Science Raccoon

And there's a thought rattling around in my head over the fact that a lot of the issues with AI are not brand new to the technology era--a source of chronic and easy misinformation; a technology that causes people to withdraw and isolate and often self-harm; an environmental scourge; an absolute machete to critical thinking, disciplined learning, and meaningful study because why bother with hard and long tasks when you can get fast and easy dopamine hits--all of these can be applied to social media as well.

But something makes AI so foot-to-the-gas-pedal worse in such a festering and pervasive and sudden way, and I think my conclusion for that lies in this emergent technology debuting to the public already under the control of big tech mega-conglomerates who--and this part is critical--were absolutely panickingly desperate at the exact moment ChatGPT hit the scene.

And I'm going to bother you with graphs about this. Because I think it will help explain a lot of the Full-Shove-Down-Throatedness you've no doubt noticed with AI.

And like to back up a second--modern social media is controlled by these exact same mega-conglomerates. But the social media platforms didn't start that way. They were a lot of guy-in-his-basement style inventions--tumblr included--which developed to serve an organic and natural niche people wanted. No throat-shoving yet. Most of us (tumblr demographic) were probably sparkle-dogging on deviantart and--yeah whatever--superwholocking over here. And that was by no means perfect or necessarily even good but there was opportunity to ease in and learn the good and bad.

THEN the mega-conglomerates got it and Facebook is a festering cesspit and Twitter is Like That. But there was a bit of a gradual enshittification there, and I imagine most people following my blog are old enough such that you were able to recognize what enshitted itself and disengage appropriately.

AI--for all the way its ills mirror social media--was born a fully formed fucking asshole directly into the cradles of big tech. And it's weird to consider the technology behind LLMs is not, inherently, evil. And that feels weird because it never really had the chance to exist in the public eye in any capacity before it was the throat-shoved and desperate weapon of big tech downright begging you to rot your brain out your ears and steal your work and pollute the earth and stop thinking and stop trying and stop learning.

Which maybe then begs the question, WHY the crazy desperation? Why the complete disregard for sense, law, legal ownership, and customer voices? Why does 'fetch' need to happen and why do Tech CEO's talk about it like they're gonna bite the cyanide pill in their molars if you don't buy a fucking gemini subscription.

Well I promised you graphs.

Here's your first graph. And here's a little fun fact for those following at home: ChatGPT came out Dec 20, 2022.

This graph shows the stock price for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta (nee Facebook) between August 2016 (10 years ago) and Dec 20, 2022.

Now see that peak right before the start of 2022? Cover the downward side of it with your finger. Go on. Don't you see a beautiful exponential future of infinite growth? Don't you love when exponential growth is forever? Some of those returns were 400% in just 5 years. Sure, Covid caused a blip but what's a global pandemic in the face of a bullish stock run?

Okay now uncover the right side. That side is the screaming crying sobbing coaster of rich people feelings. And they were so very in their feels.

I'm zooming in on the graph for you. Welcome to November 2021 to Dec 20, 2022.

If you bought Amazon at peak? You were down 50%. Meta at peak? Down 60%. And every rich person investor is a money genius until the market turns, at which point it's panic to right the ship.

There were whispers of recession all throughout 2022 and it made the tech market crumble, because tech stock prices are highly speculative, and they ride market whiplash with more aggressive slingshotting than companies grounded in material value.

And then something happened on Dec 20, 2022. Obviously you know, I've said it 3 times. ChatGPT released. And oh boy.

Companies started promising AI. Investors started listening. The stock prices got happy.

Welcome to the graph 2022 to current day

And if the dance is working, they don't fucking stop dancing.

Do you WANT AI? Do you NEED AI? Will it actually help you? Might it in fact harm you? Will it harm the planet? Will it harm learning, and discipline, and the vulnerable, in the exact ways big tech companies are shoving it down people's throats?

Who give a shit! Whogiveasshitwhogiveasshitwhogiveahit. Money up! Desperate crying tech company HAPPY now. Money happy now!

Now the entire 10 year graph looks like this

And that scary scary scary scary drop off in 2022 that course corrected itself nigh exactly on December 20, 2022?

if you call yourself a youth liberationist you have to read this or die by my fucking beam

1 - the geese in the background show that the fake coyote doesn't deter geese

It went... unpleasantly viral, and still to this day it gets a dozen to a hundred comments per day, depending on how much the algorithm is pushing it. And they go basically like this:

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments like this, completely non-stop. I've removed the most heinous bigotry from the screenshots here (transphobia, racism, violent misogyny, etc), but they are all the same two or three arguments, the same thought-terminating clichés, regurgitated on auto-pilot, forever.

I think it's easy to underestimate just how deeply brain-poisoned culture is by the beauty standards that are pushed on us. There is this reflexive and instant disgust response in so many people at the mere suggestion that anything other than the beauty ideal could possibly be desirable. And it is disgust, because nothing else can produce such amounts of venom and moral judgment so fast.

The women that these people are all so offended by look like this, by the way:

From the photo collection Athlete by Howard Schatz, 2002

I thought was making a mild, inoffensive, milquetoast suggestion in my video. I wrote it thinking "okay, what's the broadest, most mainstream acceptable, gentlest, most non-controversial version of this argument I can make?"

What does this mean?

It is a truth that it is okay for trans women to have facial hair. Facial hair is morally neutral, it's okay if a trans woman has it.

If you personally do not want your facial hair and are struggling with it, and someone says "Well it's okay for trans women to have facial hair!!" in response the issue is NOT with the statement "it's okay for trans women to have facial hair". The issue is with the way the person talking to you and how it is completely ignoring your emotions and dysphoria in an unhelpful, ignorant at best / malicious at worst manner.

It is a truth that it is okay for a trans man to not go on testosterone. HRT is morally neutral, it's okay if a trans man does not want to seek it out.

If you personally want to go on testosterone but are struggling to access it, and someone says "Well it's okay for trans men to not go on T!" in response the issue is NOT with the statement "it's okay for trans men to not go on T". The issue is with the way the person talking to you and how it is completely ignoring your emotions and situation in an ignorant at best / malicious at worst manner.

Not only this, but multiple potentially conflicting truths DO exist.

It is simultaneously a truth that trans people as a whole are pressured not to seek out gender affirming care and a truth that not all forms of gender affirming care are for every trans person.

The important thing is that everyone is allowed to opt in or out of that care in an informed manner. What is life saving for some is going to be neutral or completely unwanted for others - there is no perfect way to accommodate all of those experiences, but there are still informed ways to account for many experiences.