Will Slack

@wslack.bsky.social

259 Followers 148 Following

Decatur GA native, prev USDS/18F & hospital tech around the US. Opinions mine; RTs/likes/follows ≠ endorsements. 🆇: @wslack 🐘: wslack@infosec.exchange

A graph showing five lines on spending from 2021-2025. The 2025 line is consistently higher than the others.
Last week I gave a talk at a Center for Civic Futures conference called "What You Need To Know Now about AI." I wrote it down after the fact as is my custom and will post some version of it somewhere eventually. But for now, a tangential thing I realized after talking to people there: The blockchain feeding frenzy shows us a possible future for "AI." The fundamental dumbness of blockchain (incredibly slow, expensive, riddled with scams) was never overcome. No one is seriously even trying anymore. Because it didn't matter. Blockchain created a smoke cloud that allowed finance bros to do what they want to do anyway, which is evade 150 years of market regulation and go back to wildcat banks. That's its actual purpose, and it's up and running. You could have created exactly the same industry if enough podcasters and QVC-quality youtubers and internet clowns suddenly started promoting magic beans or Disney dollars or Monopoly money. Likewise, "AI" doesn't have to even work on its own terms, let alone solve any actual problem, for it to kick up a smoke cloud that allows the titans of industry to implement the workforce and product enshittification they want to do anyway. That's its actual purpose, and it's up and running. All of the technical criticisms that people like me have can be correct, and not matter. The purpose of a system is what it does.
Text on men feeling isolated and the dismissal of their concerns.
Sitting on a sofa in a glass-walled room, a 2-year-old in a blue T-shirt is riveted by an episode of “CoComelon,” an animated cartoon series full of vivid colors, cherubic children and earworm songs like “Miss Polly Had a Dolly” and “Ten Little Duckies.” Three adults stand outside a closed door, watching the toddler watch the television. One studies a computer screen that shows a live feed from a camera pointed at the tyke. It’s audience research day at Moonbug Entertainment, the London company that produces 29 of the most popular online kids’ shows in the world, found on more than 150 platforms in 32 languages — and with 7.8 billion views on YouTube in March alone. Once a month, children are brought here, one at a time, and shown a handful of episodes to figure out exactly which parts of the shows are engaging and which are tuned out. For anyone older than 2 years old, the team deploys a whimsically named tool: the Distractatron. It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.
A screenshot of some tweet about brilliant people make very simplistic political takes.
Quote from the linked article about the SLS launch tower
Graph showing EU and US emissions dropping while worldwide emissions rise
An apartment building with flowers around a street sign below it.
Thumbnails of 8 YouTube videos