My instinct is also to retreat to technical solutions. But, unfortunately, it appears we engineers need to fight back in the legal and political domain to stand a chance.
I like to think someone can come along with Jobs-like charisma and redefine the public's intuition for personal computing again. Foundation models with maximally deterministic harnesses, voice assistants with honest, tasteful amounts of roboticism, maybe data tenancy that doesn't make you feel like a surveilled ecosystem prisoner.
NVIDIA local AI builds are moving in that direction, but are wildly expensive. I think a lot of the current AI backlash (esp data-centers) comes from the public's accurate intuition that the current centralized, monopolistic, cloud-centric solution disempowers them, and eats any gains this magical technology would've brought them. Plugging a sliver box into the wall and your router, with no recurring fees; that would make people feel different about "taking our jobs" because they would be the unquestionable beneficiary.
> voice assistants with honest, tasteful amounts of roboticism
Do you mean like, hey chatbot stop trying to be my best friend ?
This marketing tone that every company I do business with cares deeply about me as a person - this corrosive hypocritical nonsense has obviously been sucked up into AI training materials.
This type of response is one I keep seeing, maybe it's becoming a meme
It doesnt make any sense as an argument because nothing stops one from doing _both_: 1. use a practical solution now and 2. "fight back in the legal and political domain" hoping to achieve another solution in the future
Common sense favors pursuing #1 as the opponent in #2 has "limitless" resources and the process is extremely slow
A cynic might even see advocating #2 at the expense of #1 as a "call to inaction", i.e., "please do nothing", as almost all readers are unlikely to pursue such a difficult and costly "solution"
Framing the two options as either-or, i.e., one or the other but not #1 and not both, encourages readers to give up, accept the status quo and "let others do it", assuming they dont have the ability to pursue #2 themselves
NVIDIA local AI builds are moving in that direction, but are wildly expensive. I think a lot of the current AI backlash (esp data-centers) comes from the public's accurate intuition that the current centralized, monopolistic, cloud-centric solution disempowers them, and eats any gains this magical technology would've brought them. Plugging a sliver box into the wall and your router, with no recurring fees; that would make people feel different about "taking our jobs" because they would be the unquestionable beneficiary.