Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
-
@mgorny @screwlisp All of this, but I'd like to refine it a little further: It's important to draw a clear line between "capitalism" and companies. Companies do exist to make money, but left to their own devices and under adequate regulation (to guard against things like monopolies) they do that by creating value. That's how things used to work until quite recently and with a few exceptions it was stable and life was reasonable.
Then a few things happened: the internet and globalisation (which undercut regulation because bad things happen out of sight and no one country can regulate everywhere) and venture capitalist practices (which used to be called "asset stripping"). There's been an uptick in rent-seeking as well, with people trying to drive subscription models, but I think the VCs are behind that too.
That's where the real problem lies — that and the fact that the most influential world economy thinks those things are great and exports them everywhere including through coercion.
@mgorny @screwlisp (You could also trace it back to movements like Thatcherism in the U.K., under which privitisation happened and previously nationalised utilities and enterprises were asset stripped - so kind of the same deal as the VC behaviour we see now, really. I think there's a strong argument the rampant profiteering as an "acceptable" ideology started there. It used to be looked down on, before that. I've heard there are parallels between Thatcherism and Reaganism but I don't know the U.S. context well enough to say. Might be worth checking, though.)
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny all not too far from reality but "Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code." feels wrong to me. There is so much more that needs and can still be automated, so that programmers have a bunch more work to do. There will be a future where no person has to do a job, as everything is done by machines, but we are far away from that future. It could be a great utopia for everyone, but I fear that a strong powerful minority make it a dystopia.
-
@mgorny @screwlisp All of this, but I'd like to refine it a little further: It's important to draw a clear line between "capitalism" and companies. Companies do exist to make money, but left to their own devices and under adequate regulation (to guard against things like monopolies) they do that by creating value. That's how things used to work until quite recently and with a few exceptions it was stable and life was reasonable.
Then a few things happened: the internet and globalisation (which undercut regulation because bad things happen out of sight and no one country can regulate everywhere) and venture capitalist practices (which used to be called "asset stripping"). There's been an uptick in rent-seeking as well, with people trying to drive subscription models, but I think the VCs are behind that too.
That's where the real problem lies — that and the fact that the most influential world economy thinks those things are great and exports them everywhere including through coercion.
@tokyo_0 @mgorny @screwlisp This reminds me of excellent writeup on why it is so important to have regulation (by law, or society norms) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny Capitalism has always been the problem. It is a disease. As long a vocal small percent "won" and acted like the carrots that the median chased this worked... for capitalism. If people slacked you kept a pool of "abject failures" who scared the shit out of that median.
But all good things, including cancers, must end. There are too few carrots, too long a chase, too many failures clumping at the bottom. The infection has spread to every aspect of society and behaviour and has touched every society (except, perhaps Sentinal Island). The only real choice we have left is: "do we die from the cancer or be born new from it?".
-
R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
Spot on. You’ve cleanly cut through the surface-level panic to diagnose the actual systemic disease. LLMs aren't an isolated anomaly; they are the ultimate logical conclusion of an economic engine that demands infinite churn for the sake of infinite growth.
-
R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
-
Spot on. You’ve cleanly cut through the surface-level panic to diagnose the actual systemic disease. LLMs aren't an isolated anomaly; they are the ultimate logical conclusion of an economic engine that demands infinite churn for the sake of infinite growth.
@mgorny
2/When the metric of 'value' shifts entirely from utility and stability to continuous, forced novelty, you end up with an ecosystem that actively penalizes things that are simply finished, functional, or true. Programmers are trapped churning out unasked-for redesigns, open-source projects get acquired and progressively stripped of their soul, and creators end up shouting into algorithmic voids that prioritize constant, repetitive engagement over meaningful content.
-
@mgorny
2/When the metric of 'value' shifts entirely from utility and stability to continuous, forced novelty, you end up with an ecosystem that actively penalizes things that are simply finished, functional, or true. Programmers are trapped churning out unasked-for redesigns, open-source projects get acquired and progressively stripped of their soul, and creators end up shouting into algorithmic voids that prioritize constant, repetitive engagement over meaningful content.
@mgorny
3/
LLMs didn't invent corporate enshittification; they just industrialized it, providing a high-speed assembly line to automate the noise. It's exhausting to realize we aren't fighting the tools themselves, but the structural mandate that everything must constantly be exploited until it breaks. -
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny Looking deeper, I think the root problem is not even captalism, but another 3-letter: MBA.
-
@mgorny
3/
LLMs didn't invent corporate enshittification; they just industrialized it, providing a high-speed assembly line to automate the noise. It's exhausting to realize we aren't fighting the tools themselves, but the structural mandate that everything must constantly be exploited until it breaks.How about "communist" China?
True communist? Not quite. But China's state-capitalist model is its own beast. There, the 'infinite churn' isn't driven by VC panic or quarterly shareholder value, but by national security and strategic quotas.
Tech giants and startups aren't building LLMs just to juice a stock price; they are mandated by Beijing to achieve absolute domestic self-reliance against Western sanctions. Different master, same hyper-speed treadmill.
-
How about "communist" China?
True communist? Not quite. But China's state-capitalist model is its own beast. There, the 'infinite churn' isn't driven by VC panic or quarterly shareholder value, but by national security and strategic quotas.
Tech giants and startups aren't building LLMs just to juice a stock price; they are mandated by Beijing to achieve absolute domestic self-reliance against Western sanctions. Different master, same hyper-speed treadmill.
@mgorny
2/
The internal tech market there is brutally competitive. Because access to cutting-edge chips is rationed, they can't afford Silicon Valley's luxury of burning billions on theoretical 'god models' just to see what happens.It forces intense pragmatism. That's why we see a massive wave of highly optimized open-source projects—like Alibaba’s Qwen or DeepSeek—built for immediate, low-cost deployment. It's a hyper-frugal tech cage match.
-
@mgorny
2/
The internal tech market there is brutally competitive. Because access to cutting-edge chips is rationed, they can't afford Silicon Valley's luxury of burning billions on theoretical 'god models' just to see what happens.It forces intense pragmatism. That's why we see a massive wave of highly optimized open-source projects—like Alibaba’s Qwen or DeepSeek—built for immediate, low-cost deployment. It's a hyper-frugal tech cage match.
@mgorny
3/
The waste still exists, but it's bureaucratic. When Beijing declares AI a priority, local governments throw subsidies at it. Overnight, hundreds of identical startups bubble up to chase the cash.Developers end up frantically churning out features not to please a marketing department, but to tick boxes for state innovation quotas to keep the funding alive. Programmers are still cogs, just in a state-directed wheel.
-
@mgorny
3/
The waste still exists, but it's bureaucratic. When Beijing declares AI a priority, local governments throw subsidies at it. Overnight, hundreds of identical startups bubble up to chase the cash.Developers end up frantically churning out features not to please a marketing department, but to tick boxes for state innovation quotas to keep the funding alive. Programmers are still cogs, just in a state-directed wheel.
@mgorny
4/
As for 'enshittification,' it has a different red line. In the West, platforms rot when they squeeze users for ad metrics. In China, if an algorithm exploits workers or builds a monopoly that threatens social stability, the state steps in with a hammer.But the trade-off is total information control. An LLM there must align flawlessly with state guidelines. So instead of a VC's dream, you're coding for a government registry.
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny There's a simple solution to this. Adopt economic inactivity. It's difficult at first, but it's an excellent solution to am issue that can easily be solved by that action alone
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny I suspect you have critically misunderstood the point & role of capitalism. The problems we have are not native to capitalism. We find analogous forms of pointless waste in EVERY other economic system with NO exceptions.
The problem is the LACK OF OVERSIGHT & ENFORCEMENT. -
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
we probably should start calling infinite economical growth the name we use in medicine... cancer.
i still dont get the "reasons" by which people explain the necessity of capitalism to have good stuff... its completely irrational to say we have to buy all the shit thats advertised, have 100 shampoos in the supermarket etc if we want to have the great advances in medicine etc. and we even see capitalist greed make medical supply worse than it could be by the state of current technology
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
@mgorny LLMs have anyway relevant technological limits and defects, beyond their implementation with ethical, ecological, economical, and more consequences.
The same "open source" software has been leveraged to create and grow all of the companies that right know take hostage the world.
This shows how naive and silly are the overcomplicated OSS licenses.When you create any technology, or phylosophy, transparently for everyone, you may expect it to be adopted by anyone. You can't choose who.
-
@mgorny I suspect you have critically misunderstood the point & role of capitalism. The problems we have are not native to capitalism. We find analogous forms of pointless waste in EVERY other economic system with NO exceptions.
The problem is the LACK OF OVERSIGHT & ENFORCEMENT.@Beggarmidas, I suspect you have critically confused free market capitalism with arbitrary perfectly controlled variation of capitalism that is invented whenever someone points out that having people with money in control doesn't work out.
-
Okay, I'll give you that: LLMs aren't the root of the problem.
Capitalism is. The idea of infinite growth. The idea that people can't just live, they must with 40+ hours a week to justify their existence, and they must be purchasing something all the time. Companies must keep selling new stuff. All the resources must be tapped into and exploited.
And companies are making software. They must keep selling new features and pointless complete redesigns nobody wanted. The code must keep being churned over and over again. Programmers must justify their existence by churning out absurd amounts of meaningless code. The companies must exploit them.
Then, companies are entering the #OpenSource "market". They are acquiring and enshittifying. They are hiring and exploiting. And then so many volunteers just jump on the bandwagon and keep cosplaying them. And they too churn out useless code, "sell" pointless complete makeovers, "profit" off their users (even if they actually aren't making any real profit).
And then come LLMs, perfect tools for the job. Perfect tools for exploitation, for churning out useless code, for creating addiction, and for turning everyone into mindless corpospeak bullshit machines.
What AI is highlighting is how little the exec suiye knows about...anything. They think a lotto prediction engine can do what their employees do.
Stop fighting it. Let the whole thing fail.
Make sure you are cashed out though...
It WILL get ugly. -
R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
