
Gen Zers Say Silicon Valley Is Elitist/Exclusive. Can They Build a New System? - Reedx
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/style/gen-z-tech-mafia.html
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just-juan-post
> “Gen Z Mafia is a very inclusive community,” Mr. Tran said

> Anyone over the age of 24 is placed into a group called Daddy Gang and
> limited to only a few channels.

I support these kids 100% but this gave me a good chuckle.

~~~
itsoktocry
> _Snigdha Roy, 16, is attempting to use machine learning to create an A.I.
> therapist._

I'm all for young people getting into hacking, but this seems at best useless,
at worst harmful.

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Hydraulix989
Right, the whole point of therapy is that you're talking to someone that
genuinely cares about you who is not a robot.

(I say that as someone who has personally struggled with mental health and
also has affected family members.)

~~~
brundolf
I would almost say the opposite: your therapist is not required to care about
you the way friends and family do, and their status of detachment is often an
asset. You can unload without worrying about affecting how they feel about
you, and you can trust their advice as being impartial.

I think it's very possible that a virtual therapist could be helpful, but it
could also be harmful. In the same way that fiction affects our real emotions
despite our knowledge that it isn't real, a virtual counselor that projects
sympathy could give someone a real feeling of relief. The trouble comes from
the nature of machine learning: unpredictability. What if your virtual
therapist has a bug one day and starts telling you to kill yourself?

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troughway
I get the vibe from this article and the photos that this is another cool kids
club, akin to something from their high school days. The signalling language
and posturing is too obvious.

Nothing in here is about inclusivity. It's a power trip and a social status
game on the internet.

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xhkkffbf
OMG! I try not to put much stock in what Taylor Lorenz writes. She's a
reporter for the STYLE section and she seems to spend plenty of time obsessing
about what so and so said on some TikTok drop.

It's well and good to dream about being unelitist, but the all of the
consumers want the best possible product. Since they're going to choose the
best, this choosiness flows downhill to the companies which must reward the
best developers.

If Taylor and her TikTok gang want to be total okay with average products,
well, we can get by with average coders.

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Barrin92
_Another project, called Cloakview.ai, is an effort to build technology to
outsmart Clearview AI’s facial recognition system_

 _Long Tran, 17, built a tool to help protect people from harassment on
Twitter_

I mean this at least gives me some hope that there's awareness within GenZ
about the negative dynamics of social media.

