I know that doesn’t apply 1:1 to software, but the point is less about individual OSS projects and more about the hosted service of package registries, which do have people & money behind them.

Npm, for example, is owned by Microsoft (through GitHub). MS has huge amounts of money. They could be scanning for malware on upload and adding so many more security mechanisms. But they don’t.

I think the tldr is that Gary Marcus has been hating on LLMs since ChatGPT came out, mostly because of the hype around them. His core theory is that pushing LLM tech just with more training is not going to accomplish AGI. He does have some essays with good writing (not this one), and he typically talks about how we’ll need different techniques to solve things like hallucinations.

I’ve read articles of his which made genuinely good points, and which go against the grain of what the big LLM companies are saying.

The reason there’s a lot of drama is that the LLM hype train (which includes some prominent people) really hated on HIM for saying anything negative about LLM technology, and he responded to that by keeping the flame war going for the past 4 years (as you can see in this article.)

So when any companies do anything that looks like using these other techniques (neurosymbolic AI, world models), he basically tosses a quick article out about how vindicated he feels. Because the companies were all like “attention is all we need” and “we can just build 4x bigger data centers and that extra compute will solve all of our problems with more training,” and he was like “that’s BS”

So, I really don’t mind him showing up, because we get do get much BS on here from the AI companies too. So… Gary Marcus is at least a balancing kind of BS in a way. (For example, it’s hard to trust anything Anthropic says about Mythos, because they have so much money riding on it being insanely capable.)

But that situation isn’t ideal. What we actually need is more thoughtful, critical research which is NOT tied to impossible business goals. And that doesn’t describe Gary Marcus OR OpenAI/Anthropic.

Generally, when individual humans violate other people’s rights, we’re extremely strict. When companies do it at a large, systemic scale, we for some reason let them off the hook. Even when they have exceptionally good income & financial outlook.

It follows that the system is fundamentally broken.

Were Magellan’s men volunteers? For example, in the incident with The Wager, 1,980 men left on 6 ships, and only 188 survived. Men of the original men were press-ganged (kidnapped to crew these ships), and a lot of them were even taken from an infirmary and not in great health. And, of course, conditions were pretty terrible.

So yeah, we’re more risk adverse… and also a lot better at keeping people alive. I think most people would not have signed up for some of these really risky endeavors if they knew the true risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wager_Mutiny

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

Maybe this default makes sense… if MS was generously giving everyone a couple hundred GB. Otherwise it’s a cash-grab.

Everyone else does it too, which also sucks. They just don’t fill it all up as quickly. Though iMessage in iCloud is a good comparison bc pictures people send you fill up iCloud FAST. Thing is, you can still receive iMessages and use everything just fine — you just can’t backup your phone any more.

People need to get it into their fucking heads that things get really ugly and violent under systems of extreme income inequality.

So far, AI is not focusing on solving that problem, just making it easier for tech people to get richer.

AI is certainly powerful, but despite tech CEO whitewashing, none of them are planning for how the economy will recover from a potential devastation of white collar jobs. Token bills fund rich investors & executives, not everyday Americans.

For AI to give me abundant free time & happiness, I need to have money, and I don’t see UBI anywhere on OpenAI’s roadmap.

Not surprising at all, everything I’ve ever heard about Google support sums up to “they basically don’t have any,” even for enterprises on GCP

Relying on an energy source which requires constant, continuous resource extraction is fucking stupid when we can spend resources up front and get reliable energy (solar + battery) for decades with minimal operating cost & maintenance. And then we’ll have a recycling loop to minimize future resource extraction.

If you want to debate that, spend some time with this video first: https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM