Me too. Almost every Sci-Fi AI proceeds from the premise that we will make something very obviously machine and then have to train it to seem more human. I was completely caught off guard by us taking the approach of distilling all available human output into a statistical model and using it to brute-force something resembling thought and personality through sheer data processing scale.
The unsurprising part once it was clear that approach was viable, was that humans wouldn’t be able to help but anthropomorphize it. I feel like the movie Ex Machina is more relevant than ever.
The "benefiting all humanity" charters were immediately demonstrated to be a ruse. The business model is to hook users into endlessly chatting with your new friend, thus increasing their sales. Yeah, it was surprising and disappointing.
I can buy that Meta's model is that, and IDK about Grok because I stay far far away from it, and I think OpenAI are throwing business ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.
The clear exception here is Anthropic, who seem to mostly be selling to software developers, whose general reaction to the bot is "please talk less and just do the work, I have enough going on without having to read you yammering".
Yeah, most of the list is pretty dismal, but there are some bright spots. Sonic movies. Fallout, Last of Us (and don’t forget Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) for TV.
The original Castlevania animated show was good, shame about the Warren Ellis situation. Would have loved to see him write Nocturne as well (which was fun but just had a much weaker script).
Also, I don’t think people have realized how much farmers markets now suffer from “dropshippers taking over Etsy” syndrome. Unless it’s a stand selling one or two specific things from a named farm or local producer, it’s likely you’re getting a lot of the same stuff that goes to the grocery stores, just at a markup.
Direct-from-farm delivery boxes are a better bet, at least the mainstay ones, but they’re certainly more expensive and the variety is more obviously seasonal (as you would expect).
Neither of these is a solution to nutrition at scale. It’s difficult to balance the economies of scale that consolidated distribution brings against the corruption that comes along with increased supplier leverage. Monopsony is just as pernicious as Monopoly (and they tend to feed each other, with large grocery and restaurant chains preferring large distributors).
I got an M1 Max studio w/ 64gb when they first came out and I love it. Price was obviously a lot more reasonable at the time. I’m fortunate to have dedicated office space, and there is definitely a nice psychological effect to having a desktop in a specific spot and “going to the office”.
I’ve since purchased an m3 MacBook Air as my thin client and for lightweight travel use, and when my wife needs to take a call in the office or whatever I pop out to the living room and either hop on Remote Desktop or SSH into my Studio. Highly recommend this setup. If you’re primarily doing thin client on a local network, a neo should be fine for that (and to use as a media player/communicator around the house).
That said, I have been eyeballing Omarchy…
I think a lot of this is the cultural force of the US being the gravitational center of world politics and finance for several decades. It’s always had a strong anti-intellectual faction, and now as we enter it’s “decaying Roman Empire” phase, it will behave increasingly erratically as it’s elite strip it for parts and the citizenry watch in shock.
As China rises to become the new gravitational center, it will be interesting to see how they reshape things in their image. On the one hand, they seem to be more engineering-brained than lawyer-brained, which bodes well (might be a more viable path to cyberpunk). But just as the west has been haunted by its history of white supremacy, China will be haunted by its history of Han supremacy, so I am not holding my breath that we net out to some sort of multi-cultural utopia.
> As China rises to become the new gravitational center
I don't think you can just state something like that as some sort of axiom without providing any rationale. Obviously China has become much more powerful and important over the past 4 decades, but I highly doubt they will be the new "gravitational center", for two primary reasons.
First, their demographics are horrible - their population peaked 5 years ago and will continue to decline, meaning they will need to look inward to dedicate more resources to supporting their aging population. While fertility rates are well below replacement in nearly all of the developed world, the extreme ethnic homogeneity and near complete inability to assimilate immigrants long term make East Asia's demographics much more problematic.
Second, nobody wants a conformist autocratic society to be the "center of gravity" of the world. For decades following WWII, the US, despite all of its problems, really was looked up to as a beneficial force by many (yes, again, I know we did some extremely shitty things during the Cold War, but just looking at surveys of different countries' views of the US it was overwhelmingly positive in the Western world). Whereas today, despite China being essentially "the world's workshop", basically all of their trading partners look at them with suspicion and reticence.
I think we're looking at a near and mid-term future where there is basically no (or a crumbling) center of gravity. And this is basically what existed in the areas of the former Western Roman Empire for centuries after its collapse until the rise of Charlemagne, so I think your comparison to "decaying Roman Empire" phase is apropos.
Fair points all around. I am perhaps unduly extrapolating from a lifetime of there always being a “superpower” and assuming that the power vacuum left by US decay will be inevitably and directly filled by China.
In truth, I don’t think anyone can predict how things will play out at this point. China may well settle for regional control and having a globe full of trading partners with whom they work to build trust, they may double down on their “loan shark” leverage strategy with other developing nations, or they may build up their military and go full colonizer, which may or may not erupt into a hot war. The US might go long slow decline, or may erupt into civil war or widespread civil disobedience, or unlikely as it seems get its act together and course correct. The EU might fall to infighting and dissolve or rally and lead. Rogue nations might pull a truly batshit move with nukes or bioweapons. Who knows how India and SEA will play out at this point? Climate change acceleration will likely put incredible strain on all systems, and the jury is out on the ultimate trajectory/timeline of AI and robotics.
We have been blessed and cursed to live in interesting times if nothing else.
Really great take. Can't emphasize enough how much I agree with your "I don’t think anyone can predict how things will play out at this point" and "We have been blessed and cursed to live in interesting times if nothing else" statements.
Another factor beyond individual suitability to remote work (which certainly varies person to person and even within a person’s lifetime due to lifestyle changes), is the work situation itself.
One thing I don’t see mentioned in these discussions much is that someone might be perfectly content WFH when given clear goals and autonomy to execute in a neutral political environment, but do a few unexplained mass layoffs, give muddy direction or tighten the leash with stricter policies or new monitoring software and watch paranoia and depression take root (this is true in-office as well but I think gets amplified over Slack due to a stronger prisoner’s dilemma effect).
Unfortunately due to the power differential, any disruption to output caused by these situations will still be blamed on the individual contributor.
Slack and Zoom are a massive parts of the problem. Because "my boss can read it" sure does curtail a lot of conversations.
You are left in a situation where you miss out on all sorts of hints that people just aren't putting out. A string of tepid yes's on the way to get coffee is a much different signal than a string of yes's with no context in Slack. Things may be different again on zoom because of equipment quality and connectivity and peoples willingness to be a certain way on camera (and when looking at themselves).
I have seen at least half a dozen work place kerfuffles in the last 5 years that would have been avoided entirely if people were regularly co-located.
Unless you're small enough to get away with a very open and free culture (both business and personal) then there is a lot being left on the table that requires work to be re-gained. Many organizations are still bad at this.
Agreed, the loss of some opportunities for signal like is definitely one of the downsides.
One thing that helps a lot is occasionally mixing in (non-recorded) video or phone calls, and having a lightweight way to initiate one.
Text chat: "quick call this afternoon?" "3pm ET?" ":thumb-up:" <call added to calendars>
For that matter, making 1-on-1 text chats mostly private reduces the chilling effect of perceived boss panopticon. The company might retain logs for various reasons, but the only access is through Legal, and only for exceptional events.
(Though, there may soon be an additional chilling effect on communication within a company: people will realize it's an individual problem if the company's third-party team communication SaaS is profiling them individually in company chats "for AI training", and using/selling that various ways. There's already a lot of SOP performative and gaming behavior in our field, especially when it comes to obtaining jobs and getting good performance evaluations and promotions, so we can extrapolate what will happen.)
I love my remote company for being mostly cameras off. We’re not even a small company at all. It’s so much less stressful than constantly being on Zoom on camera.
I load the dishwasher and do other small chores while I have 1:1s and other non-hands on keyboard meetings. It’s amazing for my home life. Thank goodness for modern noise canceling headphones.
I don’t feel like these small social cues or in-person signals are actually that valuable when it comes to completing tasks to make the company money. It’s really easy to avoid kerfuffles: hire the right people who exude the right values and don’t care for drama. Don’t hire people who are vindictive assholes.
From what I have seen, layoffs tend to go hand in hand with pushing for more work from the office (which companies hope will help them get rid of some employees without severance), so if being in the office helps combat layoff paranoia and depression, there's that.
I personally don't have less paranoia now I am in the office 3 days a week (and probably won't have less when I will soon be forced to come in 5 days a week either), but I only talk to "my" team via Teams no matter if I'm at home or in the office, because they're spread over several locations (and no, it doesn't make sense to do RTO in these conditions, but that just reinforces my certainty that all the talk about "increasing efficiency" is just BS and they simply hope to get rid of people, no matter how competent they are). In the meantime, I don't really care one way or the other, but if they want to get rid of me, they should at least offer me some money for it, I won't do them the favor of just leaving voluntarily (especially not in this economy).
You say your team is remote "anyway", but RTO precisely is about connecting with other people OUTSIDE your team, working on internal politics, and you act as an interconnection point between the remote team and the local network.
I think the two of you are thinking/talking about two different things.
In most workplaces before ~2020 individual teams had designated desks/islands - all team members were sitting next to each other, actually every individual had their own permanent desk.
And you could have a quick chat, pair program, and even adhoc whole team meeting by just removing your noise-cancelling headphones and talking to each other.
Though of course bigger/longer meetings would still be better in a meeting room because of big screen, not being nuisance to other people ...etc.
Most workplaces now do some variant of flexi-desks. At best a group of teams is allocated some specific area/desks, at worst it's completely random which desk you get.
And to have a chat/meeting you often need to still do it via conference call, or get into a meeting room.
Between that, and usually having some people from the team still WFH on that day (many workplaces don't even have enough work desks or cafeteria - for everyone to come into office on the same day) - you now need more meeting rooms than before.
And for some reason they didn't add more meeting rooms, even when redesigning office buildings.
Actually, you both misunderstood what I wrote: the team is spread across multiple locations in three countries. They all work from their respective offices, but for meetings we still have to use Teams. That's especially galling: my company is more than ready to embrace remote working tools when it's to its advantage, reassigning people as it sees fit, but it now completely denies the advantages of remote working/home office to its employees. Actually, because of budget restrictions, I have never seen any of the team members (except the one I'm in the same office with) in person. My company is one of those typical multinationals that grew through mergers and acquisitions and now has offices all over the world - but I'd bet it's not one of those that come to your mind, somehow it managed to fail to build any sort of brand recognition, mostly because it's a B2B company.
I was brought on to a team as WFH - there was an office, but most of the team I worked with were in different states. But a lot of folks had left 6-12 months previous. I was stepping in to a void, and just had some jira tickets.
Manager above me wasn't technical, didn't know my project, just said "get done what you can". I worked and filled out timesheet. I was pinging the ticket owner, no response. Tickets were for an external client. Asked manager to arrange meeting. Took 2 weeks. Got a meeting with the external client using the system who had put these tickets in. "That was Jeremy, he doesn't work here any more... I think he was talking to Glen". Well.. Glen left our team 6 months earlier.
Emily at the client I was talking to had no idea what this was for, cause she only started 2 months earlier. Another week later she said "I don't think we need any of this - whoever asked for it is gone, and I have no info".
I had recorded... probably 130 hours on a few of these tickets mostly just trying to get stuff to build. Emily couldn't update tickets because it was tied to Jeremy who had left.
2 weeks later I had some department head at our company about 4 levels above me call me on my personal phone and start yelling at me telling me I'd put the project way over budget, I was 6 months behind schedule, and was jeopardizing the entire client relationship, and she was threatening to fire me. Apparently the whole budget for the project was 60 hours - I'd more than doubled that plus whatever people before me had done, etc. But... the client contacts I had had no idea what it was for, or really even who wanted it in the first place. I remember this woman saying "the budget was only 60 hours - you blew it up!" I said "I never gave those estimates in the first place, and there's no one here who even knows what this code is to even ask". "None of that matters, we may lose this client because of your incompetence...."
That was pure insanity. I left shortly after - already had something else lined up, but was on the fence about leaving (devil you know vs devil you don't). At that point, I knew I'd had enough of this devil. I left for another remote/WFH position.
This was also ... towards the end of 2020 - depths of covid, lockdowns, etc. Crazy times indeed.
Next time go to your manager and say "I'm seriously considering axing this project and I want your approval to do so. x, y, and z are no longer applicable and the landscape of the client relationship has changed in the interim as well."
re: department head at our company about 4 levels above me... -- what could be going through this person's mind when they continue yelling at someone after the situation has been explained? A friend got screamed at by some upper level person for being three months behind on a project. They contined screaming even after my friend explained it was his first day at the company.
"They contined screaming even after my friend explained it was his first day at the company."
Yep - that was similar to this. Not a moment of "oh... hang on... let me dig deeper". It was just an explosion. And FWIW, I've exploded on to other people a couple of times in my career - it's not fun. But I also can recognize it's a symptom of something deeper than just the issue being yelled about, and usually very unrelated to the topic at hand.
Cybersecurity has long been a climate change sort of problem. A vague diffuse threat that is seen as an inconvenient distraction to leadership and moneyed-interests, easy to blame other factors when something occasionally goes terribly wrong.
People are so uncomfortable thinking about the true extent of the systemic risk that they will happily slurp up distractions, excuses, scams and performative fig-leaf solutions rather than face down the cost of a real system-wide solution. Meanwhile, those occasional black swan disasters are becoming more and more commonplace as we acclimate to that being “just the way things are”.
An unseasonably warm summer here, a database breach there, c’est la vie.
To be frank, I think the real risk is still just… war. A big enough war where one side goes “no holds barred” in the cyber sphere will be a rude wake-up call. And we can’t do non-proliferation the same way we do with nukes. Otherwise as you say, the small and medium size things just happen sporadically. In an (existential or fully escalated) wartime scenario between countries, you get all the systemic risks hammered at once.
Agreed. Not to say there is no such thing as franchise fatigue, but fundamentally it’s about quality. The large studios expect us to just gorge ourselves on anything with a favorite logo or name on it like it’s a brand loyalty thing, but movies are about storytelling and emotional resonance. Odyssey made me feel things, so did Spider-Man, so did Obsession. Supergirl did not. Simple as that.
The unsurprising part once it was clear that approach was viable, was that humans wouldn’t be able to help but anthropomorphize it. I feel like the movie Ex Machina is more relevant than ever.
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