Think of the fediverse as a federation of states, some bigger, some smaller, but all in the same ballpark. Threads had 10M signups just yesterday, which is more than the whole existing fediverse combined. Federating with them would be like the US adding China as a state - it would immediately be the biggest state by far, and would have the power to set politics for all others. And we know what sort of politics they would set, right?
At least one post defending spez in r/programming has been shown to be chatGPT, that’s for sure. If they have one bot, who’s to say they don’t have thousands?
Those bots wouldn’t pass the turing test, that’s for sure. One thing is pure spam like you’re describing, another is to be arguing with an AI (and losing) without even being aware that it’s an AI on the other side.
The problem with chatGPT is that it allows for automation of content creation.
Imagine a a single guy using chatGPT to control thousands of social media bots, who answer in a human-like way and are able to follow conversations and context, but who all defend the same point of view.
Or imagine a single guy controlling thousands of “local news blogs” that have a constant stream of fresh AI-generated content (both articles and comments), once again all pushing the same narrative.
That is the main problem with things like chatGPT, if not controlled - they allow anyone to create their own “troll farm”.
In my phone, for some reason, Jerboa crashes when I tap your link.
I’ve taught a basic web programming class to 17/18 year old’s. Hardly anyone had ever heard of file extensions (windows by default doesn’t show them anymore), and most of them didn’t understand the concept of folders and files, at all. I was shocked.
I spent 4 hours with them before the whole class was able to create a “index.html” file inside a specific folder, it was like teaching old people. I now feel a lot safer in my programming job.
Its CO2, not propane.