The dawn of relentless product/service bundling and then social media led the way to farming people, and capturing and gatekeeping people and businesses, instead of creating tools for people.
It turned out to be extremely lucrative.
Parasitical arrangements often are.
Because business law has not caught up with conflict-of-interest business models (surveillance-manipulation is that), and anti-trust law has not caught up with the unbelievable lock in that complex information-based products and services can leverage (network forces far greater than any form of price fixing, etc.), it still is.
The problem is worse than Silicon Valley losing its way. Civilization simply shouldn't tolerate parasitical businesses, no matter how many shiny yachts it's oligarchs let politicians vacation on.
Ethics are not a value to trade off against economic growth, they are one of the engines of both greater and less-centralized growth.
For their stock holders, and upper management it definitely is, all the automation that AI will deliver to get rid of those pesky workers with their demands, vacations, sick days, bathroom breaks, protests for better work conditions,....
Google and Meta are the only Big Tech companies that even have a presence in AI and it’s being led by Anthropic and OpenAI, neither of which were Big Tech.
The dawn of relentless product/service bundling and then social media led the way to farming people, and capturing and gatekeeping people and businesses, instead of creating tools for people.
It turned out to be extremely lucrative.
Parasitical arrangements often are.
Because business law has not caught up with conflict-of-interest business models (surveillance-manipulation is that), and anti-trust law has not caught up with the unbelievable lock in that complex information-based products and services can leverage (network forces far greater than any form of price fixing, etc.), it still is.
The problem is worse than Silicon Valley losing its way. Civilization simply shouldn't tolerate parasitical businesses, no matter how many shiny yachts it's oligarchs let politicians vacation on.
Ethics are not a value to trade off against economic growth, they are one of the engines of both greater and less-centralized growth.
Because they switched from building useful stuff to building high stock values.
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It’s literally not true though. Big tech built AI which is probably the most important technology since internet
There’s this popular misconception that companies only chase stock valuation but it doesn’t look true.
For their stock holders, and upper management it definitely is, all the automation that AI will deliver to get rid of those pesky workers with their demands, vacations, sick days, bathroom breaks, protests for better work conditions,....
Even if we count AI, how’s that Big Tech?
Google and Meta are the only Big Tech companies that even have a presence in AI and it’s being led by Anthropic and OpenAI, neither of which were Big Tech.
The article clearly counts AI as big tech. It’s clear you didn’t even read it..
> Big tech built AI which is probably the most important technology since internet
It is only important for 3 letter agencies because they also get your frustrations and they can give you answers.