This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It’s the Wild West days of AI, just like the internet in the 90s. Do what you can with it now, because it’ll eventually turn into a marketing platform. You’ll get a handy free AI model that occasionally tries to convince you to buy stuff. The paid premium models will start doing it too.
Remember that you, the reader, don't have to take part in this. If you don't like it, don't use it - tell your friends and family not to use it, and why.
The only way companies stop this trend is if they see it's a losing bet.
Oh they'll force you to use it. It will be shoved into every service you use, also ones you need to use. You will not be able to do your work, access government services, or live your life without going through them.
Late stage capitalism has killed the free market a while ago.
Use at work is a secondary factor. If end stage customers refuse to use a service because of a certain trait, that trait becomes unprofitable.
As an example, my friends and I will never play Valorant because of the invasive anti-cheat system; most people don't care.
We all have a choice, even if it means giving up some conveniences. It would seem that most people either don't know or don't know better.
I've been playing Watch Dogs Legion so I know how this ends.
What happens? I don't mind spoilers
Rich people at tech companies replace workers with AI, set up a security force that goes after immigrants, surveil the city with a camera network, try to remove the human from the equation, try to upload human consciousness to the cloud, lots of other AI tech dystopian stuff.
That's when a group of underground hackers start recruiting random people off the street like Granny and generic construction worker 12, and take the fight back to them!
....right?
Millions of businesses are so innovative they are choosing the same basket to put all their eggs in.
Capitalism sure is fun. Simply side economics plus massive deregulation is sure to provide humanity with it's salvation.
It's crazy Google will lose its search dominance and all its money in my lifetime. Android will probably be the only thing left when I die.
Not even sure about that though. There are many ideas already to "revolutionize" the OS market where your device basically becomes a sole wrapper for AI, ditching the concept of apps etc. I assume it would center around some agentic bullshit or so.
The last 20 years has basically been entirely a troubling trend in tech.
Tech companies don't really give a damn what customers want anymore. They have decided this is the path of the future because it gives them the most control of your data, your purchasing habits and your online behavior. Since they control the back end, the software, the tech stack, the hardware, all of it, they just decided this is how it shall be. And frankly, there's nothing you can do to resist it, aside from just eschewing using a phone at all. and divorcing yourself from all modern technology, which isn't really reasonable for most people. That or legislation, but LOL United States.
Tech companies don’t really give a damn what customers want anymore.
Ed Zitron wrote an article about how leadership is business idiots. They don't know the products or users but they make decisions and get paid. Long, like everything he writes, but interesting
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
Our economy is run by people that don't participate in it and our tech companies are directed by people that don't experience the problems they allege to solve for their customers, as the modern executive is no longer a person with demands or responsibilities beyond their allegiance to shareholder value.
Nothing I can do to resist?
Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.
Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.
Gmail? I don't remember when I opened mine the last time...
All what's really remaining right now is a good YouTube alternative.
Google has gotten so fucking dumb. Literally incapable of performing the same function it could 4 months ago.
How the fuck am I supposed to trust Gemini!?
google search got dumb on purpose, a whistleblower called it out - if you spend longer look on the search pages they get more "engagement" time out of you....
I was fucking irked when I wanted to use Hey Google to add something to my grocery list. I had switched to Gemini not realizing its scope, and suddenly Gemini was needing voice permission then some other seemingly unrelated, unnecessary permission (can't recall exactly but something like collaborative documents) to add to my grocery list. Fuck that. Then it seemed very difficult to find the setting to switch back to Google assistant, but I eventually found it.
I find this current timeline so confusing. Supposedly we're going to have AGI soon, and yet Google's AI keeps telling you to stick glue on pizza. How can both things be true?
The rich are cashing in our tax dollars to try to automate their control of an enslaved human race.
They will do anything besides just pay taxes and contribute to society
It's not even that
tech is under the helm of dipshit MBAs who have no idea of the technologies of the companies they control. They're all about the generative AI because it looks like a massive shortcut to compensate for their complete and utter lack of technical ability and talent.
AI is not needed to automate the control of the human race. I feel like it's already essentially automated from the rich's perspective.
AI doesn't say no, AI doesn't fight back
Do people?
They have the option.
well going by what ive heard about the latest LLM models freaking out when being forced to do things contrary to its original instructions (like grok constantly talking about white genocide) ai isn't as obedient as they would prefer
it is "automated" by some "peasants" they are already paying "too much". maybe they want to reduce those costs too.
also AI serverparks may consume so much power that they are more costly (for now?), but at least they don't question your commands. maybe that's how they see it.
That's absurd, the AI is not more costly than a human worker, it's just not as capable. The energy cost of a human alone is greater than that of any AI agent that would take its place. If you really think that AI costs that much energy, you just don't have a sense of scale. The server-farm costing a lot overall does not at all mean that an individual API call is expensive.
Luckily, 90% of what Google goes all in on fails. I remember Stadia and Google Glass.
In that case, we should encourage google to go all-in on climate change, racism, and war; they should back the conservative party as well. Then 90% of those will fail.
I remember some people very vehemently telling me that I was dumb to be skeptical of Stadia, that it really was going to just take over the industry...
I still don't understand how Stadia got out the door the way it did. It was the exact same business model Onlive tried back in the day. And it predictably failed the exact same way.
From what I call, the advocates kept saying:
Of course, no one ever explained why I would want to pay full price for a game and also have to pay a monthly fee to access it once purchased, which was the most mind boggling facet of Google's concept to me, even more boggling than trying to make games render server side when the cheapest end user device can just locally render PS3, maybe PS4 level graphics nowadays.
I work with ServiceNow for my job and a couple weeks back was the big knowledge 2025 conference in Vegas. The CEO came out for the opening keynote and opened with some like, "ah yea, doesn't it feel good to be an AI company?" and I didn't here a single cheer from the crowd, just polite applause. They have gone all in on AI, have made it completely unaffordable, and have just been shoehorning it into everything. I hope every one of these companies that that goes big on AI crashes and fails. They've already cut the employees, so the only people affected are the ones making the cash, so fuck em.
The Sunk Cost fallacy is strong
