#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#BigTech#SiliconValley: "Company documents obtained by Vox with signatures from Altman and Kwon complicate their claim that the clawback provisions were something they hadn’t known about. A separation letter on the termination documents, which you can read embedded below, says in plain language, “If you have any vested Units ... you are required to sign a release of claims agreement within 60 days in order to retain such Units.” It is signed by Kwon, along with OpenAI VP of people Diane Yoon (who departed OpenAI recently). The secret ultra-restrictive NDA, signed for only the “consideration” of already vested equity, is signed by COO Brad Lightcap.
Meanwhile, according to documents provided to Vox by ex-employees, the incorporation documents for the holding company that handles equity in OpenAI contains multiple passages with language that gives the company near-arbitrary authority to claw back equity from former employees or — just as importantly — block them from selling it.
Those incorporation documents were signed on April 10, 2023, by Sam Altman in his capacity as CEO of OpenAI."
If you only read one article this year, it has to be THIS by @Mer__edith, the president of #signal :
"AI is a marketing term, not a technical term of art. [...]
This is also why it’s imperative that we recognize mass surveillance – and ultimately the surveillance business model – as the root of the large-scale tech we’re currently calling “AI”."
Only accusing the "big companies" for doing all sort of "unethical" things, is like only accusing mass murderers for the killings that they do. Every crime is a crime. Big or small. Small companies do similar shady practices and abuse people or destroy the environment.
But best is to look at the system that creates these entities instead of accusing companies or people.
As long as the underlying practice on this planet is to TRADE or else you are fucked, then this is what we are going to do and prioritize. Thus the evolution of companies and billionaires, waste, pollution, you name it.
#AI#GenerativeAI#OpenAI#BigTech: "For years now, OpenAI told everyone that these were all secondary concerns — that its deeper ambition was something nobler, and more public-spirited. But since Altman’s return, the company has been telling a different story: a story about winning at all costs.
And why bother with superalignment, when there’s winning to do?
Why bother getting actresses’ permission, when the right numbers are all still going up?"
Seen in that light, it’s no surprise that Big Tech is refusing to comply with the rules. If the EU successfully forces tech to play fair, it will serve as a starting gun for a global race to the top, in which tech’s ill-gotten gains - of data, power and money - will be returned to the users and workers from whom that treasure came.
The architects of the DMA and DSA foresaw this, of course. They’ve announced investigations into Apple, Google and Meta, threatening fines of 10 percent of the companies’ global income, which will double to 20 percent if the companies don’t toe the line.
It’s not just Big Tech that’s playing for all the marbles - it’s also the systems of democratic control and accountability. If Apple can sabotage the DMA’s insistence on taking away its veto over its customers’ software choices, that will spill over into the US Department of Justice’s case over the same issue, as well as the cases in Japan and South Korea, and the pending enforcement action in the UK."
“Today #tech companies and their #billionaire CEOs are becoming increasingly demonized, and some people are questioning whether they should even exist at all.”
Interesting approach. But it's commercial, not decentralized, and is backed by Sam Altman and more Big Tech honchos, so my first reaction is skepticism.
Prova de que big tech é uma prisão:
"Um estudo recente conduzido pelo economista Leonardo Bursztyn, da Universidade de Chicago, retratou bem essa armadilha. Os pesquisadores recrutaram mais de mil estudantes universitários e perguntaram a eles quanto dinheiro exigiriam para desativar suas contas no Instagram ou no TikTok por quatro semanas. É uma pergunta padrão de economistas para calcular o valor de um produto. Os estudantes responderam que precisariam, em média, de 50 dólares (59 no caso do TikTok, 47 no caso do Instagram) para sair dessas plataformas.
Em seguida, os pesquisadores disseram aos estudantes que tentariam convencer a maioria dos alunos da faculdade a sair das redes sociais, também mediante pagamento. E perguntaram: “Quanto você exigiria receber para desativar sua conta se a maioria dos outros também saísse da plataforma?” A resposta, em média, foi menos que zero. Em todos os casos, a maioria dos alunos se dispunha a pagar para sair da plataforma." https://sol2070.in/2024/05/Prova-de-que-big-tech-%C3%A9-uma-pris%C3%A3o #bigtech
After watching OpenAI's presentation and, even more, an excerpt from Google's presentation yesterday, I asked myself: is this AI, according to the big tech companies (especially Google - for OpenAI it's their core business, so I understand their perspective), truly what users want and need, or is it just another method to lock people into using their technologies, which are not easily self-hostable?
I'm not arguing for or against it, but I noticed that (almost) the entire Google I/O yesterday was focused on this...
#BigTech#SiliconValley#Dystopias: "By attaching the new product to a popular speculation, especially one with built-in dramatic tension, the founders can elevate a buggy, unproven, or partially conceived technology into the cultural firmament, even if only briefly. It’s a cheat code, a way of getting us to relate to a future that’s already been culturally prototyped, and it can be quite successful. To wit: The day after admonishing tech companies for using Her as a benchmark for their products, Roose dedicated his column to explaining how AI’s ‘Her’ Era Has Arrived — thus further entrenching the link between OpenAI’s aspirational technology and its attendant useful dystopia in the public consciousness. Hell, my own story about the grim origins of the metaverse probably made Facebook’s deeply lame Horizons VR product seem orders of magnitude cooler than it turned out to be.
Even if consumers aren’t aware of all of the dystopian reference points these founders and companies are pushing, they probably should be aware of the narcissistic, us-against-the-collapsing-world mentality that is active behind them. And we shouldn’t merely mock the tech set for using dystopias as marketing materials — we should try to stop them from creating them, too."
»Software aus der Schweiz statt Amerika:
Software von Big Tech ist alternativlos? Stimmt nicht, sagt Swiss Made Software und zeigt auf seiner Website mögliche Schweizer Lösungen.«
Abgesehen davon @inside_It, wäre ua Open-Source auch eine Alternative. Obwohl sehr viele dieser Software Kostenlos ist, lässt sich damit durchaus gut Geld verdienen ohne bei 0 anzufangen, wie zB die IT-Konzerne aus der USA.