That is absolutely correct, but unfortunately very unlikely, because many of our politicians are either incredibly incompetent or simply corrupt. This is for example evident in the fact that they even want to introduce Palantir, as was recently the case in Germany, where the state of Baden-Württemberg decided to use the US mass surveillance software “Gotham” in a completely unlawful manner and against the will of the population (its use is also already planned at the federal level).

So unfortunately, I have little hope here, but I will still try to do my part.

Our politicians should really stop pretending that the US is an ally. They haven’t been for a long time, but the current regime is so corrupt and utterly unscrupulous that it’s impossible to reach any kind of agreement with them. The Epstein story alone proves this, not to mention the cold-blooded murders of Venezuelan citizens in violation of international law, the blackmail with tariffs, all the Nazi-Shit and so on and so forth - this nation is a banana republic led by organized crime and our politicians should treat it as such.

How Spotify’s $109 Billion Market Cap Stacks Up Against Other Music and Entertainment Companies

Nevertheless, Spotify makes more profit than any music label, even more than all the remaining music labels combined. This is how it works today: music, literature, journalism, and art no longer exist according to this logic - only content. And as disrespectful as the term sounds, that’s how it’s paid for - with scrabs because that’s the business model.

Your pirate approach is no longer up to date, because it is no longer directed against large corporations, but robs artists of the little they have left. This will only accelerate the trend: no one will try to make a living from art anymore. If you think that people will do it anyway because they want to express themselves, I think you are absolutely wrong.

Spotify absolutely deserves to be singled out for its exploitative practices, especially since this company is largely responsible for musicians not being paid fairly for their hard work. It’s just a shame that there’s hardly anything to steal here other than people’s hard work, to which Spotify has contributed nothing - but that applies to all companies that are successful on the internet today. Without exception, all of these companies are built on the same platform logic: the content that these companies exploit is paid for with starvation wages, if at all (not at all in the case of LLMs).

Therefore, I cannot see anything positive in this because it does not change the underlying problem in the slightest.

Yesterday, I was shopping and saw that various US products were on sale - I still didn’t buy any and won’t be buying any in the future.

It’s only right to boycott the US, and I’m glad that a whole bunch of people in Europe seem to feel the same way.

Those responsible for the Antisemite award deserve other awards themselves. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, one of the few media outlets there that still retains a spark of humanity, hints at this in the following opinion piece: This Is the ‘Crime’ That Got Ms. Rachel Nominated for ‘Antisemite of the Year’

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean by ignorance. It only occurred to me later that the term has a much more international meaning in my native language (German): what I meant was not so much a lack of knowledge, but the deliberate ignoring of facts, expert knowledge, or scientific standards out of selfish arrogance. I believe in English this is called willful ignorance - this distinction does not exist in German; for us, ignorance always means that someone deliberately ignores things because they simply do not suit them. And I think that this, or rather the fact that we allow it, is responsible for the precarious situation our world finds itself in today: people could and do know better, but they ignore the facts out of selfishness.

Then I can turn it into a business. With LLMs, that’s hardly a problem anymore. Don’t worry: I’ll do it alongside my job - just a hobby that brings in some nice extra income.

I am neither a musician nor a particularly good writer, but I am somewhat good with LLMs. Thank you very much for your encouragement. That removes all my ethical doubts about closing this chapter. If it has always been this way, then I don’t need to worry about it anymore.

What makes you so sure, when there’s not even the prospect of making a living from it anymore? Do you think most artists do it as a hobby?

You don’t seem to understand what I mean at all. I mean people who try to make a living from their creative work. Do you think that’s still possible?

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

Figures and/or examples would be very interesting for:

1. The statement that LLMs will continue to develop rapidly and/or that their output will still improve significantly in quality. I currently assume that development will slow down considerably—for example, with regard to hallucinations, where it was assumed for some time that the problem could be solved by more extensive training data, but this has proven to be a dead end.

2. The statement that the value of the companies involved can be justified in any way with real-world assets. Or, at any rate, reliable statements about how existing or planned data centers built for this purpose can be operated economically despite their considerable running costs.

3. How you justify your statement that it would be realistic to replace human workers on a large scale. Examples where this is the case would be interesting (by this I don’t mean figures on where workers have been laid off, but examples of companies where human work has been (successfully) made obsolete by LLMs – I am not aware of any such examples where this has happened in a significant way and attributable to the use of LLMs).

4. I am aware that the technology is being used in warfare. I am not aware of its significance or the tactical advantages it is supposed to offer. Please provide examples of what you mean.

Considering what LLMs are useful for, I wouldn’t say so. But in terms of how it’s all being marketed, how it’s being pushed on consumers for no apparent reason, I definitely agree.

Do you have any sources that cite figures that would suggest this? To be honest, I have my doubts—except for the statement that money is being shifted back and forth; however, I don’t understand why massive investments in data centers would make sense in this context if it’s not just making a profit for Nvidia and such.

As I said, I don’t consider LLMs and image generation to be technologies without use cases. I’m simply saying that the impact of these technologies is being significantly and very deliberately overestimated. Take so-called AI agents, for example: they’re a practical thing, but miles away from how they’re being sold.

Furthermore, even Open AI is very far from being in the black, and I consider it highly doubtful that this will ever be possible given the considerable costs involved. In my opinion, the only option would be to focus on marketing opportunities, which is the business model of the classic Google search engine—but this would have a very negative impact on user value.

Thank you for this comment. I completely agree with you: I think all it takes is people who act according to their conscience—that results in a community worth living in. That’s all it takes.

Decent people.

All I want to say is this: if you insist on portraying patriotism as something good and lose sight of reality in the face of idealism, however desirable, this leads to situations like those in Nazi Germany—and history is currently repeating itself in the US. The reason will always be the same: unfortunately, people are not inherently good, and the bad ones know how to exploit this.

With regard to the US, my point is simple: patriotism is an abstract idea that is currently being massively abused by fascists to create an unjust state very similar to Nazi Germany, which fortunately came to an end. They are using exactly the same propaganda techniques that the Nazis used in Germany to establish their reign of terror.

If you agree with me that patriotism has been misused for the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humankind, where do you see the value of this concept? Even if one starts from a purely utilitarian ethic, what could ever outweigh that?

The actual Sturmabteilung (SA) and all other Nazi divisions also claimed to be patriots—they killed millions of people under this premise. That is a fact, and that is what I am getting at.