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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
The Era Of The Business Idiot
Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week, Bloomberg profiled Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, revealing that he's either a liar or a specific kind of idiot. The
Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At (www.wheresyoured.at)
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.
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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.
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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
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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".
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
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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.
