YouTube kinda sucks now.

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JohnGrammaticus wrote:

I have ruined youtube but they forced me to! I remember years ago a friend sent me a youtube link with some content I found honestly uh, not for me and that was the joke. For whatever reason for the next three weeks youtube kept recommending me videos from that channel to the point that it was mildly embarrassing to show anyone my home page so I decided to purge it manually.

Anyhow, I still to this day get good recommendations and I do not mean 50th welding video or a 100th photography video, their bots even managed to identify me as a political fencer and recommend me videos about one subject from two opposing views, that actually impressed me. Them bots manage to find most things I don't know about but they know I want this type of knowledge (like a new hobby I had no idea exists) and for the love of gods, I am honestly not interested in viral videos or whatever is entertaining or humorous at the moment. I miss nothing from the past youtube.

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1453R wrote:

And that doesn't bother you?

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1453R wrote:

The issue is that this heuristic A.I. (or rather V.I., to use my preferred stolen term from Mass Effect because it's so fucking useful) is not being developed to help you.

The fetch dog V.I. you're so helpfully training on Google's behalf is designed to do one UND PRECISELY VUN thing - separate you from your money. The entire point of these curated V.I. systems is to train YOU as much as you train them, and to figure out the best possible ways to put shit in front of you that you're empirically most likely to click and buy. It's not a devise attempting to make your life better or more interesting, it is an invasive marketing ploy designed to undermine your own volition.

Now sure, the average individual these days is usually possessed of enough net-savvy to be able to avoid clicking on every dumb ad these things stuff in front of them, but the entire idea is that corporate megagiants are spending billions of dollars on figuring out ways to short-circuit Impulse Resistance and force you to buy shit you don't need with money you don't have.

I'd really, strongly prefer for them not to.

Spoiler

TANGENT

The difference between A.I. and V.I., at least insofar as I would like it to be, is somewhat subtle but also distinct and of critical importance.

A.I. in the science fiction sense, also sometimes referred to as S.I. ("synthetic intelligence") is the self-aware computer system that knows what it is, knows of its own existence, and which can exercise volition and judgment in ways similar to human beings. These are the Smart Computers that Japan and similar countries are eagerly awaiting a chance to welcome into society and which most Western populations are convinced will kill us all.

V.I. ("virtual intelligence", for those who didn't play the game) are what Google and such are building these days. Programs with information collation and self-learning capabilities, but which are specifically, intentionally, and importantly not intended to grow into self awareness and which are strictly bound by the limits of their original programming. V.I. can be thought of as a significant chunk of the benefits of A.I./S.I. without the potential ethical concerns or drawbacks of shackling a sentient, thinking free-willed entity to a role or task it did not choose for itself. This distinction is likely why V.I. is receiving billions of dollars of investment and research grants, while A.I./S.I. is the domain of chronically underfunded pure think tanks.

The development of true A.I. is possibly the greatest remaining game-changer technology we have left without leaving this broken ravaged shell of a space rock behind. I can only pray it happens in the East and not the West, and frankly we should all be doing the same. Given the choice between Astro Boy and Skynet, everyone on Earth is obligated to pick Astro Boy.