Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying

I generally respect this guy’s opinion (I probably use the term “enshitification” multiple times a week!), but pretending that “AI” and “Chabot” are interchangeable terms seems wildly reductive, and the subtle presumption that the process of changing is a binary changed/non-changed situation instead of a curve is just ignorant.

If the internet was “turned off” after 4 or so years not much would have changed, either.

Corey Doctorow isn’t speaking to you, he’s speaking to the many, many people who have been fooled by the ai craze.

And often I wonder, how many people have been fooled, and how much of the enthusiasm and over the top fantasy is astroturfing by a few people incentivized to sway public opinion?

And how much of the doomerism is a campaign to keep the common man from using a revolutionary tool for, well, revolution, by alienating those most likely to do revolutionary things with it?

Once you look at the actual numbers for pollution, water usage, etc it becomes very clear that the issues are vastly overstated. So, why?

That’s one for the fooled side.

Yeah. I guess we’ll see.

EDIT: you should go on claude’s reddit and look at all of the tools people have built to keep companies and politicians accountable, to renegotiate billing, to improve their lives at the expense of capital. Or you can just go on thinking you’re right!

Fuck reddit but i have a friend who automated fooa requests with claude, sent foia requests to every county in the state and has all the tracking and everything automated. Only thing he needs to do is review the emails before they get sent. It’s amazing and he’s bring transparency to every corner of the state using ai.