Monday AI Resistance Update #7
A random sampling of stuff I've come across this week...
Article - The people building AI think it might be conscious. That’s not the most alarming part
A nice contrast in this between the usual fantasies of AI fanatics/profiteers and some blunt cynicism from the redoubtable Emily Bender. Interesting to see the former being given increasingly less space for unthinking hype while critical voices are being given more.
Article - Surviving AI Psychosis
A first hand report on experiencing AI Psychosis, well worth reading. The conclusions are a little tame for my tastes (regulation not rejection) but having focused on this sort of thing quite a lot for a paper I've been working on (Faux-Social LLMs and the Resistance of Rejection (coming... one day)) there's definitely a pipeline from harms to oppositional positions. Also highlights the need to treat LLMs (or their platform operators) as a predatory actor when it comes to mental health - people need support and engagement to draw them away from the harms.
Bit of a lightweight article but plans for an AI 'themed' school in New York have been cancelled after public opposition. I do wonder if this is one of the quickest turnarounds we're seeing in the hype narrative, along with data centres maybe. Students are using AI extensively but when it comes to schools focusing on it there seems to be a lot of cynicism and not much of an appetite which is unsurprising given how the first attempts at pushing them went.
Education - Berklee College of Music Offers AI Course, Students Are Pissed
More resistance in education as Berklee College of Music students turn on the idea of an AI focused course. Also another instance of AI types arriving in the real world to discover that people really don't like them...
The turn to violence is a definite thing at the moment. Someone attempted to torch Sam Altman's house not long ago, apparently a Doomer caught up with severe mental health issues, but while that makes for more dramatic headlines local actions like this are probably more telling.
While, as far as I know, the motivations for this aren't known (well, not beyond 'no data centres' anyway) it does mark an increasingly low ebb for the popularity of AI exponents. Ironically something that seems to be fuelled as much by their own grandiose and often apocalyptic narratives as anything put out by critics of the technologies.
Business - Uninstalls of ChatGPT Are Spiking at the Worst Time Imaginable for OpenAI
As with the QuitGPT fad I'm incredibly wary of movements which fixate on the specific platform rather than the tech. Certainly I'd say they don't qualify as actual resistance given their consumer relationship to the actual power structures behind AI mobilisations. That said though, from a purely economic perspective, the more OpenAI struggle the more suspect the entire bubble becomes and the more suspect it is the more likely we are to see it burst as money gets cautious and pulls away. So, their subscriptions slumping a little is no kind of victory but it's no great shame either.
- Dylan