The Hated One
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You'll Be Replaced And You'll Be Happy
🕑 Added 2024-08-10 12:44:48 +0000 UTCThis is where the video is public, if you want to chime in the comments there: https://youtu.be/m645VYVE0TU
Imagine getting an opportunity to spend a heartfelt moment with your daughter. She asks you for help to a write a letter to her sport idol. And you could spend the time looking for the best words, bonding over her dreams. It’d be a teachable moment. A core memory, if you will.
But instead of all of that, your response is – “just ask a chatbot, child”.
The level of out of touch, tone-deaf, anti-human narcissism at big tech has reached new heights of depressing. 1984 was wrong. The Brave New World was wrong. This is peak boring dystopia.
How removed from reality do you have to be, when you decide to run this for the Olympics – the one event that celebrates human achievement?
And think about what this ad is is trying to convince you off – that AI is better at expressing feelings and pouring out your childhood dreams than the children and their parents. It’s not just asking the AI for help. It’s the AI doing the whole thing for you. So that you don’t have to be bothered with boring time consuming tasks of a being a good father. You can automate that shit now so that you can focus on what’s really important. The shareholder value. [0]
This is Evil Corp. We have all these different brands under different logos and different names. But they are all the same. They are all doing the same thing. Setting and following the same trends on and on, squeezing every penny out of each of them into sterile homogenized neatly packaged products.
I know they are the same because I know why they are the same. And I am gonna tell you why they are the same. It’s my “one corporation” theory. And I also have a solution that I disclose at the end of this video.
But first, I need to show you how much anti-human the corporate tech has become. How it’s not just a one off event and a pattern that has taken a life on its own and it make turns every piece of culture into the most bland fast-food version of the original with no taste, no texture, and no soul.
So Google made a terrible ad about Gemini. So what? Why am I even making a video on this?
Google's Gemini ad is not just bad. It is profoundly off-putting. It pissed off so many people that Google had to turn off comments to save face, instead of... you know, admitting their elite executives are role-playing traitors of humanity. [1]
Even Gemini is somehow self-aware enough to see what the corporate elites at Google couldn’t. The “cute kid” trope you say, huh? Have I seen that somewhere before? [2]
This ad is not an anomaly. It’s part of a broader trend. And no, that trend has little to do with the AI hype and the obvious tech bubble we are in right now. This trend has been developing underground for a few years and it’s now starting to rear its ugly head. What am I talking about? Well, let me show you. [3]
Remember the latest iPad Pro ad? The one where they thought it was a great idea to put every iconic piece of modern culture under a hydraulic press, heartlessly crush it into smithereens, only to show the iPad, victoriously taking the place of all that came before. A pretty terrible coconut tree analogy.
This, of courses, landed so badly with the creative community, Apple actually, in a rare instance, admitted a mistake and pulled the ad. [4, 5]
And the ad is not even that off. I get what they are trying to say. That before you needed multiple different gadgets to do what you can now do on a device that fits into your pocket. It’s only about a 20-year-old trope by now.
So that was Apple’s this year’s entry into the competition for the world’s most terrible ad. There is also Microsoft. Just…
Ah, yes… who needs friends for a group study when you can do it with a chatbot! Yes, watch me change the world by becoming a prompt engineer, because now you can larp into any profession without learning anything about it. If only MLK had Copilot, amirite. Because the thing we need more of in today’s society, is to spend less time collaborating and just… being with other humans, and spend even more time alone, isolated in front of computers gathering our data, predicting and monetizing every minute of our lives, for the benefit of the lucky few shareholders demanding infinite growth at all cost. [6, 7]
What do these ads have in common? What’s the one thing that binds all of them together? What’s the trend that ties all these companies into a giant disgusting corporate centipede? They are all anti-human.
They are selling us products that are erasing human to human interactions from our lives. It starts at the workplace, being sold as a productivity measure, then slides just the same way into our spare time and family lives.
Apple Intelligence is the perfect culmination of the world the big tech has envisioned for us. You will no longer need to read messages from your coworkers or friends. You will have AI summarize their texts for you. You won’t need to respond either. You’ll have smart reply generating responses on your behalf. None of your friends will read those anyway. They’ll use an AI on their phones to summarize your texts and respond with an AI generated reply. A supervised bot-to-bot communication. And you should be happy for it. [8]
Oh, how perfectly this fits with VR. Apple Vision Pro, will have you permanently locked in a virtual workplace, because now you can be in a company meeting while serving dinner to your kids. You will love metaverse. First, your boss will make you, then you won’t even see your friends without the goggles on. WWDC 2023 — June 5 Apple
Mark Zuckerberg thinks one of the use cases for open source AI, will be the ability of famous people to create AI bots of themselves, that their fans could talk to. [9]
You think this will never catch on, but it will. Because people are lonely and isolated. We’ve never been this alone and that’s official. Loneliness is global crisis everywhere from China to USA. [10,11]
Instead of solving that problem by, I don’t know… giving people more time and space to socialize, the big tech gives them AI girlfriends and boyfriends to role-play with. Which is a dangerous loophole that distorts people’s perception of real relationships, and adds even more hours of the day they spend not with other humans. [12, 13]
https://time.com/6257790/ai-chatbots-love/
But the big tech thinks it’s amazing that people are more open with a chatbot that spies on them than with another human being. [6, 12]
It’s no coincidence that this is happening at all of these different corporations. A few years ago, they didn’t have that much in common. Amazon started with selling books. Now they are an AI company. Facebook started off as a social network. Now they are an AI company. Apple started with selling computers. Now they are an AI company. Microsoft started by selling an operating system. Now they are an AI company. Nvidia started off selling shovels to the gaming industry. Now they are selling shovels to AI companies.
Everything is converging into this one vision. Everything is becoming a one corporation. It’s my hypothesis that claims that all major corporations are driving markets into one super-conglomerate under common ownership, that will eventually consume industry after industry, until it’s all just one megacorporate entity. My one corporation theory assumes that markets will become so anti-competitive, that consolidation will be the only way to find a way to grow. With fewer and larger companies, there will be less economic diversity and most markets will be owned by the same people. That will be the point of ultimate homogeneity. I am stretching a lot of solid economic research here, but much of what I am predicting is already happening. Hear me out.
First, markets have never been this anti-competitive. Economic researchers use the four-firm concentration ratio that says if you have four companies controlling 40% of the market, it’s consolidated. You’d be surprised how many markets meet this criteria. In fact, it’d be harder to find markets that are not consolidated.
In big tech, you usually have as little as two or sometimes just one option. Mobile OS: you only have Android from Google or iOS from Apple. Desktop OS: it’s just Microsoft Windows and MacOS just barely exists. And what is Linux? Looking for a CPU? It’s just Intel and AMD. A GPU? It’s just Nvidia or… Nvdia… and AMD. [14, 15]
With such high levels of market control, most of these major companies have nowhere else to go. They are publicly traded so they are required to bring more money to their shareholders. And at peak saturation, their only option is look outward. That’s why telecommunications companies are merging with media companies. Why an online retailer becomes a cloud service provider. That’s why all big tech giants became ad companies. Even people has stepped up its advertising division.
And then, the most important point of all. These companies are publicly traded. Somebody has to own them. And as the companies grow and expand and consume market after market, they eventually end up being owned by the same people. In economics, this is called horizontal shareholding, or common ownership. And it’s already massively prevalent. [16] It will be even more prevalent the more of this consolidation continues and the fewer corporations there are as a result.
There is a reason why this matters. Economists noticed that when companies share the same owners, they compete less and converge more. Because their shareholders are not looking for a free market bloodbath to see who wins. They just want to increase the value of their investment portfolio. Portfolio that spans across the whole market. [17]
This starts manifesting with minority shareholders and becomes more profound the larger their share. Managerial boards at these companies are voted in by their shareholders. And if the same shareholders vote for the same kind of managers in all companies they own, you have the one corporation theory. And it doesn’t require any conspiracy behind the back doors. The managers will authentically align with the interest of shareholders that voted them in. [18 – 21]
I encourage you to check all the links in the description.
Whatever the remaining differences between the big tech corporations are, they are waning quickly. And this is not gonna stop until we do something about it. So what can we do about it?
First, and foremost, touch grass and touch your friend. Can we bring back the time when we could just knock on each other’s door and hang out without arranging it first over a 100-text-long chat?
Okay, second – go small. Look for a small business or a non-profit project that offers an alternative. You’ll find a lot of good answers in the open source world. Most things that I use daily are open source. My phone is GrapheneOS, my email is Proton and Tuta, my AI are small open source models I run locally, most of my favorite apps for podcasts, YouTube or messaging are small open source projects. Don’t feed the corporate centipede with your mental energy, data and money. They don’t deserve it.
I am not selling you a product. I want you to take the path, to realize your agency. I do this because I truly believe in this. I could have made a lot more money if I closed this off with a sponsor segment. But I elected to ask you to join my Patreon instead. I am doing a podcast there which is becoming more and more serious with each new episode. There is tons of content so I recommend that you join. Thank you for your support.
Sources
[0] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-googles-ai-olympics-ad-so-disturbing/
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/google-ad-dear-sydney-comments-19605253.php
[2] https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364?hl=en
[4] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-ipad-commercial-dystopian-press-19446588.php
[8] https://www.apple.com/apple-intelligence/
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIc4mq7zMU
[10] https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
[11] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006531
[16] http://ssrn.com/abstract=2802332
[17] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3293822
[18] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2811221
[20] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2872754
Comments
The Hated One
I 100% agree. Should learn a lot from John Oliver. His delivery is amazing. Thanks for the suggestion!
No Name
This is a great video, and it caps it off with what can you do, so people don’t feel hopeless. I’m sure you’ve seen John Oliver, he uses humor for big topics and often ends with what you can do to make things better for yourself or others. I think that it’s important to have that in your videos. I think the Ente person also mentioned this when he was offering a critique (ie your videos, in the past, could be overly negative).
The Hated One
That's a hella deal. If I had a soul, I'd sell it too. Bummer.
Ajay
I accidentally sold my soul to AI when i asked it to summarize your video without reading the fine print. It now controls everything, my phone, my chats, my bank account, my kids. I just follow without asking questions. Life is simpler.
The Hated One
Huh... that's sus. How did it have the power to subscribe you to Microsoft?
Ajay
I just had AI summarize your video. It asked me not to listen to you and auto subscribed me to Microsoft instead! On a serious note, definitely one of your best videos. Kudos.
The Hated One
Woah! I love all of your points! Wow! It's overwhelming. I really thought I didn't do good enough job in my script. I tried to do it differently this time. I am glad you noticed and pointed this out. Hope I can reproduce and make it even better next time! Also all your suggestion are top notch! I should have shown a Play Store page of Signal so people can clearly see it's an app they can easily get. It would only strengthen the message to elaborate in a few more words. I need to watch out for this. I fall into this trap where I forget to explain everything properly. Will work on that! Thank you wholeheartedly for all your kind words. It really gives me motivation and strength to keep going. Even the numbers from analytics frustrate me, words of encouragement more than make up for it. They energize me for the next piece of content! So thank you! Genuinely! It means everything. Thank you!
CopyCat
Wow, i'm really impressed. This is one of your best recent videos. I have said before that i think the biggest weakness of your content is that you go really in depth on the issues you research but then forget that normal people (your target audience) doesn't know anything about these topics. because of that they are sometimes difficult to understand for people who don't know a lot about technology. But this video is one of the first which doesn't suffer at all from this problem. you introduce the viewer to the problem with a very concrete, maybe even emotional example. because everybody cares (at least hopefully) about their human relationships. Also i felt like the structure of the video was very logical. it was really easy to follow your argumentation. And i liked the way you presented the "one corporation" theory and the evil corp analogy. really well done. the only thing i thought you might change is for example when you saiy that you use signal, at least mention that it's a messenger, cause most people don't even know it exists. it would be one additional word in the script, but would immediately make it clear to everyone what you are talking about. the visuals in the video were also very pleasing and i liked the cut where you proudly hold your phone into the camera wearing a coat (or jacket, dunno the difference. This is exactly how we should market open source to the average consumer: something you should be proud of using. A world free of advertisements and corporations maximising you for profits. a world where you connect with the people you care about and not with some evil tech companies. Also i feel like you sometimes sway a little off topic in your videos or at leas the transition to another topic doesn't feel that smooth. but in this video it was flawless. I really hope your videos will continue in this direction, only thing i missed in this video was the THO intro, but that's just me. i think for your target audience it's probably better to leave it out. Keep up the great work man. this is Peak THO, this is really why i started supporting your channel. we need more of this. A voice of truth and reason who can stand up against all of the profit seeking corporate interest. I really hope that your channel can stay free of sponsors. We really need someone like you who can call out governments and corporations for their greed and evil without being reliant on those very corporations to write your paycheck through sponsorships. Thank you so much for putting this out there and produce more amazing stuff like this! Also, props for putting out so much content so frequently recently, two videos in two days is quiite impressive!
