Housing costs, social life (2005 is pre-iPhone), the value of an education, future outlook for careers/jobs, the mere existence of certain jobs pre-AI (i.e. writing), political polarization, to name a few off the top of my head.
Yeah, I don't think this really lines up with the actual trajectory of media technology, which is going in the complete opposite direction.
It seems to me that it's easier than ever for someone to broadcast "niche" opinions and have them influence people, and actually having niche opinions is more acceptable than ever before.
The problem you should worry about is a growing lack of ideological coherence across the population, not the elites shaping mass preferences.
I think you're saying that mass broadcasting is going away? If so, I believe that's true in a technological sense - we don't watch TV or read newspapers as much as before.
And that certainly means niches can flourish, the dream of the 90s.
But I think mass broadcasting is still available, if you can pay for it - troll armies, bots, ads etc. It's just much much harder to recognize and regulate.
(Why that matters to me I guess) Here in the UK with a first past the post electoral system, ideological coherence isn't necessary to turn niche opinion into state power - we're now looking at 25 percent being a winning vote share for a far-right party.
I'm just skeptical of the idea that anyone can really drive the narrative anymore, mass broadcasting or not. The media ecosystem has become too diverse and niche that I think discord is more of an issue than some kind of mass influence operation.
I agree with you! But the goal for people who want to turn money into power isn't to drive a single narrative, Big Brother style, to the whole world. Not even to a whole country! It's to drive a narrative to the subset of people who can influence political outcomes.
With enough data, a wonky-enough voting system, and poor enforcement of any kind of laws protecting the democratic process - this might be a very very small number of people.
Then the discord really is a problem, because you've ended up with government by a resented minority.
Using the term "elites" was overly vague when "nation states" better narrows in o n the current threat profile.
The content itself (whether niche or otherwise) is not that important for understanding the effectiveness. It's more about the volume of it, which is a function of compute resources of the actor.
I hope this problem continues to receive more visibility and hopefully some attention from policymakers who have done nothing about it. It's been over 5 years since we've discovered that multiple state actors have been doing this (first human run troll farms, mostly outsourced, and more recently LLMs).
The level of paid nation state propaganda is a rounding error next to the amount of corporate and political partisan propaganda paid directly or inspired by content that is paid for directly by non state actors. e.g.: Musk, MAGA, the liberal media establishment.
LLMs are useful, but AI is itself a marketing term that has begun to lose its luster. It’s rapidly becoming an annoying or trendy label, not a cutting edge one.
I guarantee that in ~24 months, most AI features will still remain in some form or another on most apps, but the marketing language of AI-first will have evaporated entirely.
> AI is itself a marketing term that has begun to lose its luster. It’s rapidly becoming an annoying or trendy label, not a cutting edge one.
Where have you been the last 15 years? However, I agree with your prediction. Coke making AI advertisements may have had cache a couple years ago, but now would be a doofus move.
Have you watched broadcast TV lately? Every single advert is AI generated. Pay attention and you’ll see the telltale signs: stitched together 3 second clips with continuity problems, every showdown from a fixed set of compositions, etc. it’s just less noticeable to the average viewer than that coke ad.
I don’t remember AI being used as a widespread marketing term until 2-3 years ago. Before that it was just more of a vague tech thing you’d sometimes see, but now every single app seems to have reframed their business to be about AI agents.
Early 2010s had a lot of neural networks AI stuff going on and it certainly became a minor hype cycle as well though that kind of resulted in the current LLM wave.
There was also a small chatbot bubble around 2014-2016 (Microsoft Tay kinda blew it out of the water, and it never recovered), though companies did seem a bit skittish about using the term 'AI' at that point.
Projects like this remind me of a plot point in the Cyberpunk 2077 game universe. The "first internet" got too infected with dangerous AIs, so much so that a massive firewall needed to be built, and a "new" internet was built that specifically kept out the harmful AIs.
(Or something like that: it's been awhile since I played the game, and I don't remember the specific details of the story.)
It makes me wonder if a new human-only internet will need to be made at some point. It's mostly sci-fi speculation at this point, and you'd really need to hash out the details, but I am thinking of something like a meatspace-first network that continually verifies your humanity in order for you to retain access. That doesn't solve the copy-paste problem, or a thousand other ones, but I'm just thinking out loud here.
The problem really is that it is impossible to verify that the content someone uploads came from their mind and not a computer program. And at some point probably all content is at least influenced by AI. The real issue is also not that I used chatgpt to look up a synonym or asked a question before writing an article, the problem is when I copy paste the content and claim I wrote it.
Ignoring the privacy and security issues for a moment, how would having a digital ID prove that the blog post I put on my site came only out of my own mind and I didn't use an LLM for it?
There doesn't need to be any difference in treatment between AI slop and human slop. The point isn't to keep AI out - it's to keep spam and slop out. It doesn't matter whether it's produced by a being made of carbon or silicon.
If someone can consistently produce high-quality content with AI assistance, so be it. Let them. Most don't, though.
I think the main issue is that when content is hand written you can be certain someone put at least the effort it takes to write into it. And while some people write fast, I would assume that at least means they have read their own writing once.
AIslop you can produce faster than you're able to read it. This makes it incredibly costly to filter out in comparison. It just messes so much with the signal to noise ratio on the web.
> the problem is when I copy paste the content and claim I wrote it
Why is this the problem and not the reverse - using AI without adding anything original into the soup? I could paraphrase an AI response in my own words and it will be no better. But even if I used AI, if it writes my ideas, then it would not be AI slop.
I share an opinion with Nick Bostrom, once a civilization disrupting idea (like LLMs) is pulled out of the bag, there is no putting it back. People in isolation will recreate it simply because it's now possible. All we can do is adapt.
That being said, the idea of a new freer internet is reality.. Mastodon is a great example. I think private havens like discord/matrix/telegram are an important step on the way.
In person web of trust in order to join any private community. It'll suck and be hard in the beginning, but once you reach a threshold, it'll be OK. Ban entire trees of users when you discover bots/puppets, to set an example.
So we expect either 1. people using AI and copy pasting into the human-only network, or 2. other people claiming your text sounds like AI and ostracizing you for no good reason. It won't be a happy place - I know from anti-generative AI forums.
Not sure how that makes sense. Using Google with ads is more productive for finding something than not using Google at all, as was the case beforehand.
To conclude that Google is a net productivity loss you’d have to also factor in the productivity of all the queries over time where you _did_ find what you were looking for.
I have the same impression. If anything, it’s become more “generic technical” topics and less “insider founder” ones. There seems to be a lot more institutional representation here than circa 2010-2015, probably because many of the new founders then are now running establishment companies.
There used to be a lot more “hustle culture” and “growth hacking” stuff on here (10+ years ago) most of which I find disgusting, so I’m glad for that shift.
Serbia is probably less attached to Russia today than at any point in the last 200 years.
Secondly, Belgrade is a city with a million+ people, and a great one at that. The company is almost certainly opening an office there because it's a cool place to be, and not because they are trying to make a geopolitical statement. For some reason, opening an office in a larger country (all of which have similar ethical issues) doesn't come with accusations like this.
Milion, not milions :)
OK, a bit over 1M.
I also don't think it is about geopolitics. It's more about nostalgia (owner is from Belgrade) and marketing. Based on their location, it looks more like marketing than practicality. It's dead center of downtown, almost everyone would have to commute trough heavy traffic. Anywhere in New Belgrade would be more practical (but less prestigious). And that's if you really want to be in Belgrade. Otherwise, Novi Sad is probably better.
And yeah but then you wouldn't get many Kagi customers (not employees) or visiting employees to visit, which seemed like the main point of this IMO. Being in Novi Sad or New Belgrade only makes sense for local employees.
That's not saying much, everything is relative. If the man in Belarus decided to step down and have "free and fair" elections tommorrow it would be the farthest it has been to Russia in quite some time. But you wouldn't rush to put a tech hub there.
Has Serbian infrastructure been tested by a sustained Russian cyberattack like some other Easter European countries? That's what would matter at the end of the day.
Have you spent any time in Belgrade? Because if you did, I think you'd find these kinds of comments nonsensical at best.
And no, Serbia is in no way comparable to Belarus. Serbians have cultural and historical reasons for feeling close to Russia, but as I said, this is absolutely at a low tide. This is not "relative" to Belarus, which is extremely tied to Russia geopolitically. Entirely different situations.
Yes I have. My point has nothing to do with culture or where it stands now relative to its past. It is a basic question that is important for a tech company that wants to be based in Serbia: Has Serbian infrastructure been tested by a sustained Russian cyberattack? You could have simply answered that question.
Nowhere in the post do they say anything about infrastructure. Nor are they going to be "based" there. They are opening an in-person community hub for their customers and employees. I imagine their infrastructure, like most other large tech companies, is distributed around the world.
You're stubbornly refusing to read comments in good faith and preferring to nitpick things that don't affect the general point and avoiding to answer a relevant question.
At the end of the day, both being based there and creating a hub require significant investment by the tech company. I'm trying to assess whether they made a forward-looking decision or a hasty one. The stability and robustness of Serbian infrastructure would be one important criteria for me when considering whether to create a hub there or not. Them not mentioning it in their post does not protect them from its effects or shortcomings in the future.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make. They obviously chose Belgrade because it's a cool city and because one of the founders is apparently from there. It's a community hub, not a infrastructure site. My guess is that they're spending a few thousand dollars on rent, and that's about it. Full stop. Your comment chain is not engaging with the actual post in good faith, at all.
> Serbia: Has Serbian infrastructure been tested by a sustained Russian cyberattack?
There is Microsoft software development center in Belgrade (for 25 years). I heard they moved Azure development team to Belgrade Hub recently. Does that answer your question?
It's not nothing, thanks for the constructive comment.
Microsoft is pretty much a US asset defended by the US government at this point, so their risk profile would be quite different than a much smaller tech company. I doubt they were depending on getting the 400 mil financial commitment they made to Ukraine any time soon a few years back, for example. That and many actions seem to be done in support of US foreign policy so they can retain the preference of the US government (ie other contracts etc) in the long term, as opposed to a normal tech investment decision.
But like I said, it's not nothing. As a smaller tech company if Microsoft steps in when the shit hits the fan and aids in keeping Serbian cyber infrastructure running smoothly, as a smaller tech company you would indirectly benefit.
This is a really cool idea and definitely encourages me to use Kagi, which I’ve never tried before. Belgrade is an awesome city, absolutely worth a trip (while working at their hub.)
The business model reminds me a bit of Revolut, which comes with some various benefits like one day a month at a WeWork. It’s not the primary business but it makes me feel like more of a “member” and less just a bank customer.
The people claiming that Kagi should stay in their lane don’t understand the dynamics of being a niche business with a massively more successful competitor. Technical power users aren’t going to keep you alive, building a club-like feeling while also having a solid product will.
> The business model reminds me a bit of Revolut, which comes with some various benefits like one day a month at a WeWork. It’s not the primary business but it makes me feel like more of a “member” and less just a bank customer.
It doesn't come with those benefits, you're paying more to get them. It's just banking + random subscriptions bundles basically.
Not really, because the fee I'm paying is comparable to any other bank that offers the features Revolut's (banking) services offer. And if I wanted a day pass at a WeWork, it costs ±$20, which is already $10-15 more than what I'm paying for the entire Revolut account.
I haven’t read the Asimov story, but it was probably based on this true event:
As a result, U.S. troops began asking other soldiers questions that they felt only Americans would know the answers to in order to flush out the German infiltrators, which included naming state capitals, sports and trivia questions related to the U.S., etc. This practice resulted in Brigadier General Bruce C. Clarke being held at gunpoint for some time after he incorrectly said the Chicago Cubs were in the American League[7][8][9][10] and a captain spending a week in detention after he was caught wearing German boots. General Omar Bradley was repeatedly stopped in his staff car by checkpoint guards who seemed to enjoy asking him such questions. The Skorzeny commando paranoia also contributed to numerous instances of mistaken identity. All over the Ardennes, U.S. soldiers attempted to persuade suspicious U.S. military policemen that they were genuine GIs.
Ugh, I'd fail any questions based on US sports. And, these days, 30 years removed high school civics, I'd likely miss some of the state capitals as well.
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