You know, a year ago people in charge were all, like nooo we’re not going to fire people and pocket the payroll savings

When did we cross the line where everybody stopped lying? I mean, our vaunted business leaders dropping the bullshit is welcome, even if its bad news… but the interesting bit is in the collective, unconscious decision to just own up to this as the likeliest future.

I have so many questions

Enjoy your access to this technology before the bigger players do something that “disrupts” your capability to:

• Use electricity
• Afford computers
• Have time to think about stuff other than food & shelter
• Get access to medicine
• Discern truth from fiction for anything you’re not directly experiencing

We’re on a razor’s edge balanced between dystopia and a sci-fi dream, and we keep getting pushed in the wrong direction by the tech debt and social/economic conventions of the 20th century. We need to tool up while we remain in this transitional phase. It might be very bad later. There’s a chance it might be awesome too. Expect the worst, hope for the best.

The government prefers to kill people by letting them die from neglect.

To beat the enemy we must become him!

Not to worry, we will cover the expense.

The feeling of constant acceleration is valid. It will only get more intense in the coming years, so consider this your practice round.

In spite of the marginal results a lot of current LLMs can deliver, they are making a difference in some areas of work. I’m a data engineer and working with an agent over the last few months has been a revelation. You have to wrangle it just so, but with an adequate context well-defined, you can plow through months of tedious due-diligence and fine-tuning in days.

I wouldn’t trust it for medical advice… yet… but the time will come when it stops being “ai” and becomes like autofocus or voice transcription or shopping cart suggestions, just another tool. Something else will take on that mantle, and be a different, even more disconcerting mixed bag.

There was a book that came out about 20 years ago by Ray Kurzweil, named The Singularity is Near that discussed this phenomenon in detail, and so far has been prophetic. It will help you understand what’s happening and what’s coming next.

Welcome. I too disagreed with the wrong people on Reddit and can no longer participate there.

Yeah presently Lemmy is not Reddit-scale. But, it also is not Reddit-moderated, or Reddit-algorithmed. I find I can sign into Lemmy, do a bit of scrolling and commentary to scratch my itch, and get on with my day. No dynamic selection designed to retain my engagement through emotional manipulation, a far lower population of malicious bots and actors, and generally more thoughtful discussion.

Quality beats quantity. Federated social breaks the toxic monoculture. Distributed media like this is able to support a broader diversity of people. In the end, this is the future.

Is this related to the idea that as soon as artificial intelligence can be applied to a specific use-case, it ceases to be magical, hand-wavey magic and becomes auto-focus, or shopping suggestions, or voice transcription?

To the 18th century doctor, our state of healthcare is literally science fiction tales of wonder. Resurrecting the dead, replacing organs, changing gender… impossible! Now it’s just healthcare.

Transgender tech person here. I’d generally agree with you.

In the last 5 years I’ve lost 160 pounds, instituted an aggressive exercise program, started a longevity-focused supplement regime which includes radically changing the function of my endocrine system to focus on estrogen. Somebody who hasn’t seen me since starting would have a hard time believing I was the same person.

All of this is really only possible due to the technology and research we have access to. Bioidentical hormones, anti-inflammatory drugs, anti-androgens, metabolic support like GLP-1 agonists, etc, as well as the basic over-the-counter supplements… are all backed by many decades of research by armies of scientists on proper formulation and dosage. Not to mention the advances in wearable tech that continually track my physical condition, combined with staggering levels computational power that synthesizes the whole picture.

The march of advancement is ongoing. We are soon to enter the era of personalized medicine, where my genome can be analyzed to produce custom viruses and mRNA that deliver precisely defined instructions to fix or alter specific aspects of my person. This doesn’t even touch on surgical innovations.

I think what the kitten-eaters dislike is not the tech but the -ism in transgenderism. The notion that I should want a change they find culturally icky, but can’t dispense with without also doing away with all the other stuff they do want. It drives ‘em nuts, lol. As long as we live in a free society, I get to do whatever I want. So, their solution is to make the society less free, but just for this.

That targeted disenfranchisement easily broadens to persecute an entire credo that naturally occurs around people such as myself. I also live in a city, have electric cars in my drive and solar panels on my roof, and subscribe to crazy notions like everybody should have guaranteed access to medicine. This is apparently an existential threat to the straight, white, male, Protestant, suburban fossil-fueled strip-mall American Way. I’m well and certainly on a number of lists. In case they’re reading this, Ka$h Patel can eat the peanuts out of my asshole.

I aim to live for a long time, in good health, as the person I envision myself to be. The only threat to that are the right-wing psychopaths… but I contribute too much to the precious economy to be written off completely. It vexes them, which amuses me.

That darn constitution, keeps getting in the way of people exercising their freedom to hurt others who make them feel uncomfortable.

Homeboy might be more credible without that fucked-up haircut. Seriously, are you that disconnected from the world of normal people that you can look in the mirror with that ‘do, consider it critically, and say, “yeah, that’s just what I’m going for"

There are some things you need a shared workspace for. Most of what we do in the US, having converted largely to an email-and-spreadsheets-based economy, does not.

My full-flavor, everyday workspace requires a comfortable chair, decent internet, and intermittent access to elecricity. It fits in a backpack. All of my coworkers are similarly equipped. Our 40-person startup has a minuscule office that we couldn’t begin to fit everybody in. We are making lots of money.

At least you got the tender version.

WHERE do I find that gigantic USB delete key?

They couldn’t have been sober, then.

I feel like, having read your comment, I should stop feeling so grumpy about Russia fucking with us. We can’t get thru this late-stage capitalist nonsense fast enough.

Kids are little disease vectors that drain your life-force and murder your dreams.

If you enjoy being broke, fat, tired, and boring, you should totally have kids. Come on, do it! Your friends and family just assume you’ll squeeze out one or two, you don’t want to disappoint them , do you?

Just install Amphetamine on your Mac, duh

Nick Bostrom takes himself waaaaaaaayyy too seriously.