Like an AI trained on its own output, they’re growing increasingly divorced from reality, and are reinforcing their own worst habits of thought.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19683130

The ideologues of Silicon Valley are in model collapse.

To train an AI model, you need to give it a ton of data, and the quality of output from the model depends upon whether that data is any good. A risk AI models face, especially as AI-generated output makes up a larger share of what’s published online, is “model collapse”: the rapid degradation that results from AI models being trained on the output of AI models. Essentially, the AI is primarily talking to, and learning from, itself, and this creates a self-reinforcing cascade of bad thinking.

We’ve been watching something similar happen, in real time, with the Elon Musks, Marc Andreessens, Peter Thiels, and other chronically online Silicon Valley representatives of far-right ideology. It’s not just that they have bad values that are leading to bad politics. They also seem to be talking themselves into believing nonsense at an increasing rate. The world they seem to believe exists, and which they’re reacting and warning against, bears less and less resemblance to the actual world, and instead represents an imagined lore they’ve gotten themselves lost in.

  • unexposedhazard
    20·
    4 months ago

    They should have commited with the title and called them “terminally online”. At least they called them chronically online in the article. But yeah jokes aside, the take is accurate, these people are living in their own little echochamber worlds and are losing all connection to reality.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    16·
    4 months ago

    Yeah, pretty much. But it’s not a new phenomenon. For thousands of years, people at the top of the social hierarchy have ended up surrounded by sycophants who feed their delusions. These guys are no more out of touch with reality than were some of the emperors of ancient Rome.

  • Kwakigra@beehaw.org
    6·
    4 months ago

    Terminally online is an improvement for plutocrats. It used to be that they could never possibly glimpse beyond their limited social circles. Good for regular people to be exposed to just how infantile and narcissistic these “job creators” they used to worship are.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    4 months ago

    Lol … society is suffering from the same short comings and ignorance humanity has always dealt with.

    Our made up kings and queens believe they own the world and are surprised when they don’t have full control over anything or anyone.