Hacker News (curated)new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs| show hidden

The revenge effects of technologies are well known: email was great! It was faster and much cheaper than mailing letters. But it gave rise to spam and many types of fraud. The mobile phone is awesome. A powerful computer in your pocket. But now people, including teenagers, spend 12-16 hours each day staring into their mobile phones, doomscrolling towards Babylon. In 2006 people memorized dozens of phone numbers. Today? Maybe you remember 1-2 numbers.

What will be the revenge effects of LLMs and diffusion models? I sense that the revenge effects from these technologies will be much more substantial.



> But it gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

It's kinda funny that you can put that after all of the big jumps in technology:

Email: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

Cellphones: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

Texting: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

Social Media: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

Online Gaming: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

Smart phones: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.

And now AI: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud.


Clay Tablets: It gave rise to spam and many types of fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ea-nāṣir

I don’t think the quality of that copper had anything to do with the tablets. Tablets only hold a record that an issue happened, and are otherwise uninvolved. It would be different if Ea-Nasir advertised his copper with clay tablets, but that’s not the story we know.

Maybe Nanni was the real scammer all along, blackmailing an honest merchant with slander



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact | github