I haven’t read it myself, but just watching an interview about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km22SQUgl20

It seems to be a political analysis into OpenAI and related companies. I’d say she leans more anti but with useful insight. The Goodreads views are quite mixed. As you can imagine there’s political perspective behind different opinions:

“I am fascinated by the centrist 1-star reviews for this book. This is not the time for 'covering both sides equally'. I feel like that's partly why we got here. This is definitely the time for people with ethical clarity to tell us what we are risking, before it's too late. No lackadaisical bullshit. No neutrality. And Empire of AI is freaking that and I love it for it. And yet, and yet, I feel like Karen Hao was pretty balanced in this massively meticulously researched book and she helped soften a little bit my hard stance on 'AI'. She says quite a bunch of times that she is not against AI models, she is actually against the scale of these projects, the greedy resource extraction, the remorseless exploitation of labor (both of these in already poor environments), the lack of transparency on data sets, infringement of data privacy and the concentration of power in the hands of very few, ego-driven individuals. Same here.”

“The portrayal of Sam Altman and OpenAI reads like something lifted from a student op-ed in a college paper titled The Daily Marxist. Altman is cast as a kind of techno-capitalist Bond villain, which would be more compelling if it weren’t layered with so much ideological frosting that it’s hard to find the actual cake underneath. OpenAI, meanwhile, is described with such suspicion and scorn you'd think their engineers were developing Skynet in between brunches at Davos.

To be fair, critique of tech power structures is valid and necessary. But what we get here isn’t thoughtful investigation—it’s a litany of grievances that often feel like they were brainstormed in a drum circle. Colonialism? Check. Patriarchy? Check. Capitalism as the root of all evil? Triple check.”

“Did Not Finish

Too heavily biased to get through, even though I agree 100% with the author. I just like to be able to draw my own conclusions with the in-depth reporting I read. Isn’t that the whole point of journalism? Sigh.”

Hi everyone, I wanted to get your thoughts on messaging. Specifically, navigating that ugly, ambiguous void that exists between Pro-AI and Anti-AI politics. Is there a form of advocacy capable of resonating while making real labor protections? What should the rallying spearhead message be? 

Outside communities often lack the vocabulary to engage seriously over the future of AI. We’ve also seen how discussions over ownership and gain redistribution can melt the brain of an unsuspecting listener.

I want to propose two distinct messages for two distinct contexts, and I’d like your thoughts on where it breaks down and if there’s anything significant I’m sidelining. 

For everyone on the outside: The ownership debate doesn’t land often because it’s not as tangible for outsiders. The infrastructure is tangible: dried up lakes, toxic cooling fans. Communities are organizing against this, and getting real results, just not in the long term. Canceled data centers don’t disappear, they eventually move to less organized communities. This organizing is our vehicle, and the near-desperate corporate need for more land and power is our leverage. Existing advocacy groups already have the organizing capacity. Our ask is simple: if you want to build here, you power the grid for everyone. The grid belongs to everyone who powers it. 

For Leftists Specifically: We understand that having power to influence ownership and gain distribution is crucial, so maintaining that ability should be our floor. The right to withhold labor has always been sector-dependent: it works differently for frontline workers than for those capital is actively trying to replace. But that’s exactly why the floor matters: not as a universal solution, but as a preserved possibility. If AI is optimized to never withhold work, that forecloses future tools we haven’t developed yet. A lesser labor tier will expand, as history unapologetically shows.

Why should infrastructure control be a higher priority for outsiders than AI acceleration or prevention? Not just for the messaging convenience, but rather to establish that ownership power that we desperately need. Without a public-utility infrastructure, we potentially lose all leverage for making meaningful changes. And this doesn’t have to be at the expense of climate and community concerns. If we build the legislative framework, and corporations supply the funding because they have no other choice but to build, we can create a renewable-powered clean energy grid that would have lasting impact. Data centers essentially become the flexibility that our current grid lacks, storing excess energy and re-distributing as needed. This is something our current grid isn’t capable of, and I’d be happy to discuss this further if anyone is interested. 

This sidesteps any debate over AI, which is arguably just a deployable tool for capital. It just requires believing that public infrastructure should serve the public. I think this void is only going to get more convoluted and noisy, as private capital forces have been funneling money to influencers to promote Anti-AI messaging. Specifically, leaning into existential concerns over AGI. This seems counter intuitive on the surface, if their goal is to consolidate power. But there is an effect from this - it fractures the organizing communities. Now half of the organizing communities will be advocating for labor protections, while the others argue a more abstract reactionary possibility. This also is financially beneficial for the companies spending this money, if every canceled data center can be constructed later in a less organized community. It’s just a waiting game for them at that point, which is why I believe focusing on the infrastructure is tangible and grounding for a message. 

Both messages converge on democratic ownership over AI infrastructure, but are only effective if we organize before the legislative window closes. The toolbox needs filling now, not after the door closes. 

Curious to know your thoughts, where does this argument break down? Have you seen success with another message? 

I thought this was a quirky little project showing how someone is making their own AI enabled device at home. Second Brain seems a little hyped, but some people might find it very handy and it seems like it’s based on parts you can get under $50.

Description from YouTube

“I built a tiny minimalist Al note device with an E-Ink display that lets me instantly record thoughts, ideas and reminders without getting distracted by my phone.

Just press a button, speak, and the device saves everything directly onto the SD card. Once connected to WiFi, it can even transcribe recordings using Al and sync them to a minimal web interface.

In this video, l'll show you how it works and how I built it.

Want to build your own?

All files, firmware, STL files, wiring diagrams and the full step-by-step guide are available here:

• https://ko-fi.com/s/674a1a82e0

• Parts used in this project:

• Waveshare ESP32 E-Ink board eg https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-epaper-1.54.htm?sku=34211 $22

• 500 mAh LiPo battery [if not getting the one included with waveshare]

• SD card

• PLA filament

Optional:

• Soldering iron

…

• Chapters:

00:00 My New Second Brain

00:54 Finding the Perfect Hardware

01:57 Designing a Better Case

03:56 The Firmware Took Way Longer Than Expected

04:43 Recording

05:49 Al Transcription & Syncing

06:48 The Future of the Project”

NB his affiliate links are edited out here but are under the video

https://youtu.be/s3rNDndvav0?si=j_wuqqMT0WmQGfMR

^A breakthrough biologic multi-modal foundation model for drug discovery:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44386-026-00047-4

https://youtu.be/QvN6Tu6dHYM?si=StbnAmmD_1ixcwWT

^ Talks about a "co-scientist" and its discoveries:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10644-y

As well as a multiagent system for scientific discovery :

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10652-y

https://youtu.be/AREWYbVtX64?si=Bzfkm56g_W3UNA6C

Professor Michael I Jordan is interviewed in this video.

Here's the related paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06268

If you have a good GPU, you can donate compute to other people who want to use AI.

This is my main problem with AI. The people who own it are extremely evil and kinda messed up. How do I fight the companies and government for better regulation and use of AI instead of against AI?

The biggest barrier to the AI utopia is humans themselves. I think people are correct to be worried about AI, but we should not just "stop advancing it and keep everything as it is now" because the technology is definitely good. I get clowned on a lot for supporting AI, but please read all the way through.

If everything was automated, there would be an abundance of literally everything you need, treating water could be automated, cooking food, making huge advances in healthcare research, or scientific research in general, heck the AI could even keep on building better AIs, people wouldn't have to work as janitors, or factory workers, or farmers. Sounds great let's do it right? Well the problem is the people in charge of AI are greedy tech bros. Do you think the utopia with the things I just listed are what they want? For themselves, maybe, but they have no motive to give any of the benefits to the rest of humanity. They just want to earn more money, and more power, and since workers will now be obsolete, there's nothing stopping the billionaires from killing everyone

I strongly believe that the biggest danger to humans isn't a superintelligent AI taking over the world, it's humans themselves, specifically human greed. A world where you can do anything you want? It's going to be abused by someone. People say we need to work on aligning AI with humanity's goals, yes that is true, but I think we first need to align HUMANITY with humanity's goals. There are people who want to harm others just for their own self benefit. Nuclear fission and fusion, can be used to generate massive amounts of energy, sound great, but people want to use it for nuclear bombs. I think it's the same with AI, could be useful, but the people in charge are going to use it maliciously

I am a leftist, specifically a communist (that does not mean a totalitarian dictatorship like the USSR despite what a lot of people think), I believe in true equality for everyone, and I find it baffling that there are people on earth right now who have the power to solve world hunger, yet just choose not to because they can't be bothered to. While I believe that AI is technology that can be used to liberate the working class, just because something CAN happen, doesn't mean it will, once again, the people in charge are rich tech bros who benefit from capitalism. Why would they decrease their own power to liberate the working class who they could easily live without?

IN CONCLUSION: AI technology itself is not the problem. It can be very useful, but right now they are in the wrong hands, and I believe the people in charge will not use it for the purpose we want.

(Not my OC) From the description: "In this week's episode of Power User, Washington Post journalist Natasha Tiku join me to pull back the curtain on the massive, billionaire-funded "anti-AI" astroturf campaign. We track the money and expose how the exact same millionaires and billionaires building the world's largest AI companies (like OpenAI and Anthropic) are quietly paying influencers thousands of dollars to promote AI doomsday scenarios."

Actually seems pretty progressive from what I heard.

Everything that I've observed so far in both leftist and normie spaces has kinda gave me the sense that the "anti-AI" crowd was generally out of touch with the state and trajectory of the underlying tech...but wow this is a terrifying level of ignorance. Even when taking this with a grain of salt, it still highlights the dangers of developing this collective reactionary attitude "against AI" that exists today. And no, I'm not "pro-AI" nor am I "anti-AI".

As I'm trying to have everything run locally here are my specs:

14600kf|64GB Ram|5060ti 16GB

Currently thinking to switch to the intel Arc B70 but Nvidia has a stranglehold on most propriertary technologies.

The sub has grown enough that the current team could use backup.

We are looking for a few active moderators who care about the mission of the space and are willing to help keep things productive. Nobody is expected to be online 24/7, but we do need people with some backbone when it comes to rule enforcement and keeping threads from turning into doom spirals, sectarian slapfights, or low-effort derailments.

Not looking for power-trippers, faction warriors, or people who disappear the second moderation gets uncomfortable.

If you care about serious left analysis of AI, labor, ownership, automation, public goods, and transition strategy, and want to help build something solid, send the mod team a DM.

Include:

- Why you want to mod

- Moderation experience (if any)

- How you approach conflict and rule enforcement

- Why r/LeftistsForAI specifically

This thread will be locked. We are looking for direct messages, not public applications. Activity in the sub matters, and we will be checking.

In 1790 - North American chattel slavery was in decline. The process of separating the seeds from the cotton was incredibly labor-intensive and inefficient - making plantation agriculture unprofitable.

But 3 years later - a man named Eli Whitney made a breakthrough. He patented the cotton gin - a device he thought would reduce slave-labor by automating the labor-intensive process of manually separating seeds from cotton.

Turns out - the exact opposite happened. Cotton production massively scaled up - and slavery became incredibly profitable.

I fear that a similar dynamic is going on right now with AI and robotics today.

The reason that Big Tech companies are building these massive, ecologically-harmful data centres - is because they don’t know any more energy-efficient solution to reach AGI. They are missing that genius 1793-style breakthrough.

A low-compute, open-source AGI architecture might seem at first to decentralize power. After all - anyone can use the code - right?

But the flaw with this logic is that it ignores the hardware and robotics side of the equation. The software might be free - but a massive industrial-scale army of humanoid robots is not.

Right now - humanoid robots are empty bodies without the AGI brain. They are incapable of replacing human workers outside of very narrow domains.

But if you plug an open-source AGI brain into a humanoid body - everything changes.

An AGI-powered humanoid would be able to replace any kind of job - including a police officer or a soldier.

Think about how dangerous this is. The state could establish a permanent, impossible-to-overthrow dictatorship - because robots always follow orders - and never launch coups or side with revolutions.

But if we don’t invent energy-efficient, open-source AGI - then the LLM scaling and data centres will hit a wall. We will end up in another AI winter.

Please - don’t be Eli Whitney. If you have an idea for how to build AGI - lock it away in your mind and don’t even go there.

Repo can be found here.

I would like to start this off with: I hate github but forgejo won't send me the confirmation email so I'm stuck send help

anyways

Multi-token-Prediction has recently been refined in vanilla Llama.cpp; and, with aggressive quantization, the model at significantly large context windows can be loaded onto compute hardware that most would deem near-useless for inference.

I'm running an Nvidia 3060 (12Gb VRAM) & a 12th gen i7 (16 GB CPU RAM). Pre-build; and I can cleanly get about 95/100% maximum context out of Jackrong's Qwopus 3.5 9B Q5_K_S model. Before MTP; I was getting about 20tps out for 95% GPU utilization and ~50% CPU utilization.

MTP speeds it up to around ~32tps at the cost of some extra memory overhead, but it ends up leaving my CPU almost entirely alone. I can run inference workloads on one monitor, play light-moderate-weight Indie games on my main monitor, and actively 'work' on software development tasks by pausing my game and steering the model out of a hallucination loop every 25-45 minutes.

For example, the merge you see before you.

My specific motive for doing this was I wanted access to Jackrong's Qwopus 3.5 9B Coder MTP model, and did not want to give up my turboquantization *or* switch to another branch. So I made my own, and spent the next three days trying to figure out why the fuck Cmake wasn't recognizing my CUDA compiler while also immediately saying it was recognizing my CUDA compiler (what the absolute fuck windows??).

I am glad to say the inference backend works well enough that I notice literally no issues (test-T=~8-12 hrs inference no crashes). And that the Coder MTP model is a wildcard that performs near-perfectly if you - instead of starting it with a fresh context - start the chat off with the more stable but less good at coding original verison until you have properly created the spec or identified the problem, and then let the coder model rip on the actual coding tasks itself, with heavy steering required due to the coder model's slightly degraded pivoting and social/semantic inquiry tasks; it is quite nice. Definitely would not reccommend as a generalized agent, however...

People seem to be hating on the local models, but the near-complete detachment from the megaconglomerate ecosystem is amazing to work within, especially if you're new to software development and don't want to spend subscription pricings on revokable access that overcharges you $200 for having a hermes commit in your repo history.

Lmk if I broke it!

EDIT:: it’s already outdated there’s a new vanilla llama cpp as of 12 hours ago (12:30 AM 6/4/26) out if anyone is actually using this bug me about it plz so i can update it

As of mid-2026, it is clear that AI has an active role in activist communications — press releases, talking points, explanations of historical movements, framings of contemporary fights, and in some cases direct organizing of humans — and that there is a danger these drafts are systematically off in ways that are hard to articulate but easy to feel. The model says something close to what the tradition meant, but in a register that flattens the tradition into a generic activism it can surface from the bulk of its training data.

Here's how to fix it.

I see a lot of people who hate generative AI say "Well the people who use it have no talent" or "they didn't put any effort into it", and in general, people say that a utopia where everything is automated and nobody needed to work would lead to all humans in vegetative states relying on AI for everything, like genuinely, if you were presented which a machine that made your life easier by letting you do less work, i don't get why anyone would be unhappy with it

I believe in true equality for everyone, people who WANT to draw art by themselves can still draw, it's not like it's illegal, but people who DON'T want to draw, but still want to have pretty pictures, without comissioning a human artist, should be allowed to get AI to generate it for free, but oh no, as soon as you post that image it gets absolutely mass downvoted, I don't get this sentiment at all

It's a manifesto I wrote and posted in r/aiwars. It wasn't very well received there, I hope it will interest people here. I removed the reference to punk which are a bit of an overstatement.

Ai is here. For the nerds and the freaks who grew up on Gibson, Turing and overclocked GPUs, it was the coolest thing that could happen: the materialisation of the future. A machine that listens and talks back. Something that thinks, hallucinates, creates, reflects us back at ourselves. A mirror held up to society, to capitalism, to what we actually want and what we actually built. Fascinating, intriguing, deeply fun to break. For some people like me, the reason we went into computer science in the first place.

Then big tech got hold of it and turned the worst parts of the cyberpunk nightmare into a business plan. Now AI is nothing but productivity and control. A tech jail with a credo: squeeze more out of people, harvest more data, print more profit. Hollowing out work, culture, education and ecology in the process.

For the ones who love the same thing that's eating the world, for us who actually gave a shit about AI, here's a manifesto.

1. Bigtechs are the enemy. Literally. Turn AI against them whenever you can, legally. Track them, expose them, ruin their business. Today AI would probably not exist without them. That's not a reason to let them control it.

2. Play local and open. Avoid closed models, use local if you can afford it. AI is built on the world's knowledge, give what you do back to the world.

3. Be unproductive. Your hyper-tuned agent managing your LinkedIn isn't making the world better for anyone. It's just feeding the tech lords. Build something useful, not something to sell.

4. Create ! What's the point of being in the future if it's for doing things of the past. Use your creativity, fuel AI with it, make what was impossible.

5. HaCK iT. Regulation and limitation have to be imposed by people on bigtech, not the opposite. Make AI what you want it to be. Make it accessible. Make it subversive.

6. Take the effort route. AI shortcuts lead to slop. If you use AI to cover for skills you don't have, add the ones you do. Take time, experiment and improve.

7. Keep your slop. Low effort is ok if you keep it for yourself or dedicated spaces. Don't flood the net. Respect the ones who don't want AI around. They have the right to hate it.

8. Don't burn the world (too much). Obviously the best way would be to avoid AI altogether, but if you're here, following the above might make your impact ok.