At the "AI Woodstock" at the San Francisco Exploratorium last Friday, there was, in fact, a gentleman with a handful of real, live llamas in tow. They were shaggy and greasy, with matted wool dangling in oily locks, and they shit massive piles of excrement all over the Embarcadero sidewalk. I never did find out if it was a Meta publicity stunt or just a birthday party entertainer who found the opportunity of a lifetime.
I don't know if the Woodstock comparison at the beginning was trying to do this, but Woodstock while being a celebration and a symbol of the times in 1969 has also symbolized a shift of the beginning of the end. Adam Curtis's documentary HyperNormalization marked Woodstock and its corresponding generation's actions as the symbol of the last attempt at large social organization to revolutionize every day life, and that no one has tried to fight back in any serious way since.
A lack of awareness about this point of view did not move me to have faith in the next generation of AI, instead basically the opposite. The sign that so many people are making so much money and investors are jumping in head first just marks another corporate capture of every day life with a gilding of "this will make life better" while actual persistent issues don't change and for many things become worse.
I welcome opposing views to temper my grimness. Probably better that way.
Yeah, avoidance of "harmful" or "offensive" responses is an awful metric for the quality of an LLM. I understand big corporate feel they need to cover their asses, but I much prefer software that operates on the principle that we're all consenting adults.
