theluddite

This is a frustrating piece. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history knows that you can't just report on what fascist movements say then fact check it (which is what WaPo is doing here). JD Vance doesn't give a single shit about workers, and the facts don't matter. It's about aesthetics. The American fascist movement, like all such movements, is interested in appropriating the very real grievances of workers into a spectacle that serves power rather than challenges it. Walter Benjamin calls this the aestheticization of politics.

Fascism attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.

This article is a mess. Brief summary of the argument:

• AI relies on our collective data, therefore it should be collectively owned.
• AI is going to transform our lives
• AI has meant a lot of things over the years. Today it mostly means LLMs.
• The problems with AI are actually problems with capitalism
• Socialist AI could be democratically accountable, compensate people from whom they use data, etc.
• Socialists have always held that technology should be liberatory, and we should view AI the same way
• Some ideas for how to govern AI

I think that this argument is sloppily made, but I'm going to read it generously for the purposes of this comment and focus on my single biggest disagreement: It misunderstands why LLMs are such a big deal under capitalism, because it misunderstands the interplay between technology and power. There is no such thing as a technological revolution. Revolutions happen within human institutions, and technologies change what is possible in the ongoing and continuous renegotiation of power within them. LLMs appear useful because we live under capitalism, and we think about technology within a capitalist framework. Their primary use case is to allow capitalists to exert more power over labor.

The author compares LLMs to machines in a factory, but machines produce things, and LLMs produce language. Most jobs involve producing language as a necessary byproduct of human collaboration. As a result, LLMs allow capitalists to discipline labor because they can "do" some enormous percentage of most jobs, if you think about human collaboration in the same way that you think about factories. The problem is that human language is not a modular widget that you can make with a machine. You can't automate away the communication within human collaboration.

So, I think that author makes a dangerous category error when they compare LLMs to factory machines. That is how capitalists want us to think of LLMs because it allows them to wield them as a threat to push wages down. That is their primary use case. Once you remove the capitalist/labor power dynamic, then LLMs lose much of their appeal and become just another example of for profit companies mining public goods for private profit. They're not a particularly special case, so I don't think that it requires the special treatment in the way that the author lays out, but I agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to do that.

I have a lot of other problems with this article, which can be found in my previous writing, if that interests you:

• The Anti-Labor Propaganda Masquerading as Science
• Why Is There an AI Hype?

Investment giant Goldman Sachs published a research paper

Goldman Sachs researchers also say that

It's not a research paper; it's a report. They're not researchers; they're analysts at a bank. This may seem like a nit-pick, but journalists need to (re-)learn to carefully distinguish between the thing that scientists do and corporate R&D, even though we sometimes use the word "research" for both. The AI hype in particular has been absolutely terrible for this. Companies have learned that putting out AI "research" that's just them poking at their own product but dressed up in a science-lookin' paper leads to an avalanche of free press from lazy credulous morons gorging themselves on the hype. I've written about this problem a lot. For example, in this post, which is about how Google wrote a so-called paper about how their LLM does compared to doctors, only for the press to uncritically repeat (and embellish on) the results all over the internet. Had anyone in the press actually fucking bothered to read the paper critically, they would've noticed that it's actually junk science.

Happy to be of service!

I don’t know enough about their past to comment on that.

I highly recommend Herman and Chomsky's book, Manufacturing Consent. It's about exactly this.

But at least the way I read it, Bennet is saying that the NYT has a duty to help both sides understand each other, and the way to do that would be by giving a voice to the right and centrists without necessarily endorsing any faction

I think that this is a superficially pleasing argument but actually quite dangerous. It ignores that the NYT is itself quite powerful. Anything printed in the NYT is instantly given credibility, so it's actually impossible for them to stay objective and not take sides. Taking an army out to quash protestors gets normalized when it appears in the NYT, which is a point for that side of the argument, but the NYT can't publish every side of every issue. There's not enough space on the whole internet for that. This is why we have that saying that I mentioned in the other comment, that journalists should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, or that journalists ought to speak truth to power. Since it's simply impractical to be truly neural, in the sense of publishing every side of every issue, a responsible journalist considers the power dynamics to decide which sides need airing.

The author of the OP argues that, because Cotton is already a very influential person, he ought to be published in the NYT, but I think that the exact opposite is true. Because Cotton is already an influential person, he has plenty of places that he can speak, and when the NYT platforms his view that powerful people like him should oppress those beneath them, they do a disservice to their society by implicitly endorsing that as something more worthy of publishing than the infinite other things that they could publish. For literally all of history, it's been easy to hear the opinions of those who wield violence to suppress dissent. Journalism is special only when it goes against power.

No, we only agree that the NYT sucks, but disagree on basically everything else. We are coming from exact opposite directions. Yes, we both are attacking the NYT, but, like I already explained, the article attacks them for the opposite reason. For example:

Until that miserable Saturday morning I thought I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in a struggle to revive them. I thought, and still think, that no American institution could have a better chance than the Times, by virtue of its principles, its history, its people and its hold on the attention of influential Americans, to lead the resistance to the corruption of political and intellectual life, to overcome the encroaching dogmatism and intolerance.

That is absurd bullshit. Like I said, the NYT's principles and history are that of collaborating with American elite interests since its founding.

The article talks about "objectivity" over and over, and how the NYT used to strive for it, but that's simply not true. The author's concept of objectivity is what Gramsci calls cultural hegemony, in which the worldview of the ruling class becomes accepted as consensus reality. Like I said, the NYT and its ilk once had cultural hegemony, but it's now been pierced. Another example:

There have been signs the Times is trying to recover the courage of its convictions. The paper was slow to display much curiosity about the hard question of the proper medical protocols for trans children; but once it did, the editors defended their coverage against the inevitable criticism.

Fuck that noise. This author is praising them for being "brave" on questioning trans people, but many activists groups have documented what this actually is: The NYT has an anti-trans editorial stance.

Again, like I said in my first comment, the author doesn't understand the role of power in journalism: He thinks that the job of the journalist is to present all sides objectively, without any understanding that some people are in power and others are oppressed. Like the famous saying goes, the job of the journalist is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. The NYT's entire history, with some very notable exceptions, I grant you, is the opposite of that. Its apparent fall from grace now isn't because it has lots it objectivity, but its hegemony over American information.

I very strongly disagree with almost every word in this article. The work of journalism is to hold power to account, not to publish the dangerous ideas of the already-powerful. Any so-called journalist who thinks that is their job ought to be fired. The NYT didn't lose its way when it hesitated to publish a call to crush BLM protestors with the army, but when it decided to be the mouthpiece of the American elite, as it has been for most of its history. Remember when it collaborated with the Bush administration to invade Iraq? Manufacturing Consent came out even before that, and it documented decades of NYT editorializing in favor of specific American interests.

Over the decades the Times and other mainstream news organisations failed plenty of times to live up to their commitments to integrity and open-mindedness. The relentless struggle against biases and preconceptions, rather than the achievement of a superhuman objective omniscience, is what mattered.

Give me a break. The very people who did the Iraq WMD coverage are still famous and respected journalists, for crying out loud. Some of them are still at the fucking Times.

I agree with the author that the failure of journalism is a major cause of Trump, but in the exact opposite sense: It's not that the NYT is no longer trying to be objective, but that its veneer of objectivity has become transparently bullshit. The only thing that has changed is that traditional media outlets no longer have a monopoly on what information Americans get. The many other sources that have risen to challenge them are extremely problematic, to say the least, but traditional media outlets created that opening themselves. Like so much MAGA bullshit, the attacks on the media as elite and biased and out of touch land because they are in fact grounded in some truth, though the "solutions" are always a nightmare.

I say this every chance that I get: There is no such thing as a technological revolution. Revolutions happen within human institutions, and technologies change what's possible within them. It's great to see a similar argument in such a mainstream magazine.

Dan McQuillan has been warning about this since forever, to the point where I would've assumed that he'd be referenced if not interviewed int his article, though he wasn't. Here's a pretty short one from him. His basic argument is that AI is best understood as algorithmic Thatcherism, in which they'll silicon-wash the same austerity politics that neoliberalism has been feeding us forever.

Sounds very doable! My friend has an old claw foot tub that he lights a fire under. If you want something a little less country, you can buy on demand electric or propane water heaters and hook your hose up, though I'd expect the electric one wouldn't be able to keep up at 120v. Hardest part of this project is probably moving the tub. I say go for it!

I would love to read an actually serious treatment of this issue and not 4 paragraphs that just say the headline but with more words.

I have been predicting for well over a year now that they will both die before the election, but after the primaries, such that we can't change the ballots, and when Americans go to vote, we will vote between two dead guys. Everyone always asks "I wonder what happens then," and while I'm sure that there's a technical legal answer to that question, the real answer is that no one knows,