Turkish AI hype

A while ago (specifically a week ago apparently), the official Evrim Ağacı Instagram account posts some Gemini ad. Evrim Ağacı previously showed signs of pivoting to liboşslop and AI hype content, which I was very concerned about. This was the last straw. The bills couldn't have been THAT high for Çağrı Mert Bakırcı to take the advertisement solely because of financial pressure; besides Evrim Ağacı has YouTube memberships, a Patreon, and a Kreosus, and I'm pretty sure Bakırcı lives in the United States (which, while is going through a lot of economic trouble due to Trump and his goons, is doing better than Turkey economically) and has access to plenty of US dollars (1 US dollar is around 45 Turkish Liras), unless his sole job is content creation. What the hell?

I guess it's official now. Evrim Ağacı has now become TESCREALslop. First thing I could think of doing when I saw that ad was to leave the following comment (For reference, in the advertisement, Bakırcı asked Gemini a question about vaccines. For some reason there was a lot of anti-vax propaganda in the comments; the ad itself was pro-vaccine):

(Translation: "Vaccines are great, I do not hesitate getting them (aside from fear of needles) but don't damn use genAI, instead go read The TESCREAL Bundle or Against the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia or The AI Con or something")

Here's another comment and replies (in which I was involved) (I think I typed "üzere" in the reply on accident, ignore that):

(Translation: "did gemini place an ad how is this relevant"
"The AI thing wasn't successful in the West so due to that they decided on expanding the market probably"
"turkey is a country in the west and whatever happens there always happens here too anyway you should stop pretending as if you live in the north pole"
"Whatever happens in the West always happens in Turkey, you're right about that, but Google Gemini entering the Turkish ad market after the increase in the successes of anti-AI movements in the West and the view on AI becoming negative there in general makes one feel suspicious")

And worse, it's not just Evrim Ağacı. These days on TV I have been seeing advertisements for Gemini. A lot of them. Survivor especially has A LOT of them (a lot of their advertisements feature Survivor contestants, they're probably sponsoring them all). And let me tell you, I have never, ever seen an advertisement for a Google product or service on Turkish television before all this.

So, why all the push? As I said in that Instagram reply comment, I think part of it is the rising anti-AI sentiment ("sentiment" is a word with too much of a negative connotation to be honest) in the West, in contrast to Turkey, where a lot of people have embraced generative AI tools and the pushback is just newly rising (see the AntCon controversy). Google has begun seeing this country as a place to "bail out" all their losses. Considering the current situation, it might be a safe bet, but for a short period of time only. It will take some time until we catch up. (Who knows, they'll start building datacenters here and that will speed up the rise of local anti-AI movements. I mean look up the İkizköy resistance. There's already some groundwork; that same pushback against coal power plants can be applied to AI datacenters, I'm pretty sure.)

And I can't help but notice... So many of these AI hypers are secular nationalists, or adjacent. Cem Say, for example. Bro is a leading force of AI hype in Turkey, and even worse he is a secular nationalist trying to appropriate leftist movements. The damage he does is innegligible. Sometimes I think that the mere reason Naci İnci kicked him out of Boğaziçi is the difference of the names of the parties and ideologies they support. Otherwise they actually are in the same position. And of course all those other secnats are glazing him. The number one reason is that secular nationalists are OBSESSED with the West and Western technology that they will often try to bring it to Turkey and implement it uncritically. Number two is the ideological overlap between TESCREALism and AI hypism and Turkish secular nationalism. Both got a lot of racism inside them, and they both lean towards libertarianism. Number three is, this is kind of weird, blind idolization. You probably already know that there's a huge cult of personality over Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in secular nationalism. It causes a lot of problems, and one of those problems is the need for a savior. I think I can explain it easier through what can be considered a subset of secular nationalism: nationalist feminism. Turkish nationalist feminists (kind of an oxymoron one would argue; they threw intersectionality into the depths of the dumpster it seems like) have this notion that their rights were given by Atatürk, not fought for, so unlike ACTUAL feminists who push against the criminal state and system that commits horrible crimes against them, they just carry around photos of Sabiha Gökçen or whatever, never forget to say "Atatürk sayesinde" ("thanks to Atatürk") whenever talking about some woman's rights development in Turkey, and harass Syrian refugees. Cinderella complex, dare I say? THEY NEVER ACTUALLY DARE TO FIGHT AND GO INSTEAD PICK ON WEAK PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY WERE FREED ALL SOLELY THANKS TO A MAN AND FORGOT THEY ACTUALLY HAD TO FIGHT FOR THAT FREEDOM!

Soon they're going to put Google or whatever onto that same pedestal and praise it for bringing academic freedom or labor freedom or something like that, and all but one person who actually had to fight for said academic freedom or labor freedom will be forgotten, and I guess that one person will be Cem Say. Throw all the others into the trash because anti-AI is törörö or whatever. Goddamn it.

And dear Çağrı Mert Bakırcı, please, WAKE THE FUCK UP.