The Luddite

all ai hype big tech critique new idea policy guest crosspost

Against a purple gradient background, getting slightly darker from the bottom right to the top left, there's a pie. The pie is in a pie pan, and the pie's crust has four holes like those holes in those cardboard cutouts at, say, amusement parks, where you can stick your face in and take a picture and it's your face on whoever's body. The pie has four holes, and there are four faces sticking out, looking pretty expresionless, maybe a bit confused. It's hard to know. — The Anti-Intellectualism of Social Media Design

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A kitten holding onto a rope, with the words 'hang in there' written beneath. in the bottom right is einstein's face. the background is red with a bunch of equations written over it. for my screenreader friends, i'll explain the joke: it's a reference to how, in this post, i compare the book's use of deleuzian philosophy to using einstein's relativity to explain a simple fall. — A Revolution for the Perplexed: A Review of "Blockchain Radicals"

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Tokens, the oft-overlooked appetizer: Large language models, the distributional hypothesis, and meaning

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Nature's Folly: A Response to "AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably"

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The pound symbol, aka a hashtag symbol, drawn in light blue. Inside each of the four sticks is a forearm and hand, pointing, with each hand going over the forearm that it crosses. Background is blue, pink, and purple, with little frilly drops leaves, and other border doodles. — A Response to Jackson et al's "#HashtagActivism"

Complexity and Accountability: A (Non-Environmental) Case for Rationing Computation

A drawing of a green demon named Todd talking to Satan. Above Todd, the words 'How Todd become demon of the month... CONGRATS, Todd.' Todd is facing Satan, his right shoulder towards us. Satan is bigger than Todd. He's red and lacks Todd's huge canine teeth. He's got long black nails and looks pleased, maybe even impressed. He's holding a phone and saying 'So they just swipe right to reject each other? Because we gave them this UI? That's really all we had to do?' — Capture Platforms

Are Tech Stocks Overvalued?

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A Response to Futurism's "CEOs Could Easily Be Replaced With AI, Experts Argue" and Similar Articles

Why Is There an AI Hype?

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A medium-dark skinned face depicted from the nose to the chin with its mouth open, and the word RESPONSE coming from it in red letters on a yellow background like a beam of light and truth or something. — A Response to Mark Rober's Apologia for Anduril and the Military-Industrial Complex in "Vortex Cannon vs Drone"

A woman in a green dress and something resembling one of those old-timey, medieval head cloth thingies is holding a sign that says 'When will you HEAR US?' She's facing three people, a blue-robed man with a strainer on his head, pointing at her to get out, a mermaid with pink scales, and a green orgre like dude that looks mostly friendly but feels a bit awkward about this whole situation. In the background, there's a globe on the table with red tablecloth, with dangling versions of the sun and the earth next to the globe. — Mass Protests and the Danger of Social Media

Two little kids. The first looks frustrated, is holding a single teddy bar, and is staring at the second, while the second says 'you have to give it to me. for national security.' Behind the second there's a big ol' pile of toys, with teddy bears, model trains, model cars, a book, a doll, etc. — The TikTok "Ban" and the Missing Leftist Response

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A creepy purple-green-tinted, featureless body with a computer monitor displaying green-purple static for head caresses the head of a crying young woman wearing a green shirt with light skin and blonde hair — [UPDATE] Nature's Folly: A Response to Nature's "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots"

Saturn Devours His Children, except edited so that Saturn is devouring a crumpled-up calendar. — Daylight Savings and the Case for the Pre-Julian Calendar

the luddite presents

Reddit Will License Its Data to Train LLMs, So We Made a Firefox Extension That Lets You Replace Your Comments With Any (Non-Copyrighted) Text

A three-dimensional space with the axes labeled x, y, and z axes labeled need, want, and agency, respectively. The background of the graph is lightly decorated — Need, Want, and Agency: Mapping the Digital User Experience

the luddite responds

An injured person in a hospital gurney, covered completely from head to toe in bandages with their right leg in a sling hanging from the ceiling and their neck in a brace, such that they look like a mummy save for the slit for their eyes. Theres a screen on the medical widget attached to their IV that says 'Just type the purpose of your visit into the interface. I will be happy to assist you' — Nature's Folly: A Response to Nature's "Google AI has better bedside manner than human doctors — and makes better diagnoses"

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A golden clock with the words Time for a Guest Post written on its face. — The Playlist(s) Lie

A drawing in a pixelated style, such that it looks like roller coaster tycoon, of a fellow with a big stupid grin and brown hair, enclosed with a fenceand trapped on a path with no way out. — Digital Public Footpaths: A Policy Proposal for an Internet Right of Way

A man in a turquoise t-shirt and brown hair, staring back at us with his eyes filled with red and black swirls, hypnotized. Behind him are two screens with almost-naked women. On the left there's a woman's butt with revelaing underwear; on the right, the face and top of the torso of a topless woman, facing forward. — The Pornetariat: The Techno-Optimist Underclass

A large red SUV, with the license plate DNTWRY. It's way too close, and so big that the sides and top are out of frame. Its footprint is even too big to fit on the road under it, and it's probably going way too fast towards you -- watch out! — Why Are Cars Getting Bigger?

A megaphone says Welcome to Automation World ... your input is not required. There are five people bound tightly from their feed all the way up to their noses attached to a platform, and in the background there are roller coaster tracks. — The Tyranny of Data and Its Digital War on Human Agency

Two very sketchily drawn faces look at each other, and the space in between them is one of those inkblot texts, where depending on what you focus you see a different image. The negative space between their faces is a cup, which is the classic inkblot drawing. — Why Do Teens Use TikTok for Mental Health Diagnoses?

A business man smoking a cigar says Everybody's gotta making a living. In the background there are piles of dead bodies. — A Statement on Technology in War or: Why No One Should Stop Worrying or Love the Bomb

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A golden clock with the words Time for a Guest Post written on its face. — Emergent Aikido

the luddite presents

Are Things Getting Worse? We Made A Website That Lets You Decide

One Year Update: Is This Thing On?

The Fractal Bloat

A bunch of worries carry a typewriter labeled ChatGPT to a giant head, the boss, on a palanquin. — The Anti-Labor Propaganda Masquerading as Science

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An Amendment to the Seven Strategization Initiatives For Success And Profit

Google Made Me Ruin A Perfectly Good Website: A Case Study On The AI-Generated Internet

Two hands exchange some cash with a yellow lock in the background. Behind that is a striped background containing little human eyes — Landlords of Cyberspace: Understanding Tech through Twitter's Rebrand and Worldcoin

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A golden clock with the words Time for a Guest Post written on its face. — Population Emission Unit Reductions: A Totally Serious Opportunity to Expand Carbon Markets

A crying barbie says: mass murder is hard; let's go shopping. In the background there's an actual photo of an atomic bomb exploding. — Barbenheimer and our Malleable Reality

The word Cucksumerism on an arch that seems to enter hell, depicted by a bunch of fire. The arch is helled (lol sorry) by pillars and surrounded by various red demons and tortured souls, though it's hard to konw which is which. — Cucksumerism: A Boyboilian Theory of a Modern Internet Pathology

the luddite responds

A medium-dark skinned face depicted from the nose to the chin with its mouth open, and the word RESPONSE coming from it in red letters on a yellow background like a beam of light and truth or something. — Smithsonian Magazine Is Wrong About Vertical Farming

A hand-cranked meat grinder on a green background that contains the title of the piece, along with the wordss like Average, Monotony, foating around in small font. — The Crucible of Mediocrity: Lessons from the Physical World for the AI-Generated Internet

A malabranche, depicted in a skin-tight red-with-black-stripes outfit covering everthing but its face, stares sadly at a computer screen full of tedious looking notifications: You — Flying Sucks and Robots Steal Your Job: On The Joyless Technologies Capitalists Create

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One of those chatterbot wind-up toys thats some feet on a mouth with eyes, but the entire thing is made up of words too small to read. — A Blind Spot for Large Language Models: Supradiegetic Linguistic Information

A light skinned woman with a blue dress and brown curly hair drags what appears to be a dead goose by the neck, looking might annoyed. — The Internet Continues Getting Worse: Reddit's Third-Party Apps and Digital Enclosure

A bunch of pop up ads covering a mechanical tree, and a guy with sunglasses. The pop up ads have over the top tech copy, like NFTREEE and BUY.TREEEEE.coin. They also promise to SOLVE CLIMATE CHANGE and INNOVATE. Also, there's CARBON SEQUESTER, I HARDLY KNOW HER — Legalize Ransomware: A Totally Serious Market-Based Solution to the Cybersecurity Crisis

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A golden clock with the words Time for a Guest Post written on its face. — The Snake Eats Itself

A flowchart: Users go into a computer, which feeds into workers, which also feed into a computer, which finally goes to shareholders. — Capitalism Uses Computers Backwards: What Amazon Warehouses and Online Dating Have in Common

This is a circularly repeated drawing, where each slice, as it were, is repeated 12 times in a circle. Each slice contains a red demon, with a mechanically operated jaw (there's a gear portruding from their cheekbone), which is sorta fused but also seems to be dominating this angel, with light blue wings. They're attached at the torso. In the middle of the drawing, or farther up the to the tip of the slice, there is an interconnecting system of tree roots, with various company logos discussed in the piece, like Tesla. — Technological Antisolutions: The Difference Between Public Transit and Self-Driving Cars

The justice scales, balanced, overlaid by a psychedelic pattern. — Effective Altruism: Should We Pause AI?

A tomato floating in space. — Colonizing Space Is Store Bought Tomatoes but More and for Everything

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A golden clock with the words Time for a Guest Post written on its face. — Rise of the Banal

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A flow chart. — Money Is The Problem

A flow chart. It starts at community, whic then goes to social media conflict, which splits into profit or into a square where communities, represented by ribbons of people holding hands like those things kids cut out, have hteir ties severed, who then go to conflict resolution, who then go back to community, which is the top of the chart. — The Alienation Machine: How Social Media Creates Private Profit from Public Disunity

A woman in a purple dress and curly hair talks to her computer monitor. Behind her is a green monster with two fangs, and a half-bird half-woman with light skin, both looking at her. — Why Do We Blur Our Zoom Backgrounds?

The words FEED ME on the bottom, most prominent. The rest is a bunch of human eyes al circling around a fucked up, eight-sided mouth like thing that's almost double pedaled in its mouthiness — On Section 230 and Third Party Content

A woman with dark skin checking her phone. She's wearing a large hoop earring. In the background there are lightbulbs, pizza slices, and different inds of vegetables arranged into a sort of pattern to form the background. — Social Media Is Not A Utility

In the foreground, there's a black and red cicular design that's like eight stylized triangles meeting the middle. In the background, in faded gray, there's an intricate sea of repeating detailed machine parts — Technological Antisolutions: The Difference Between Public Transit and Self-Driving Cars (Original)

This one is a doozy. It's an angel man with large white wings on top of a weird mythological drawing of a head, surrounded by the words: iterate, inncarnate, quantify. Aboe that is a banner that reads 'TAM SAM SOM BABA'. There are two people kneeling at this weird altar wearing fish costumes, and in the background there are little disembodied heads with angel wings like this byzantine mosaics. — The Attention Economy 3: Why?

A donut with white frosting and sprinkles with an eye pearing through the middle — The Attention Economy 2: Any App That Could Just Be A Website Only Exists To Track You

The grim reaper holding his scythe and wearing his usual black garb hugging a blonde woman, facing away from us. — The Attention Economy: How Tech Harvests Human Life For Shareholder Value

Elon Musk's stupid face on the body of a turquoise blue bird — Elon Musk Is Not The Problem With Twitter

A 'Y' in a field of little bubbles containing company logos that went through y combinators. — Paul Graham Sucks

The Case Against Substack