Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning

UX researcher. This account is dormant because this place has become too full of shouting. Follows are not endorsements.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

Here's our field report from running a ritual design studio at Burning Man this year: https://t.co/CmF4duvdC7

Curious about ritual design? Check out our project and toolkit at https://t.co/gnIJpIoiWD

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News Oh yes and this is in continuance of our thread earlier about the lack of data on successful use that doesn’t simply parrot marketing and hype points.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News Aaand… here’s a study on “psychosis” that touches on these themes:
https://t.co/0sibjen9S7

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News Indeed.

Something seems qualitatively different in this one because of its apparent anthropomorphic superpowers (for consumption) and its alignment with cybernetic science-fantasies (for production). It’s rare for tech to so explicitly and accessibly refigures “human” IMO/IME.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@NinaDSchick @tunguz This is an interesting claim. Do you have a study link backing it up?

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@razibkhan That’s fascinating, I grew up around Muslims from various walks of life in India and never once would it have occurred to me to code a sari with a religious identity. It always seemed to have more to do with geography: the more north and west of India, the less sari use.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@deepfates “ Agents can do anything you can do on a computer”

No this is only believable if you do not have any understanding of what expertise looks like. There is no way to universally achieve quality via quantity; the damage won’t come from “AI” but from using it as an excuse.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@provisionalidea I am begging them to achieve at least a bare minimum of dorkage for the public good

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@provisionalidea Based on how they talk about this, I do not believe they* possess the methodological sophistication or the ontological models to have an analysis engine that can possibly drive inquiry in the way that human social scientists do

*= all AI qual research tool makers

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@mykola “You are one of us whether you like it or not!”

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

My act of quixotic optimism this week is watering & fertilizing the moss growing in-between the roofing cracks on my apartment’s balcony so it survives but also thrives during this heat wave.

(It survives every year without my help but this year I’ve decided that is not enough)

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News Rotating the perspective a bit, it seems the one definite use GenAI has is revealing many of the deep fault lines and dysfunctions of an overly individualised and hierarchical civilization.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@mykola The fact that this is happening frequently explains why they’re offering free usage outside core hours as a “promo” but is probably an experiment to see if they can shift usage to manage load.

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News @libshipwreck Splice
https://t.co/BDuVBYTM0f

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News @libshipwreck Which basically complicates the picture around it and explains why some people react to critiques of their use or warnings against it with “skill issue“.

i.e. from their perspective, they claim to have a working model that manages the risks

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News @libshipwreck And that this benefit is laundered as an excuse

But also simultaneously likely that LLMs provide certain kinds of support for some people that we did not realise was possible to give or was needed

↓

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News @libshipwreck Which then produces the question of: what framework animates that decision-making and why and where does it come from and all the other sociological and historical questions that come from that

[Arvind Venkataramani is letting go of conditioning @_arvind]

@STS_News @libshipwreck Which means we would need to differentiate the argument of using Gen AI is bad for the user from using Gen AI is bad for the ecosystem/public/commons,

…knowing that some people will choose to respond by ignoring the collective harms