You’re not wrong, but I only came here to try and explain the meme.
Three quarters of a century ago, a different society than ours suggested flying cars as a possibility for the world, and now we make funny pictures about it.
Whether that was at the time objectively right or wrong for them to believe is a whole new topic that I’m not equipped to get into.
Well yes of course it’s unrealistic, as we understand it today.
It’s an imagined future based on boundless optimism that things would keep getting better and better, both technically and socially.
Inventions and discoveries at that time were happening so rapidly it surely felt like some revolutionary new thing was always just around the corner. We’d probably invent some amazing new levitation technology that would let things hover without making any sound, and it would all be powered by individual nuclear generators in every car, because why not right, nuclear is the future!
It was a dream from a time of optimism that never came to pass. The current day meme isn’t about literal flying cars, it’s about the contrast between this imagined world - no matter how realistic or not - and the reality we actually got.
When the 1950s thought flying cars would be real they didn’t mean military VTOLs or expensive and noisy helicopters.
They meant flying cars that are efficient, quiet and affordable. Flying cars that are so ubiquitous they are parked on every driveway in the country. Flying cars where you go to the showroom and test-fly one in your favourite colour, and it only costs as much as an SUV does today.
More importantly, it’s not really the car itself that matters for the meme, it’s the idea of the society that goes along with it. The imagined future where we have flying cars on every driveway is one where we also have robots doing all the menial labour, one of utopian prosperity, where everyone is educated, happy, and spends their days in fulfilment of personal pursuits.
That’s what “flying cars” alludes to, and it’s a long way from a society where people have to be warned not to eat a sandwich wrapper.
And the power switch was like KA-JUNK when you pushed it, because it was a big ol’ switch that actually physically connected and disconnected the power.
“It’s now safe to turn off your computer” went away after we moved to software power control, where the operating system could signal the power supply to turn off.
The classic example we already have of this is when you are stopped at a side road about to enter the main road, and a car coming towards you on the main road signals to turn in.
Many people take the fact the other car has their turn signal on as a guarantee that it’s safe to emerge, but any good driving instructor will tell you to wait until the car actually begins to turn before you yourself emerge.
They had their signal on but that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to DO what the signal said they would.
Same with the front brake light. It would be like “Well their front brake light came on, so I assumed it was safe to step into the crosswalk” NO. They could have just tapped the brake a second, doesn’t mean they saw you, or they will actually stop.
Those meme email chains were annoying at the time, but kinda endearing to look back on in retrospect.
I kept getting added onto ones my mum and dad were getting from a bunch of their friends that had people’s random corporate/work email addresses included and stuff…
It was a simpler time, when boomers hadn’t discovered social media yet, and were making their own fun without Facebook and without the algorithm.
If someone offered me a chance to magic social media away like it never happened, and the price I had to pay was unfunny memes spamming my inbox, it’s a price I’d pay gladly.
They both use copyrighted material yes (and I agree that is bad) but let’s work this argument through.
Before we get into this, I’d like to say I personally think AI is an absolute hell on earth which is causing tremendous societal damage. I wish we could un-invent AI and pretend it never happened, and the world would be better for that. But my personal views on AI are not going to factor into this argument.
I feel the argument here, and a view shared by many, is that since the AI was trained unethically, on copyrighted material, then any manner in which that AI is used is equally unethical.
My argument would be that the origin of a tool - be that ethical or unethical, good or evil - does not itself preclude judgment on the individuals later using that tool, for how they choose to use it.
When you ask an AI to generate an image, unless you specify otherwise it will create an amalgam based on its entire training set. The output image, even though it will be derived from work of many artists and photographers, will not by default be directly recognisable as the work of any single person.
When you use an AI to clone someone’s voice on the other hand, that doesn’t even depend on data held within the model, but is done through you yourself feeding in a bunch of samples as inputs for the model to copy and directing the AI to impersonate that individual directly.
As an end user we don’t have any control over how the model was trained, but what we can choose is how that model is used, and to me, that makes a lot of difference.
We can use the tool to generate general things without impersonating anyone in particular, or we can use it to directly target and impersonate specific artists or individuals.
There’s certainly plenty of hypocrisy in a person using stolen copyright to generate images, while at the same time complaining of someone doing the same to their voice, but our carthartic schadenfreude at saying “fuck you, you got what’s coming” shouldn’t mean we don’t look objectively at these two activities in terms of their impact.
Fundamentally, generating a generic image versus cloning someone’s voice are tremendously different in scope, the directness of who they target, and the level of infringement and harm caused. And so although nobody is innocent here, one activity is still far worse morally than the other - and by a very large amount.
Execs aren’t hell-bent on anything apart from making money.
If they could replace every job in the world with AI (except their own) then of course they would, but they can’t because AI cannot do every job.
AI cannot stack supermarket shelves. AI cannot make coffee. AI cannot wait tables.
But AI certainly can produce pictures and text and music - to some questionable degree of “quality” - and so it’s these creative jobs which are being stolen.
And that’s exactly the irony the comic is pointing out. The creative things are what humans actually want to do, but those are the very things we are being replaced in.
I’d suggest not moving towards even more consolidation on the biggest instance. It rather defeats the point of decentralisation.
I myself am a lemm.ee refugee (just registered this new account today) and I specifically ruled world out because it benefits the health of Lemmy more to spread users and communities around.
I’m dumbfounded there are people out there who will tolerate spending upwards of $1,000 on a phone which then pushes ads at you on your lock screen.
The ship was one of the best parts for sure. Once you are competent it feels super liberating how nimbly you can zip around a planet.
The other good parts of that game were progression, and death.
I love that knowledge is the only thing retained between loops - the only currency of value. And I loved the feeling of making new discoveries.
And with death as an expected mechanic, the game doesn’t have to put up any guiderails to save you from it. There are no training wheels. You want to go outside without a spacesuit? Bad idea but we’ll let you. You want to literally lose your ship so you can never get it back? Sure, go for it. You want to fall into a space anomaly and see what happens? Be our guest.
Masterpiece game honestly.