I don't know how everyone doesn't see this. I pray. I hope. One day people look at you in complete repulsion and dumbfounded that we gave anyone, let kids unfettered access to social media. Absurdity.

Because it's very far from being Tobacco.

Tobacco has zero utilities, meanwhile Facebook is heavily used for connecting families and sharing small life events.

Saying it is the same as Tobacco isn't useful. It's an exaggeration, which makes it hard to take the argument seriously.

Millions of people find Tobacco a very pleasurable experience. Not just addicted cigarette smokers. It increases social lubricity, brings people together at parties... It helps connect new friends together and can strengthen existing bonds. It's not uncommon to celebrate events with a cigar anywhere in the world.

I don't see social media being a whole lot more useful. Cool you can share some photos, and organize some events, but you can do that without Facebook and all the unnecessary shit that goes along with it.

With that kind of thinking, meditation is like a cigarette. Running is like a cigarette. Drinking water is like a cigarette. Cue the original point of how unhelpful the analogy is.

I really appreciate this comment. Now in my 30s, I was not even aware of EA or Rationalist groups in my 20s but your description of a person high on the smell of their own farts and putting logic as king was me. The world is so chaotic that it felt good and right that I could lean on something "true" like logic. It took me to the "correct" answers according to logic but very misguided answers as I see them now. Humans are driven by emotions and the world is probabilistic so relying so heavily on logic just seems so misguided now that I'm older.

By the way, "the world is probabilistic" is one of the key lessons of the rationality community. (Infinite certainty would require infinite amount of evidence, according to the Bayes' Theorem.) When you find someone on internet trying to assign probabilities to their beliefs, chances are you have met a rationalist.

It has been clear from the beginning that Meta's supposed desire for an open source AI, is just a coping mechanism for the fact that got beat out of the gate. This is an attempt to commoditize AI and reduce OpenAI/Google/Whoever's advantage. It is effective, not doubt, but all this wankery about how noble they are for creating an open-source AI future is just bullshit.

You're wrong here. Meta has released state of the art open source ML models prior to ChatGPT. I know a few successful startups (now valued at >$1b) that were built on top of Detectron2, a best-in-class image segmentation model.

It’s because Facebooks complementary good is content (primary good is ad slots) and if somebody wins the ai race they can pump out enough content to jumpstart a Facebook competitor with a ton of content.

but they've _always_ released their stuff. Thats part of the reason why the industry uses pytorch, that and because its better than tensorflow.

In the same way that detectron and Segment anything is an industry standard.

Sure, for LLMs openAI released a product first. but its not unusual for meta to release useful models.

So much negativity. Is it perfect? No. Is there room for improvement? Definitely. I don't know how you can get so fucking jaded that a demo like this doesn't at least make you a little bit excited or happy or feel awestruck at what humans have been able to accomplish?

Why get so bothered by other people being upset? Apple is going to be fine, you don’t need to worry on their behalf. No need to get your undergarments of choice in a twist. Good opportunity to step outside and get some fresh air.

It doesn’t really ‘bother’ me and I’m not worrying on their behalf. If you’re actually interested in why I’m worried, it makes me question whether there’s less emotional resilience in our society, and I value emotional resilience because I think we need it when life truly tests us.

Sounds like you are getting your panties in a bundle about other people getting their panties in a bundle. Why do you care so much what other random people on the internet think?

Maybe it is you who needs to go outside and stop reading these comments which make you feel 'insane'?

And why do you care so much about what foobar thinks to the point of passively-aggressive asking him?

"Why do you care about X" questions are inane.

....and you have continued the pattern by joining in and asking me the question. Well done!

People exercise their God given right, why do you care so much about it?

Getting emotional are we?

This is clear as day. If they got an early lead to the LLM/AI space like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, then things would be very different. Attributing the open source to "good will" and Meta being righteous seems like some mis-founded 16 year old's overly simplistic ideal of the world. Meta is a business. Period.

Yeah if I had to stack rank 'obscene' energy consumption technologies, Bitcoin would be number 1 and AI would be pretty low on the list.

Feels like another pivotal moment in AI. Feel like I’m watching history live. I think I need to go lay down.