CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@joshhunt Are you sure? I see two possible choices for Claude integration in Xcode ("Claude Agent" and "Claude"), and I'm not sure what they mean.

@Bachus I'm not Marco.

Also, I would take that bet on crypto and NFTs. I think AI will prove to be both more widely used and more useful than both of those things combined (even if you consider crime as a valid use case for crypto).

@Bachus After a quick search, here are three links to older episodes that cover some of those topics. (See the links in the show notes.) I'm sure there are more.

Accidental Tech Podcast: 658: Your First Mistake Phone

Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.

(atp.fm)

Accidental Tech Podcast: 645: More Frosting

Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.

(atp.fm)

Accidental Tech Podcast: 594: We Just Found It on the Doorstep

Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.

(atp.fm)

@Bachus Though I didn’t say that and I don’t believe that, I do think AI will turn out differently than crypto and NFTs. Don’t you?

@USBTypeSTeve Estimating AI water usage is not straightforward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc But if/when we do enter a "water crisis" (really the "world's first"?) I'm currently inclined to blame climate change (and politics) rather than AI.

@vmachiel Like electricity, AI will (eventually) live or die based on the ratio of its usefulness to its harm. Crypto mining lives on because it’s useful for crime and blackmail and speculation, but it seems like it will never reach the mass market in the way that, say, smartphones have.

I think AI is already more useful than crypto, and it also has a much better use-to-harm ratio. Your opinion depends on your own estimate of those use and harm values.

@vmachiel Oh, and as for things stolen for electricity specifically, we stole a ton stuff for the resources used to generate power: people’s land, resources, freedom, and lives!

@vmachiel And as for the environmental impact of AI's energy usage, despite the fact that it is somewhat overblown as a percentage of total human energy use, it surely will be a short-term problem. And I'd argue that crypto mining (a much more clearcut case of harm with little practical use) shows we are not good at dealing with things like this. But advances in *other* tech (renewable energy) does give me some hope.

@vmachiel Electricity was also initially seen as "a curiosity, not a necessity." It was also not seen by everyone as "inevitable." Hindsight is 20/20.

As for "stealing," we have many precedents, both good and bad, in this area, from the printing press to player pianos to VCRs to fonts to APIs. Sometimes we come up with a pretty OK system, and sometimes we end up making things worse. But the basic questions of ownership and compensation in the face of new tech is very old and recurring.

@vmachiel I think your opinion of electricity would have been very similar to your opinion of AI had you lived during its dawn! Electricity initially "provided benefits for a relatively small group of the population" while its generation poisoned the air and polluted the water, all of which affected the masses way more than the elites. Oh, and eventually…climate change.

@marcoshuerta I agree with all of this! Uber is a similar recent example: "Lose money until we've destroyed enough of the existing market that we can start charging higher prices and customers have nowhere left to turn."

The relative timing of the bubble-pop (or even more mild "consolidation") vs. the rate at which these tools improve and we learn how to use them well will probably make a big difference in how this goes.

@jamesnvc The only “compliance” required will be your continued use of technology products and services. Even today, there are few tech products and services that are not using ethically dubious LLMs without your knowledge or consent. That’s why I say “barely a choice” today.

@freediverx I wouldn’t be so sure you have your finger on the pulse of “most” of anyone. A lot of people object to a lot more than that when it comes to AI!

@jamesnvc @mpbarlow It's barely a choice now, and will be less so as time goes on. (Do you know how many LLMs are active and doing work for you when you use software products and services today? How could you?)

Also, "LLMs" are not inherently immoral or evil. Using, say, image generation in Photoshop using an Adobe model trained exclusively on licensed data is very different than, say, creating nonconsensual sexual abuse material with Grok.

@avakining @mpbarlow I'm not giving up!

@Colman So will you, and everyone else, eventually—for better AND for worse. (See also: electricity, automobiles, modern agriculture, manufactured goods of all kinds, etc.)

@mpbarlow I think I made all the points you mentioned regarding the industrial revolution on the show. Presumably you also use electricity, manufactured products, etc., despite climate change and other ongoing negative externalities. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism.

@vmachiel Many people do think about it, including me! And we all should.