cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19683130
The ideologues of Silicon Valley are in model collapse.
To train an AI model, you need to give it a ton of data, and the quality of output from the model depends upon whether that data is any good. A risk AI models face, especially as AI-generated output makes up a larger share of what’s published online, is “model collapse”: the rapid degradation that results from AI models being trained on the output of AI models. Essentially, the AI is primarily talking to, and learning from, itself, and this creates a self-reinforcing cascade of bad thinking.
We’ve been watching something similar happen, in real time, with the Elon Musks, Marc Andreessens, Peter Thiels, and other chronically online Silicon Valley representatives of far-right ideology. It’s not just that they have bad values that are leading to bad politics. They also seem to be talking themselves into believing nonsense at an increasing rate. The world they seem to believe exists, and which they’re reacting and warning against, bears less and less resemblance to the actual world, and instead represents an imagined lore they’ve gotten themselves lost in.
Terminally online is an improvement for plutocrats. It used to be that they could never possibly glimpse beyond their limited social circles. Good for regular people to be exposed to just how infantile and narcissistic these “job creators” they used to worship are.