These experts on AI are here to help us understand important things about AI.
Who are these generous, helpful experts that the CBC found, you ask?
“Dr. Muhammad Mamdani, vice-president of data science and advanced analytics at Unity Health Toronto”, per LinkedIn a PharmD, who also serves in various AI-associated centres and institutes.
“(Jeff) Macpherson is a director and co-founder at Xagency.AI”, a tech startup which does, uh, lots of stuff with AI (see their wild services page) that appears to have been announced on LinkedIn two months ago. The founders section lists other details apart from J.M.'s “over 7 years in the tech sector” which are interesting to read in light of J.M.'s own LinkedIn page.
Other people making points in this article:
C. L. Polk, award-winning author (of Witchmark).
“Illustrator Martin Deschatelets” whose employment prospects are dimming this year (and who knows a bunch of people in this situation), who per LinkedIn has worked on some nifty things.
“Ottawa economist Armine Yalnizyan”, per LinkedIn a fellow at the Atkinson Foundation who used to work at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Could the CBC actually seriously not find anybody willing to discuss the actual technology and how it gets its results? This is archetypal hood-welded-shut sort of stuff.
Things I picked out, from article and round table (before the video stopped playing):
Does that Unity Health doctor go back later and check these emergency room intake predictions against actual cases appearing there?
Who is the “we” who have to adapt here?
AI is apparently “something that can tell you how many cows are in the world” (J.M.). Detecting a lack of results validation here again.
“At the end of the day that’s what it’s all for. The efficiency, the productivity, to put profit in all of our pockets”, from J.M.
“You now have the opportunity to become a Prompt Engineer”, from J.M. to the author and illustrator. (It’s worth watching the video to listen to this person.)
Me about the article:
I’m feeling that same underwhelming “is this it” bewilderment again.
Me about the video:
Critical thinking and ethics and “how software products work in practice” classes for everybody in this industry please.
good point. “learn to code” is such an optimistically presented message of pessimism. It’s like those youtube remixes people would do of comedy movie trailers as horror movies. “learn to code” like “software is eating the world” works so much better as a claustrophobic, oppressive, assertion.
The blasé spite with which some people would say “just learn to code” was a precursor to the glee with which these arrogant bozos are predicting that commercial AI generators will ruin the careers of artists, journalists, filmmakers, authors, who they seem to hate.
and as we’ve seen in this thread, they don’t mind if it ruins the career of every junior dev who’s not onboard either. these bloodthirsty assholes want everyone they consider beneath them to not have gainful employment
their apparently sincere belief that not being in poverty is a privilege that people should have to earn —by doing the right kind of job, and working the right kind of way, and having the right kind of politics, is genuinely very strange and dark. The worst of vicious “stay poor” culture.
in spite of what they claim, most tech folk are extremely conservative. that’s why it’s so easy for some of them to drop the pretense of being an ally when it becomes inconvenient, or when there’s profit in adopting monstrous beliefs (and there often is)
The politics of silicon valley is a fascinating and broad topic in & of itself that could make a good thread here or in sneerclub
Would love to find a good analysis of the way Silicon Valley politics works like prosperity gospel evangelism. ie. If you are currently very rich, it is because you are smart, good, & deserving. If you have a path to being rich it is because you are emulating the smart, good, & deserving. If you are formerly rich, you were never smart, good, & deserving, you were simply a scammer, and retroactively it turns out nobody valuable ever valued you. If you are not very rich, you are unsaved.
Someone could do a religious pamphlet/broadside explaining that God is blessing his chosen people with successful IPOs and big houses on hilltops. Then they scatter some copies in the streets of San Francisco. Trouble is people would probably take them seriously.