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Comment by the_snooze | Hacker News Reader

What AI boosters don't realize is that we're not in the optimistic days of the 1990s anymore. We've seen that the prevailing tech business model is to offer convenience as a lure to lock in dependent users and extract value from them.

Unless these AI assistants are running on self-managed platforms independent of their developers, all I see is immense counterparty risk.

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> What AI boosters don't realize is that we're not in the optimistic days of the 1990s anymore.

Comments like this are in a different reality than most consumers. Most consumers don’t care about things like avoiding lock in to a platform. If the platform solves their problem then they don’t have any reason to leave it anyway. They’re not worried if their data is used to show them more targeted ads.

Topics like this show a sharp divergence between what you read on Hacker News and how actual users operate. We already knew that people who don’t trust Facebook aren’t going to suddenly start using Muse. They were never going to consider it. For the people who do actually use Meta products, which is a customer base counted in the billions, many will not have any problem using these tools.

I see a lot of validity in your reply, but I think there is still nuance in how these priorities are expressed. How would you compare this issue to the Flock backlash, for example?

I think most people draw a strong distinction between privacy violations that are done "to them" and privacy issues with things they've chosen to use, even if they're quite similar from a technological perspective. I'd bet a lot of anti-Flock people have location sharing enabled on their phone.

And there is a very American anti-government aspect to it as well.

This is only true as long as they don’t think about the future or do risk management.

I asked my wife to not share any info with Muse and she said “Well they know everything already”. Well I was able to convince her not to with some stories about hallucinations of agents getting things horribly wrong as agents in the past, because the privacy concerns just didn’t phase her. Shes even more aware than most people since I’m very privacy aware. 100% it’s very echo chambery to claim that it’s not 1990 anymore. It’s like a historian saying that history won’t repeat itself because we all know what happened last time

My wife and I do not even allow Meta Apple and Google products or proprietary software in our home (unless owned by guests) because they are all predatory and endless alternatives exist.

Do you allow guests to use their Meta Apple and Google products in your home?

Begrudgingly if for short periods of time, on a dedicated wifi network, but if they are visiting my home I encourage them to interact with me and others instead of doom scrolling.

Try as I might some are so addicted and gone now that they just come over, doom scroll for a few hours, and leave. Maybe they feel like they get something out of just being in the same room as other people. It confuses me, but I will not force my views on guests.

What software / hardware do you use? How do you get around binary firmware blobs?

I use Linux and maintain my own Linux distribution. All software I directly touch and rely on is Open Source and does not spy on me. I do not own or use a smartphone. I do however permit the use of proprietary software for purely entertainment use cases, such as video games, but never for a -tool- that I use to do my job or live my life.

I even have a Talos workstation. Open hardware motherboard and open spec CPU both made in the US with fully open hardware. Also a Precursor which is similarly open.

I support these efforts as much as I financially can, but I admit open firmware/hardware is not a gap I have fully closed day to day. Yet. Deep down in some hardware is firmware I do not control, such as on the inside of my AMD GPUs. But I wallet-vote for those over Nvidia who require proprietary code in user space where it requires rights within my operating system.

> I do however permit the use of proprietary software for purely entertainment use cases, such as video games

How do you isolate those from affecting the rest of your machine? Do you use a different machine for entertainment? A different account? Something else?

I’m not judging or trying to catch you in some kind of gotcha, I’m interested in your setup in case the idea is something I could use myself.

All machines that can do things like play games are untrusted to the point I never even lock them. They are treated as game console.

I sometimes consider going scorched earth, but then I realize doing so will leave a conspicuous void which may also limit my options in the future.

Hmm. The areas where I ran into a brick wall on this were firmware for SSDs and hard drives. Doesn’t exist in open source form.

True but if it is immutable it still meets the FSF definition of an appliance regarded as a closed hardware problem vs a closed software problem.

Software Freedom means no one has more control of the hardware in front of you than you do. If no one can change the SSD firmware, then it is part of the hardware.

Now for firmware that can be changed, that is a different story and maybe the OpenSSD project gets us there. We will see.

Most consumers absolutely care, why do you think the biggest bipartisan issue is a massive national backlash against tech companies and a clear majority of workers being against LLM tools in the workplace?

These types of comments just show what a massive bubble you're in.

That backlash is based on conspiracy theories about data centers using up all the water and the legitimate fear of AI taking their jobs, not anything to do with privacy.

No the backlash is based on very real decline of material concerns, please try to speak in reality and talk to other humans outside of VC.

That's been happening for the past almost exactly 60 years, AI had nothing to do with the majority of it.

> a clear majority of workers being against LLM tools in the workplace? > These types of comments just show what a massive bubble you're in.

The fact you think it's a "clear majority" and not a "sizable, but still loud minority" of workers shows that you're in a bubble.

The vast, vast, majority of people are largely apathetic to AI as a technology at large, with general techbro-sentiment trending very negative (for all technology, across the board), especially towards SV/AI figureheads.

Well they will start caring when their teen with image issues starts getting targetted beauty ads[1], or when they get pregnant, want to abort, and get directed to an anti-abortion center instead[2], and afterwards they get served "abortion reversal pills" ads[3].

Or when they are hit by any other privacy fuckup like that.

[1] https://futurism.com/facebook-beauty-targeted-ads [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-61320202 [3] https://tech.yahoo.com/general/articles/facebook-made-money-...

Imagine we were talking about soda (or pop, or coke, or soft drink, depending on your dialect). Personally, I find it absolute insanity to be regularly consuming so much dissolved sugar especially during our ongoing obesity and digestive health epidemic.

But, “most consumers” don’t care about that. The beverage industry is insanely profitable, especially with recent forays into “energy drinks”.

Do people who drink so much dissolved sugar live without consequences? Absolutely not. They have a significantly lower quality of life and die much sooner than people who do not drink dissolved sugar.

I don’t see your comment as a valid dismissal. Just one more way that individual outcomes in our society are increasingly K-shaped.

Another way to say this is that your parent may be suffering from lack of imagination. Stuff like this can (and should) be regulated. Consumer protection is a thing most jurisdictions do. In fact there are millions of possible markets which consumers would absolutely fall victims to, but government regulators prohibit it because of the harm it causes consumers. Government regulators can (and should) apply the same logic to AI, but they don‘t. There is not really a good reason why they don‘t other then some ideological movement towards ever greater neo-liberalism, deregulation, and laissez faire capitalism.

Expanding on this thought (too late for an edit), there's a nice simile to be had:

  - technologists : software that is bad for privacy
  - nutritionists : food and drink that gives you diabetes

So, I'm no nutritionist, but I pay attention enough to pay attention when they say I shouldn't drink a liter of Coke every day. As technologists, we should carry the torch and speak loud-and-wide about the dangers of software that is bad for privacy.

> I don’t see your comment as a valid dismissal. Just one more way that individual outcomes in our society are increasingly K-shaped.

I was dismissing the claim that the product will fail because the world doesn’t like it.

You changed the subject to something else.

You’re right, I was responding more to the sentiment of the overall thread than your comment in particular. Mea culpa.

Most consumers do not want or need agents which also shows how much of a bubble tech people are living in.

How do you explain the brand segmentation Facebook is doing with Muse? They're keeping the Meta / Facebook brand very far away from the Muse product.

Doesn't that imply Meta itself believes users care?

If we’re talking about the average consumer, they’re increasingly hostile towards ML in general and Facebook in particular. The majority want the tech regulated stat, so you might want to think twice before appealing to the masses.

Consumers do care about these things, a lot. The issue is they have a lack of choice and transparency. Everyone is basically just OK with tech being shit because all tech is shit, so now you're just choosing shit.

Take smartphones. Don't want platform lock-in? Go fuck yourself. You're options are Apple and Google, who both maximize platform lock-in. You could always go live in the woods, that's freedom of choice baby. Welcome to the free market.

Of course, this is something you'll have to decide after reading the hundreds of pages of terms of use, privacy policies, and EULAs to learn how your data is actually being used. Oh, and they all update weekly. And you automatically consent.

The truth is that nobody trusts Facebook. It's a bargain. If you want to do certain things, you're forced to relinquish control. It doesn't matter if you trust them or not.

Absolutely. If you need any signal to know where Big Tech's head is at, just look at how quickly they became arms dealers.

Big Tech's head is at "being evil is just being competent", "democracy is incompatible with freedom" (for me to do what I want). It is also at "humans are obsolete" point. And while Zuckenberg specifically does not have cool quotes, he was at the "who cares about genocide" and "let show weight loss ads to teenagers who we determined have low self-esteem" points in the past.

Notes: actual quote is "If you're evil, you're at least competent. And if you're evil, you're not bad. And therefore, maybe you're actually kind of good because you're at least getting something done"

Quote was from Thiel FYI. https://youtu.be/B7yl7fEHeKM?t=840

Actual Demon Thiel

Impressive how every single statement is absolutely wrong.

You mean wrong because you don't believe this is how they are acting (likely because you are financially secure enough not to notice - part of the problem) or what they believe is dangerous and malevolent or because it's also nonsensical, despite being dangerous and worthy of reproach?

No, more like:

> If you're evil, you're at least competent.

Incompetent evil exists. This statement is wrong, B does not follow A.

> And if you're evil, you're not bad.

They aren't mutually exclusive, so this is incorrect.

> And therefore, maybe you're actually kind of good because you're at least getting something done

This presupposes that "getting something done" is a positive end in itself, which is not a given.

Each phrase is wrong. It's impressive, actually.

i think it was a bad analogy. he was talking about competent evil for eg ai enhanced weapons systems vs incompetent evil for eg middle easterners stoning people coz of religion.

both are evil but you can rationalise competent evil coz you're getting something real done like preventing the upending of the moral world order.

You're getting something real done like destroying moral world order, turning the western world into feudal techno fascist system. Which is his actual goal he stated multiple times.

Considering weirdness of Thiel believes, his praise and support for actual atrocities, including actually in middle east, trying contrast him with violent religious fanatics is weird. They dont contrast, they have notable similarities.

what moral order? the moral order where america (and allies) bomb whoever they want to the stone age for not following their rules? where nuclear powers basically get to bully non nuclear states?

rules based world order never existed, thiel etc just openly acknowledge it.

yes atrocity is atrocity there is an equivalence.

Weird that Thiel seems to think the “Antichrist” is a bad thing, given that quote. I suppose he sees it as unwelcome competition.

I read "the tesla files", a book about a whistleblower leaking a ton of internal tesla files.

They were discussing how tesla manages problems with full-self-driving.

It was interesting how this realm of problems was viewed.

If there was an accident while the car was driving itself due to some glitch, the police at the scene put all the blame on the driver.

The book had a different viewpoint. obviously there was a tesla bug in full self driving, and they kept their mouth shut.

meanwhile society/government doesn't even think of this and puts responsibility/blame on the user.

Me and 4 Billion happy users don't care.

HN must understand that they are not a representative sample of anything.

Most of the planet refused to wash their hands or use basic sanitation until about 150 years ago even though they had clear reproducible evidence doing so saved countless lives 50 years earlier. Most just considered doing the bare minimum to save lives as too much work. Also we used to advertise cigarettes and alcohol for consumption by babies in the 50s.

It is reasonable to assume the majority of humans are intellectually lazy to the point of killing themselves and their families if told to with the right marketing.

We should all make our own individual well researched choices and not ever buy into the worthless argument of "everyone does it".

False analogies won't make your case.

There are plenty of happy, successful people who didn't die because they used a Meta product.

In fact I'd even argue that all things equal, a Meta user is happier than a paranoid-meta-hater who worries every minute that someone is going to serve them an Ad that fits them

"oh, the horror!!!. How am I ever going to recover from the trauma and financial ruin of seeing a targeted ad."

>successful people who didn't die

Did you just move the goalposts to “it didn’t kill me”?

We’re talking about society-wide effects here, including harm to children for which Facebook is paying 17 billion dollars.

https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-announce...

And those children are $17B richer today.

The ones that did not commit suicide get a tiny tiny fraction of that, yes.

Your comment implies no harm matters so long as people can sue for it later?

For a supposedly science-based cohort we aren't using any science aren't we?

There is ZERO proven causality between social media usage (specifically Meta products) and long-term happiness of a person. All the social science are spurious correlations that can be attributed to anything (including higher education where hysteria about the modern world reins)

As far as $17B settlement, it has nothing to do with causality. It's just some $$$ set aside for Meta to remove operational headaches.

I could even say Meta-haters make more irrational life decisions compared to normal people who just browse Instagram and use WhatsApp without paranoia

Did you just accuse others of not being science-based, while casually handwaving studies away?

Can you point me to causation studies please? or are you the type who believe in social sciences (using self-reported, biased data) with 0.10 R2 values and think that's the smoking gun?

Nope, it’s on you to either provide counter-studies first, or even just provide one solid, concrete example of what issue you have with these studies, rather than just handwaving them away as if such a rhetorical flourish can substantiate any sort of argument.

Science 101. There is no causation and very poor correlation

You are still writing in generalities. You need to actually pick a prominent study and state how it specifically mistakes correlation for causation. Just saying “oh all the existing science is wrong” doesn’t advance your argument. You’re assuming the reader knows what you’re talking about.

I don’t have any vested interest in upholding those studies, for all I know you might be entirely right. But if they’re the only studies out right now, the onus is on you, as a minority dissenter, to say specifically why they’re wrong. To just handwave it away is to undercut your own position because it makes you look like a crank who is just casually attacking the state of the field. And in the context of a forum such as this, it’s very off-putting, obnoxious behavior.

You’d get no pushback if you actually substantiated your points rather than tossing around general criticisms.

> There are plenty of happy, successful people who didn't die because they used a Meta product.

And plenty of teens that never became happy and successful people because they used a Meta product.

These companies are predatory, and have nothing to offer us we cannot easily setup at home these days with privacy and sovereignty.

[citation needed]

Note: Unless you spin an alternative universe there is no way you can prove causality of social media usage => happiness/depression.

Meta would not have paid out if they saw the evidence and thought they had a chance in hell at winning.

But it is the undeniable opinion of most mental healthcare professionals that giving teens an endless stream of content about unattainable body images or suicide content... results in more suicides.

Meta -knew- this and then fired the team that told them about it and doubled down on pressing the gas. They knowingly and substantially increased the chances of teen suicides for money.

And people want to give these monsters -MORE- data and power? I cannot comprehend anyone defending this company still.

Meta had to pay out because the entire country is brainwashed with anti-Bigtech hate and 99.99% are clueless about correlation != causation and there is no point in fighting the court where the media will make sure to amplify 1 in 100 Million cases as thought it's the norm.

I mean some of the smartest people on HN fall for it, where is the hope for general masses?

I am at least encouraged to see even one of the last anti-privacy chads left is admitting the surveillance capitalism corpos are losing the war of public opinion.

Every time their stock price takes a hit my hope in humanity gets a little boost.

All proprietary technology will fail. I really wish it would fail faster though.

If you had bought META/FB every time there was a negative hit-piece from the media, you'd be very very rich

> "oh, the horror!!!. How am I ever going to recover from the trauma and financial ruin of seeing a targeted ad."

Well yeah that... and the spread of misinformation on Meta platforms leading to deaths from COVID. And the genocide in Myanmar they caused.

Information and outcomes are not separate. If you think the words you see, which are very carefully curated, truly have no effect on outcomes then you must have never attended a history class. Like, ever.

Not at all, if you are happy, go for it. I might look into something like hermes, that seems to fit my bill more.

AI seems to be an amplifier for other problems that we never fixed, more than an authentic source of problems on its own. In this case it's amplifying that we never really trusted the cloud to begin with.

We have a lot of deferred problems to go back and solve before all these dreams can come true.

I agree with this, but I’m wondering where these self managed platforms are for the average person who doesn’t want to spend hours fixing OpenClaw upgrades. Surely there has to be an easy to use Muse/Dots/GrokBot self hosted solution for the privacy conscious?

I think WallE is the perfect reference for the world AI/oligarchy are running towards. Not whether it exists, but that' dependency+environmental destitution.

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