Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

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Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

Post by Boink Boink » Tue May 09, 2023 8:25 am

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... aomi-klein
AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are

It is perhaps unsurprising that this Guardian columnist Naomi Klein chose to focus on profit motive in this otherwise impressive takedown of the tech sector and the march of AI. I was however quite struck by what a glaring error it was to fail to mention how many of the evil society destroying aspects of Profit Driven Tech are also present in the allegedly not for profit Wikipedia.

After all, are these things not eminently true....

* Wikipedia has made numerous grandiose claims about its supposed societal benefits, right up to and including reversing climate change (how's that going, you useless pricks?). Wikipedia's devotees are clearly tripping when they make these claims, guzzling down their own KoolAid, while entirely ignoring their model's own glitches. Where, for example, does Klein imagine chatbots might have encountered entirely fictitious footnotes or other simlly plainly wrong information of unclear origin? Perhaps Wikipedia? Where to a machine, this all reads like the sum of human knowledge? Mmmm. Tasty knowledge! Appropriating a commonly understood word, encyclopedia, to mean something entirely different in a way that evokes the mass hallucination of a technically illiterate group of irresponsible dipshits who see themselves as visionaries, is Wikipedia's origin story all over. And it continues to be their mass delusion, somehow going unnoticed by Klein et al. The purpose of this mass delusion should be obvious to Klein. It is to wall off "the sum total of human knowledge" in a "proprietary product" that was produced without the consent of those whose labour made it possible by creating the information Wikipedia seeks to summarise. In terms of the aim of this siloing, tying the information to a brand, it hardly matters the Wikipedia product is free, because as Klein points out, the tech giants rely hugely on what can gained by giving away stuff. Arguably it was even built without the consent of most whose free labour directly built it. Did the editors of fifteen years ago, the last time Wikipedia could genuinely claim to be a mass participation exercise, give consent for their work to be sold to the likes of Amazon on a priority access basis? Legally, yes. Got fucked right in the ass there, didn't they?

* In practice if not in policy, Wikipedia is an exercise in mass copyright theft. Between the inexperience of newbies and the activism of veterans, and the general disinterest of unpaid and unqualified Wikipedia editors in doing the hard stuff like identifying and correcting copyright violations, which is all by design of course, Wikipedia illegally copies vast chunks of the internet every day. I'm not so sure about the asking for forgiveness later element, but as a recipe for survival and growth, this has surely always been about making sure this theft is done at such a vast scale and with such a clear intent to disrupt pre-digital approaches to such things, that any subsequent legislative or legal action is moot. This of course has been part of a wider free content movement, but for sure, Wikipedia has taken full advantage, in both sca!e and aggression. In the broader context, not paying for shit you can simply take and disseminate for free for your own gain, claiming this is some grand societal benefit, confident that your size alone will protect you, is pretty much Wikipedia all over. Just like AI, the irony is Wikipedia needs its victims to at least survive to keep feeding the beast. Unlike AI, Wikipedia would be over the moon if mortally wounding their economic model meant the media were distilled down to one "reliable" source. Say, the Guardian. One assumes that just like Wikipedia, the Guardian are building a fund to hedge against the possibility of donations drying up.

* Although not their original model, facing a huge downturn in volunteer interest, Wikipedia has embraced this idea that technology can release its people from drudgery while they focus on fantastic things like rebuilding democracy and saving the world. Fun, interesting, engaging stuff. The reality of Wikipedia is that it already has deep ties with the tech giants that have destroyed so many fundamental aspects of human dignity and classical capitalist theory such as supply and demand, a fair day's play for a fair day's work, without offering any better and certainly not utopian alternatives to how we should all spend our limited time on this Earth. Although claiming that profit is not their motive (when it sure as hell is when it comes to paying the salaries of staff members), Wikipedia relies on the exact same model as Big Tech - lobbying to ensure the continunce and Indeed proliferation of policies that serve its own needs, but which deeply damage society. If Wikipedia isn't about being a vampire that feeds on individual's ingenuity and thrives on humanity's "venal traits" and depersonalises human existence and reduces it to how we can serve the collective, all for some nebulous and frankly bullshit claims of common good, invoking the mantras of doing no evil but with a self serving Silicon Valley corporation at the very heart of it all, taking full advantage of the corrupt legal and moral codes of America and seeking to apply them to the rest of the world, I don't know what is.

* There are simple and effective legislative means by which Wikipedia could be destroyed overnight. Regulate to ensure Wikipedia serves society's needs, not the other way around. But it is precisely the US legal framework that prevents this, as surely as it props up those who Klein's narrow view of the nature of capitalism, charges with evil intent.

As this is a column you would at least hope the cosy relationship between the Guardian and Wikipedia didn't play a role in this glaring oversight, but you never know. After all, who would even had a clue if the writer was a Wikipedia editor in their spare time?

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Re: Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

Post by ericbarbour » Tue May 09, 2023 3:24 pm

You make good points, although Klein's little pissy hand-wringing diatribe tiptoed around "free" projects and their place in the internet hellscape. All she gives us is that stupid Jimbo quote "sum total of human knowledge". Hope it ends up on his gravestone.

For my $$$ this was the funniest part:
Altman, like many creatures of Silicon Valley, is himself a prepper: back in 2016, he boasted: “I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
Let's be honest; tech is crawling with hypocrites and narcissists with axes they must grind. And "bug-out plans" for when the house of cards (THEY helped build) crashes down. Naomi Klein included, I bet.

"AI" still ain't intelligent, and "truth in advertising" is still a joke in digital land.

oh btw: we are reliving the late 90s dotcom boom. Again.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-busines ... i-6bdbed3c

also BTW, Klein's WP article isn't the most friendly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein

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Re: Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

Post by wexter » Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:34 pm

Boink makes some very good points;

Wikipedia
-makes grandiose claims about its benefits
-ignores its own inaccuracies.
-falsely appropriates the term "encyclopedia"
-Is a proprietary product
-evades, ignores, and skirts copyright
-is judgement proof
-is a big-tech company
-relies on lobbying, marketing, and PR
-has a profit motive (directly and indirectly via Google)
-has a negative impact on society.
-is protected by the US legal framework and congress via section 230
-is the darling of media outlets
oh btw: we are reliving the late 90s dotcom boom. Again.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-busines ... i-6bdbed3c
..We are in the very very early innings.... say 1987 - with perhaps five to seven years to follow (Wikipedia will become irrelevant during that timeframe)
..Cathie Wood suggested that software companies will be the sweet spot - with hardware and the same old tech getting bulled

Strange looking Cathie Wood
with a meaningless, PR controlled, and sanitized Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathie_Wood

However, her ​​flagship Ark Innovation fund fell 24% in 2021 and, in the first quarter of 2022, it was the worst performer among equity funds covered by Morningstar <-- nope cannot say that..
Anyway I am adding into all the ARK funds...
Wikipedia - "Barely competent and paranoid. There’s a hell of a combination."

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Re: Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

Post by ericbarbour » Fri Jun 09, 2023 9:10 pm

wexter wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:34 pm
Wikipedia
-falsely appropriates the term "encyclopedia"
-Is a proprietary product
-evades, ignores, and skirts copyright
-is judgement proof
-is a big-tech company
-relies on lobbying, marketing, and PR
-has a profit motive (directly and indirectly via Google)
-has a negative impact on society.
-is protected by the US legal framework and congress via section 230
-is the darling of media outlets
AND LIES ABOUT IT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... dia_is_not

Strange looking Cathie Wood
with a meaningless, PR controlled, and sanitized Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathie_Wood
Obvious paid editing of the routine kind. Please, post it over here.

Heavily involved in Wood's article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GloriaJFM (blocked as a sock of a notorious paid editor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shivertimbers433 (never blocked and probably should be)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emir_of_Wikipedia (one of the weirdest characters I've ever seen, currently blocked for fighting over the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial)

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Re: Guardian columnist gives free pass to Wikipedia in tech diatribe

Post by Bbb23sucks » Sat Jun 10, 2023 12:38 am

wexter wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:34 pm
-is protected by the US legal framework and congress via section 230
Don't forget about the CIA/FBI agents too! ;)
"Globally banned" since September 5, 2023 for exposing harassment.

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