that they want more hands on keyboards rather than more brains on call… tend to be the worst time to freelance.

    It’s a race to the bottom, and you’ll probably be so busy spinning plates that you won’t be able to make any long-term strategic decisions about what you wanna learn and do next.

    If you can, I’d look for a stable corpo job that you can firewall to 9-5, and keep your options open. Watch the market, and — more importantly — find something that you like, so you don’t have to ask internet strangers what to do with your life again.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•LLMs and xfwl4 – Brian TarriconeEnglish
    63·
    11 days ago

    The “it’s just a tool” (with optional add-on “what matters is how you use it”) thought-terminating cliche makes me put my face in my hands a little bit deeper every time I see it.

    Daily life in 2026 would be completely unrecognizable to a person from 5,000 years ago, and the difference is not just how we use our tools. The production, existence, and proliferation of the tools shape what is easy or hard, or even what is possible or impossible.

    To think that you can reshape the contours of the decision-making terrain and that has no effect on what people do, or how they think of who they are… you’d have to accept that someone in the bronze age could just wake up one day and decide to be a telecommuting web developer on HRT and Ozempic.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•Linus: Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.English
    31·
    24 days ago

    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the author sticking to the level at which he’s an expert. If everyone had to chase down the lowest possible level, we’d all be physicists (or maybe philosophers, depending on your take there).

    Besides, isn’t the “materialism” portion of “dialectical materialism” about interrogating the implications of present world you find yourself in, rather than evaluating what-ifs of alternate histories?

    However generative AI might have emerged differently under a different regime, this is the version that we have access to inspect and, crucially, the version we must contend with if we want to influence its future trajectory under any regime.

    Edit: But I do have to agree that he is much better at diagnosing the problem than he is at prescribing the solution. That seems to be the way of things. People tend to be good at either analyzing problems in detail, or rallying people around a tractible plan of action. It’s very very very rare to see someone who is good at both. So I don’t mind it too much.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•Linus: Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.English
    182·
    24 days ago

    Ehhh, probably the most pragmatic option for someone in his position, but I’m not gonna take that as an even-handed analysis of AI in open source, the software industry, the economy, or civilization writ large.

    There was a post earlier today that directly counters the “just a tool” trope. (And if you’re thinking “but this is Linus! What credentials could this rando possibly have?”, allow me to preface their essay+video with a note that this guy has experience at high levels in the industry and then quit the industry to get a PhD with a focus on the social impacts of software development tools.)

    And Cory Doctorow has a book (and many blog posts and speaking engagements covering the same content) about the precise harms (and non-harms) of AI.

    Dr. Fatima (on Youtube) also has a pretty well-rounded take.

    And Baldur Bjarnason makes some good points from a cognitive science perspective, though I think he’s ultimately out over his skis quite a bit.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Why do the vast majority of people on Lemmy seem to HATE AI?English
    1293·
    1 month ago

    I mean, take your pick. This is a place where a lot of us…

    • are leftists who disagree with extractive, anti-human economic systems
    • left Reddit because they insisted on controlling how people could connect to each others ideas
    • like the open collaboration of open source, which is getting wrecked by AI
    • like open access communities like wikipedia, which are also getting undermined by AI
    • dislike copyright law, which is being selectively ignored here because the people violating it are rich (on paper)
    • are marginalized people, who tend to be disproportionately effected by AI decision-making
  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml•mac or linuxEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    That’s a carefully crafted illusion. And if you’re a power user, it won’t last long.

    How so? I’m probably as power user as it gets (been using Macs since around ‘95, been splitting roughly 50/50 between Mac and Linux since around ‘06, and I love weird esoteric coding tools, so I’ll try to run some truly cursed setups) and I can’t imagine what you’re alluding to.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Is "AI slop" enough?English
    1·
    3 months ago

    We might want two separate terms: one for the personal ways that AI slop infects and manipulates your mind, and another for the way it makes the wider cultural landscape difficult to navigate by adding noise and intercepting your attempts to find the original sources of concepts or artifacts which might bring you into a community (and the fact that these communities are now all playing defense because of the everlasting scraping DDoS).

    I’m concerned about the former because I think it might make doing anything at all much more difficult.

    But I’m concerned about the latter because we… don’t really know how much pollution culture can withstand before collapsing. We may already be in the early stages of something like Kessler Syndrome but for communications.