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Google is going ‘all in’ on AI. It’s part of a troubling trend in big tech

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  • Tech companies don’t really give a damn what customers want anymore.

    Most of the time customers don't know what they want until you give it to them though. People don't know they want something when they don't know it exists. A perfect example using AI - DLSS. Probably no one would have wanted their games to be rendered at a significantly lower resolution and then have AI recreate 3/4 of the pixels to get it back up to their regular resolution - yet when it came out it was one of the biggest game changers in gaming history, and is now basically universally agreed upon as the default way to do game development going forward.

    And frankly, there’s nothing you can do to resist it

    Vote with your wallet. Make your opinion known. If you're just a vocal minority then no, it likely won't make a difference - but if enough people do it, it will. More people need to understand that while they have an opinion, it might not be the majorities opinion and it might be "wrong".

    And it's fucking awful.

    People didn't "want it" neither before nor after it was forced into being a thing, people had no choice because of GPU prices, especially console peasants stuck with their AMD APUs on par with like a GTX 1070 where a middleman built their PC for them under £600 + hundreds in PS Plus/game fees over years to come.

    DLSS is even worse cancer than TAA, the washed out blurry slop only looks good on YouTube videos due to the compression. It's one thing if you're playing in the extremes of low performance and need a crutch, e.g. steam deck, it's a whole other when you make your game look like dog shit then use fancy FXAA and motion blur to cover it up so you can't see.

    I agree with you on making the personal choice to steer away from megacorps, and I practice this myself as much as I can, but it hasn't ever worked en-masse and I don't expect it will, nor do I expect people will have much choice as every smaller company will do what every big company does and AI will be integrated in such small ways, like all the ways it has pre-Covid pre-AI spring that people will use it unknowingly and love it.

  • What tech company isnt going "all in" on AI? We just had Google I/O and AI was literally the only thing they talked about.

    Apple still lets you disable their AI which I’m grateful for.

  • To be fair, they kind of have to pivot from search at this point. More and more people are using alternative ways to find information. That cash cow is dying.

    Read Ed Zitron’s work on google search. It’s dying because they killed it.

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    The Sunk Cost fallacy is strong

  • And it's fucking awful.

    People didn't "want it" neither before nor after it was forced into being a thing, people had no choice because of GPU prices, especially console peasants stuck with their AMD APUs on par with like a GTX 1070 where a middleman built their PC for them under £600 + hundreds in PS Plus/game fees over years to come.

    DLSS is even worse cancer than TAA, the washed out blurry slop only looks good on YouTube videos due to the compression. It's one thing if you're playing in the extremes of low performance and need a crutch, e.g. steam deck, it's a whole other when you make your game look like dog shit then use fancy FXAA and motion blur to cover it up so you can't see.

    I agree with you on making the personal choice to steer away from megacorps, and I practice this myself as much as I can, but it hasn't ever worked en-masse and I don't expect it will, nor do I expect people will have much choice as every smaller company will do what every big company does and AI will be integrated in such small ways, like all the ways it has pre-Covid pre-AI spring that people will use it unknowingly and love it.

    And it’s fucking awful.

    DLSS? No way lol. DLSS often gives better image quality than native resolution, and gives you a choice in image quality vs performance increase options. It's a god send.

    DLSS is even worse cancer than TAA

    You've clearly never used DLSS, at least not DLSS3 or 4. I've got a 4070 Super and Ryzen 7 and I use DLSS by choice literally every time it's available.

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    The other day I asked my phone for a measurement conversion while cooking only to be greeted by the new Gemini nonsense. Don't touch my shit!

    Then I was driving and tried to play a specific song, but the Assistant couldn't get further than dumping me into YouTube Music and hiding my navigation.

    So anyways, I just uninstalled Assistant and after failing to find something else I came to Lemmy and saw this.

  • And it’s fucking awful.

    DLSS? No way lol. DLSS often gives better image quality than native resolution, and gives you a choice in image quality vs performance increase options. It's a god send.

    DLSS is even worse cancer than TAA

    You've clearly never used DLSS, at least not DLSS3 or 4. I've got a 4070 Super and Ryzen 7 and I use DLSS by choice literally every time it's available.

    It's only better imo if you set it to native resolution for the AA. If you set it to anything below that, there's definitely still artifacting. It's not crazy obvious but no way it's not noticeable, especially if you have a larger screen.

  • It's only better imo if you set it to native resolution for the AA. If you set it to anything below that, there's definitely still artifacting. It's not crazy obvious but no way it's not noticeable, especially if you have a larger screen.

    There might be some slight artifacting sometimes, but theres also significant improvements on sub-pixel detail compared to native that are far more noticeable.

    I play on a 75" tv and at DLSS Quality profile you couldn't tell it's not native.

  • Read Ed Zitron’s work on google search. It’s dying because they killed it.

    They certainly didn't help it by weighing it down with more and more ads.

  • Apple still lets you disable their AI which I’m grateful for.

    Yes, THANK YOU!!!!!!!

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    I work with ServiceNow for my job and a couple weeks back was the big knowledge 2025 conference in Vegas. The CEO came out for the opening keynote and opened with some like, "ah yea, doesn't it feel good to be an AI company?" and I didn't here a single cheer from the crowd, just polite applause. They have gone all in on AI, have made it completely unaffordable, and have just been shoehorning it into everything. I hope every one of these companies that that goes big on AI crashes and fails. They've already cut the employees, so the only people affected are the ones making the cash, so fuck em.

  • Tech companies don't really give a damn what customers want anymore. They have decided this is the path of the future because it gives them the most control of your data, your purchasing habits and your online behavior. Since they control the back end, the software, the tech stack, the hardware, all of it, they just decided this is how it shall be. And frankly, there's nothing you can do to resist it, aside from just eschewing using a phone at all. and divorcing yourself from all modern technology, which isn't really reasonable for most people. That or legislation, but LOL United States.

    Tech companies don’t really give a damn what customers want anymore.

    Ed Zitron wrote an article about how leadership is business idiots. They don't know the products or users but they make decisions and get paid. Long, like everything he writes, but interesting

    Our economy is run by people that don't participate in it and our tech companies are directed by people that don't experience the problems they allege to solve for their customers, as the modern executive is no longer a person with demands or responsibilities beyond their allegiance to shareholder value.

  • It's only better imo if you set it to native resolution for the AA. If you set it to anything below that, there's definitely still artifacting. It's not crazy obvious but no way it's not noticeable, especially if you have a larger screen.

    Results vary wildly depending on the game or situation, mainly depending on how fast the camera moves, and how cluttered or dark the environment is. It does pretty well in cyberpunk when you're walking around the city on a sunny day with a low camera sensitivity, but looks pretty bad when driving in the rain at night. But yeah, I personally wouldn't use lower settings than DLAA unless my framerate is below 30.

  • Tech companies don't really give a damn what customers want anymore. They have decided this is the path of the future because it gives them the most control of your data, your purchasing habits and your online behavior. Since they control the back end, the software, the tech stack, the hardware, all of it, they just decided this is how it shall be. And frankly, there's nothing you can do to resist it, aside from just eschewing using a phone at all. and divorcing yourself from all modern technology, which isn't really reasonable for most people. That or legislation, but LOL United States.

    Nothing I can do to resist?

    Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.

    Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.

    Gmail? I don't remember when I opened mine the last time...

    All what's really remaining right now is a good YouTube alternative.

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    Google has gotten so fucking dumb. Literally incapable of performing the same function it could 4 months ago.

    How the fuck am I supposed to trust Gemini!?

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    imagine if a company said they're going all in on quality instead

  • Tech companies don’t really give a damn what customers want anymore.

    Most of the time customers don't know what they want until you give it to them though. People don't know they want something when they don't know it exists. A perfect example using AI - DLSS. Probably no one would have wanted their games to be rendered at a significantly lower resolution and then have AI recreate 3/4 of the pixels to get it back up to their regular resolution - yet when it came out it was one of the biggest game changers in gaming history, and is now basically universally agreed upon as the default way to do game development going forward.

    And frankly, there’s nothing you can do to resist it

    Vote with your wallet. Make your opinion known. If you're just a vocal minority then no, it likely won't make a difference - but if enough people do it, it will. More people need to understand that while they have an opinion, it might not be the majorities opinion and it might be "wrong".

    It's basically how any business starts today, whether it's computers, the internet, or the industrialization of processes.

    AI is undergoing the same product life cycle, which is divided into four stages. In Stage 1, a company has a novel product, and it's the only one, so the price is usually very high and profits are higher.

    In Stage 4, there's fierce competition; the novel product is now available to many companies, the price is usually cheap, and profits are low. Technology companies look for developing sectors to stay in Stage 1 as much as possible and avoid reaching Stage 4.

    AI may be between Stage 1 or 2, or perhaps Stage 3 of the product life cycle. Stage 4 is still a long way off, and we'll only say we're in that stage if AI becomes very cheap and very common in society.

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    Thankfully I’ve been “all out” on Google for some time.

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    Google did the same thing with Google Plus they went all in on social and it failed miserably

  • Nothing I can do to resist?

    Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.

    Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.

    Gmail? I don't remember when I opened mine the last time...

    All what's really remaining right now is a good YouTube alternative.

    Nothing I can do to resist?

    I admire your optimism, but we are pissing in the wind.

    Microsoft is shoving this copilot in all its products? Alright, Linux and open source it is.

    Windows 11 is forcing people to throw away functional computers that Microsoft seems "not secure enough" (it's lacking TMP 2.0)

    This means you can get a great deal on one of these "inscure pc"... but in the long run your pc now and tomorrow will have TPM. As time progresses, the use of TPM/attestation will become more and more entrenched in application, web pages, everything. ... and Linux, with its 4% user base, will be left out in cold.

    Google is bugging with its spyware? Well, I only use a Pixel phone, and ironically, its the best phone to put GrapheneOS on it.

    Currently, many banking apps won't run on Graphene (or any custom firmware) due to attestation.

    Graphene issued calls for help, because Google is restricting public access to the latest android source code (I cannot find the links atm).

    Gmail? I don't remember when I opened mine the last time...

    Today things like "email reputation" make it difficult to host your own mail server, so your stuck paying someone who has a better "reputation".

    My point is: today, you and I can resist with some (minor) success, but our days are numbered.

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    omegalemmy@discuss.onlineO
    American individualism is when you believe everyone is as bad as you or worse Self-fulfilling prophecy when they never want to cooperate in fear of being ripped off
  • This Is Why Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch Needed Human Babysitters

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    H
    Karel es hone
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    R
    Even with pirated Spotify the worsening of recommendations pushed me to pirate another service. Which is a win for Spotify, I guess.
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    K
    Most jokes need to be recognizable as funny? Like if you say the word cucked, ever, I'm going to assume you're serious and an imbecile and I would be right to do that, no?!
  • Android 16 is here

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    bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.deB
    [image: be056f6c-6ffe-4ecf-a137-9af60aef4d90.png] You people are getting updates? I really hate that I cannot just do everything with the pocket computer I own that is running a supposedly free operating system.
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    G
    Obviously the law must be simple enough to follow so that for Jim’s furniture shop is not a problem nor a too high cost to respect it, but it must be clear that if you break it you can cease to exist as company. I think this may be the root of our disagreement, I do not believe that there is any law making body today that is capable of an elegantly simple law. I could be too naive, but I think it is possible. We also definitely have a difference on opinion when it comes to the severity of the infraction, in my mind, while privacy is important, it should not have the same level of punishments associated with it when compared to something on the level of poisoning water ways; I think that a privacy law should hurt but be able to be learned from while in the poison case it should result in the bankruptcy of a company. The severity is directly proportional to the number of people affected. If you violate the privacy of 200 million people is the same that you poison the water of 10 people. And while with the poisoning scenario it could be better to jail the responsible people (for a very, very long time) and let the company survive to clean the water, once your privacy is violated there is no way back, a company could not fix it. The issue we find ourselves with today is that the aggregate of all privacy breaches makes it harmful to the people, but with a sizeable enough fine, I find it hard to believe that there would be major or lasting damage. So how much money your privacy it's worth ? 6 For this reason I don’t think it is wise to write laws that will bankrupt a company off of one infraction which was not directly or indirectly harmful to the physical well being of the people: and I am using indirectly a little bit more strict than I would like to since as I said before, the aggregate of all the information is harmful. The point is that the goal is not to bankrupt companies but to have them behave right. The penalty associated to every law IS the tool that make you respect the law. And it must be so high that you don't want to break the law. I would have to look into the laws in question, but on a surface level I think that any company should be subjected to the same baseline privacy laws, so if there isn’t anything screwy within the law that apple, Google, and Facebook are ignoring, I think it should apply to them. Trust me on this one, direct experience payment processors have a lot more rules to follow to be able to work. I do not want jail time for the CEO by default but he need to know that he will pay personally if the company break the law, it is the only way to make him run the company being sure that it follow the laws. For some reason I don’t have my usual cynicism when it comes to this issue. I think that the magnitude of loses that vested interests have in these companies would make it so that companies would police themselves for fear of losing profits. That being said I wouldn’t be opposed to some form of personal accountability on corporate leadership, but I fear that they will just end up finding a way to create a scapegoat everytime. It is not cynicism. I simply think that a huge fine to a single person (the CEO for example) is useless since it too easy to avoid and if it really huge realistically it would be never paid anyway so nothing usefull since the net worth of this kind of people is only on the paper. So if you slap a 100 billion file to Musk he will never pay because he has not the money to pay even if technically he is worth way more than that. Jail time instead is something that even Musk can experience. In general I like laws that are as objective as possible, I think that a privacy law should be written so that it is very objectively overbearing, but that has a smaller fine associated with it. This way the law is very clear on right and wrong, while also giving the businesses time and incentive to change their practices without having to sink large amount of expenses into lawyers to review every minute detail, which is the logical conclusion of the one infraction bankrupt system that you seem to be supporting. Then you write a law that explicitally state what you can do and what is not allowed is forbidden by default.
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    F
    For sure they are! Meta more then the others though
  • Bill Gates to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years

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    hehehehe You know, it's hilarious that you say that. Nobody ever realizes that they're talking to a starving homeless person on the internet when they meet one, do they? Believe it or not, quite a few of us do have jobs. Not all of us are disabled or addicted. That is the problem with the society we live in. We're invisible until we talk to you.