AI should be a formidable booster for learning if used properly.
I know that some students it to prepare for competitive tests, sometimes with very good results.
I've also been using it a lot recently to brush up on my math and physics knowledge from my graduate years. It has helped me clarify and understand a lot of concepts better.
That being said, there is no shortcut, and to be good at anything, one has to put in the work and the hours. However, information has never been as available as it is today.
> AI should be a formidable booster for learning if used properly.
A premature technology, known to be potentially harmful in its current state of development and established guidelines as to its effective use, is pushed by powerful and wealthy elite down the throat of society.
These same forces (and their unwitting helpers in the unmoneyed public) also wish to deflect with useless argumentation over "AI good" "AI bad".
The debate that we should have had: Is this tech actually mature enough for pervasive use in society.
Instead we get these entirely useless back and forths with anecdotal "works for me!" and "sucks for me!".
It is no "too late" about AI right now. The only people who stand to 'suffer' in anyway from putting on the breaks and doing a comprehensive review of +/-s are the moneyed classes who have bet the house on this tech.
We know this tech as it is now is harming society. We also know that most of the people who are principally pushing it will be fairly immune to (or certainly are in a position to mitigate) its detrimental effects.
That's what I told myself when I was in my 20s and early 30s. And then I realized that I had no savings and no opportunities to save, unless I switched to a more lucrative career (which I did, with zero regret).
We don't know what tomorrow will be made off, now I reached a stage where I think I should save as much as possible while I can. And I'm not a materialistic person at all.
There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on...
Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise given the other advantages you get? Everybody has a different answer to these questions. Some people would tell you that even working in tech is wrong due to environmental concerns.
Personally, I would happily work for Meta. Many people use their services and like them. Is it the greatest thing for society? probably not, but neither is Netflix or Amazon or Apple...
Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption.
If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately.
Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix.
Amazon has hollowed out local retail/is also bad for society, though not on Meta’s scale. But you sell your soul more cheaply there.
Well not in bulk to its advertisement competitors as you seem to suggest. But as a different revenue stream, data collectors sell the collected information. Don't be naive, of course they do, first customer are governments.
All corporates sell your data. You're a fool to think otherwise, data makes dosh, and you can sell any data for a price.
Data is a commodity.
There are current ten plus folk in the subway carriage I am sitting in right now. Toss me £10 and I'll give you a dataset of ten people of what colour tops they're wearing and what brand of shoe and colour.
its not a misconception. As an advertiser, I can go use meta's tools, target people specifically, and show them ads on meta's platform. While i don't get the CSV dump, but if i can target people with my message, its the same thing. Meta keeps the data AND the distribution. Data brokers have the data but no distribution of attention for that data. Newspapers have distribution but don't have the granualar data for direct targeting.
There are many, many use cases of having a CSV dump of the data, but in reality, all of it boils down to either reselling the data, or marketing a product to the demographic in the data.
The 3rd use case is that of palantir but let's not get distracted.
So, meta is not selling data is like saying netflix is not selling movies (its actually buying them). Technically true, but a shallow understanding.
Really do you care that your daughters are being advertised beauty products at the exact moment that they delete a photo because it's likely that they're feeling low self esteem at that moment? Because that's a service that you used to be able to buy from Meta.
I have learnt that very few in tech hold themselves to a complex moral standard. Most seem to have an attitude like "well company X is offering money, why not take it?" Some seem to genuinely believe large money = large societal value no matter what the job is. Quite blasé and pretty sad.
This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.
People struggle with claiming responsibility for their actions.
They think a 6 digit salary is a god-given right, and that everybody else is to blame if their work results in negative externalities for the rest of society/the world.
It's quite ok to say "I chose the money and don't value x". I'd prefer the honesty, rather than people larping as moral crusaders and throwing blame around.
If morality is only a consideration after similar pay and benefits are secured, then it's not really a high enough consideration to call the person moral
This an ad company that proveably, willingly targeted insecure children. You could write the same things about Northrop Grumman or Palantir. I mean corporations were never angels, but how software engineers can work anywhere else with similar features... just why.
Growing up, I’d wonder how people could work for companies like cigarette manufacturers even after it became well known that their products wreck havoc on your health.
This comment is a masterclass in the type of mental gymnastics people do to justify working for these kind of companies.
> Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line?
You couldn’t even answer the question you yourself posed.
Meta isn't nowhere near cigarettes manufacturers in terms of damage. Tobacco kills millions every year. Meta may need even more regulation, and you can argue that social medias aren't the greatest invention, but I don't think they are that bad.
There's no mental gymnastics here. I draw the line differently than you, that's all. I'm not a big fan of Meta and their products, I would be happy to work there anyway for the reasons I mentioned. But I wouldn't work for let say Marlboro.
I think one could make a hypothetical case that working at a cigarette company in 2026 is a more morally justifiable position than working at meta in 2026, because cigarettes as they're regulated today generally only affect adults, only affects those who opt in, and kills people on average near the end of their lives.
Meta's decisions affect everyone, even non-users, because of their outsized impact on society. But they also have way more users than cigarettes, and deliberately prey on children and teens in ways that could affect them their whole lives (see recent lawsuit).
I would struggle to judge anyone working for either of these companies. I think the blame lies at the top, or is shared by all of us for failing to build a better society which prevents such exploitation.
Measuring damage to society, or the degree of moral bankruptcy in a company's leadership, is a very difficult thing to quantify.
So, I agree with you that these are personal choices, and everyone will draw the line differently based on who they're comfortable working for and what they're comfortable contributing to.
Maybe not in the millions, but Meta is certainly not free from bloodshed. For example, in efforts to promote "engagement," they left the rollout of Facebook in Myanmar dangerously unmoderated, and (at least according to claims by Amnesty International[1]) are at least partially responsible for the genocide of the Rohingya there, which saw the tens of thousands of deaths.
Putting Meta next to Netflix in terms of moral culpability is in my opinion laughable.
I don't disagree that there are reasons people compromise on things like the morality of their employer - tale as old as society itself. I do disagree that many people like Meta's services - the only things I have seen people like about Meta is Facebook Marketplace (which is really just Craig's List or eBay if you are looking at technical problems) or the Meta Quest VR (which they've since gutted employment wise since the metaverse debacle).
Not only is it a morally bad employer, but it's also not a very good employer overall. They've just got institutional inertia keeping them entrenched, and are trying to buy their way into AI dominance to boot.
It's hard to imagine a tech company with more clear disdain for their employees than Meta. To me, that seems like a recipe for a dead company, but by all means, build your resume and network.
*Edit: people also use Instagram, but the engineering problems with that are also found in newer social networks like Bluesky, with a little less engagement addiction focus.
> how many people finally get it because of animations and playing with the maths instead of some old dude drawing a formula on a blackboard
Visualisation helps of course, but if you want to be good at maths, you need to put the work and try to solve tons of problems. Most of what 3blue1brown shows in his fancy videos are things you can drawn on your own on a paper, and if you've never done it yourself, chances are you don't understand.
The problem with digital tools is that it's easy to get distracted. If you watch 5 minutes of 3blue1brown and then 20 random videos, it's not going to help.
Of course you need to put the work in. But visualisation and directed play really does wonders. I don’t understand why maths teachers generally take a math perspective and not a “bored kid with no math inclination and who doesn’t see the beauty in it yet” perspective, since that’s the target group he’s supposed to be reaching..
Same here. I didn't find the drink especially nasty. I drank it very cold, it had a somewhat chemical taste but very fluid, not disgusting texture. I do remember it was a lot of liquid to drink though. As for the bathroom part, no pain or discomfort whatsoever. It took a couple of hours total if I remember correctly.
No, the worst part is the risk of puncture. Rare, but it happens. Happened to a colleague of mine.
He seems to be a nice guy and this contrasts with big tech CEOs, but this is pretty demagogical. AI is going to causing disruption but is here to stay, so what should be done about it? "Think different", "you have actual intelligence" may be comforting and enough to be cheered but is not a very actionable advice.
Gemini helped me a lot for my tax return. It actually did a better job than Deloitte, it found several mistakes in previous returns they filled for me.
What could go wrong...
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