LTT is incredibly corporate (+ a private jet??), Mrwhosetheboss is super AI-pilled (generated “hand painted” wallpaper of him and wife? Really?), Marques has his own controversies (e.g. exceeding highway speeds in a school zone, wallpaper app cashgrab, etc. + he does not seem to have any concept of value or budget), Gamers Nexus has their own problems (e.g. they claimed how Matrix could be Israeli spyware, with the source being a poorly received Reddit comment), etc.
Wendell from Level1Techs is still quite good and relatively out of controversy, perhaps because he doesn’t target a general audience like the above? Veronica Explains (Linux and adjacent topics) and Jeff Geerling (primarily self-hosting and networking bits) are also great in their niches. Salem Techspurts (the greatest technician to ever live) and Hugh Jeffreys both cover topics relating to right to repair and they make interesting videos around vintage electronics as well!
Are there any other good tech creators that are not super corporate, not AI-pilled, and outside of controversy?
What does “AI-pilled” mean? Complaining about a generated wallpaper/cover image seems rather nitpicky to me when YouTube does that for everyone now. As in, that war has been lost.
In fact, complaining about AI-generated cover images in general seems rather nitpicky. The actual content wasn’t AI generated, just a tiny little advertising detail.
I dunno: It’s like people complaining about “kids these days.” “Instead of spending a few hours working on a proper clickbait cover image, kids these days are using AI!”
“AI-pilled” means you.
Except thumbnail artists exists and can be incredibly meaningful to the success of a video. AI has stolen their work and now directly compete with them. It might be a small part of the whole production of a video, but theft still went in to the box, and less money for the working class comes out.
Don’t call it theft. Theft is what happens when the original owner doesn’t have that thing anymore.
Nothing was “stolen”. AI just lowered the value of generic “thumbnail artists” and probably increased their value as artisans for those willing to pay for a premium service.
That’s what generative AI does: It makes stuff of mediocre quality that’s “good enough” for the masses. However, if you want something better than that, you have to pay a professional.
My hypothesis is that Baumol’s Cost Disease combined with AI is going to result in the collapse of capitalism. Where bespoke service work (e.g. hiring a thumbnail artist) is going to become more expensive over time while generic stuff that doesn’t need to be high quality is going to become cheaper and cheaper, to the point where it’s basically free. We’re almost there, actually.
It’s not a term invented by critics of the AI craze, but rather proponents (who apparently don’t realize just how insane it sounds). First time I heard it was when an enthusiastic coworker sent this article to me in an email. He was completely serious. Made some off-hand remarks that sounded borderline cultist about people who are “completely misguided” about AI. He’s been sending out emails about AI for a couple years now and I realized that I’ve been watching a case AI psychosis gradually unfold.
Wacky!
Arun often puts heavy emphasis on the AI features on the devices he reviews, making them sound super magical and wonderful. Having a machine generate “hand painted” artwork also seems wrong.
Also of note, this is for a wallpaper on a smartphone (that I believe he continued to use on his main phone), and was used as an example of how Samsung is actually far ahead of the competition and they aren’t really lagging behind the competition.
Aside from his views on AI, he also makes videos in the style of “I spent X amount of money on these gadgets”, which aren’t to my taste. In particular, I don’t enjoy how he covers fitness/health gadgets that border on the line of pseudoscience.