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They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

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Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#81

Post by doktrin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
doktrin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My bartender and ski instructors’ careers are secure. Both of these jobs - particularly the latter but where I live also the former - rely on a heavy surplus of disposable income sloshing around the economy. Once the money stops flowing the home stills start and the ski trips stop. > My friend whose ten year old stayed indoors for a few years to play around on REPL, less surely. The broad point you're conveying is…

> broad point you're conveying is reasonably clear Let me further clarify it: winemakers, lobbyists, charismatic artists and anyone else whose job is based on relationships will also be fine. (Or folks like plumbers and electricians.) The roles being automated away look like the quiet, tinkering alone genius types. First at the commodity level. But increasingly at the highest ones. The preserved jobs will be both hig…

> The preserved jobs will be both high and low, and exist in the context of a more-productive society.

A more productive society is not incompatible with extreme inequality. Unless the middle is preserved, it's hard to see how all these winemakers and charismatic artists will find a market for their labor.

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#82

Post by JumpCrisscross »

doktrin wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> broad point you're conveying is reasonably clear Let me further clarify it: winemakers, lobbyists, charismatic artists and anyone else whose job is based on relationships will also be fine. (Or folks like plumbers and electricians.) The roles being automated away look like the quiet, tinkering alone genius types. First at the commodity level. But increasingly at the highest ones. The preserved jobs will be both hig…

> The preserved jobs will be both high and low, and exist in the context of a more-productive society. A more productive society is not incompatible with extreme inequality. Unless the middle is preserved, it's hard to see how all these winemakers and charismatic artists will find a market for their labor.

> more productive society is not incompatible with extreme inequality

Sure. And I don’t see why in the trades and service industry solid middle-class jobs won’t survive. I’m just commenting that, ironically, coding is turning out to be the 21st century’s auto line worker.

Just because software engineering is being done by AI does not apply most other jobs can, too—it’s just the impersonal ones.

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#83

Post by locopati »

Go back and watch the old MCI amd AT&T ads from the early 90s at the dawn of the web. They had an optimism that feels false coming from Apple & Google & all the others now. We know better now that they're interested in money and market share more than benefits to people's lives. The latter is an incidental reason to achieve the former. It was that way back then too, but it feels more blatant now.

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#84

Post by skrebbel »

advael wrote: post #78
skrebbel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live in the smoking ruins of the world of our grandparents Wait, what? My grandparents lived through a war and a famine, and came of age when over half the world lived in extreme poverty. I don't think you fully appreciate how little of the world population could poo into a toilet not that many decades ago.

Many commenters here are older than me and have older parents. I forget because many are also younger than me and my parents are now grandparents. I'll be more specific: The post-WW2 economic boom (That is, roughly 75-80 years ago) was full of promise and prosperity for a growing middle class. We got a lot of technological progress and even political will toward egalitarian attitudes out of that, but the economic sit…

You said “smoking ruins” and you said “world”. Actually you meant “in my super rich country, the middle class used to have better future prospects than now”. Meanwhile, most of the world has substantially better prospects now than in the 60s. And, depending on where you live, the same may well hold for a large lower class as well (eg black people in the US, who now get to pick any bus seat they want).

Things only got worse if you exclude everybody who didn’t already have it super good.

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#86

Post by advael »

skrebbel wrote: post #84
advael wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many commenters here are older than me and have older parents. I forget because many are also younger than me and my parents are now grandparents. I'll be more specific: The post-WW2 economic boom (That is, roughly 75-80 years ago) was full of promise and prosperity for a growing middle class. We got a lot of technological progress and even political will toward egalitarian attitudes out of that, but the economic sit…

You said “smoking ruins” and you said “world”. Actually you meant “in my super rich country, the middle class used to have better future prospects than now”. Meanwhile, most of the world has substantially better prospects now than in the 60s. And, depending on where you live, the same may well hold for a large lower class as well (eg black people in the US, who now get to pick any bus seat they want). Things only got…

Yea, "world" is often used in pretty drastically different senses, like we might mean an everett branch, the continuity of a fictional universe, or, as here, the experiential reality of a person or group of people. Their context.

I have little granular information about the economic and political policies of most of the world, and will not claim to. I can mostly only talk about the US, where I live, though to be fair, this article is about a US festival wherein US industries got booed. Also, while it's great that we have ended the most obvious forms of nominal discrimination against racial minorities, there are a lot of thinly-veiled ways in which discrimination is still rampant, and trends like the decline of labor power and the automation of various decisions actually exacerbate these

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#87

Post by varelse »

CaptainFever wrote: post #35
varelse wrote: post #13

Sure, people hate tech. And tech clearly hates its own customers. So why hasn't something that doesn't hate its own customers disrupted tech? If anything, the enshittification is just getting worse. Prime video's random ads alone should have led to mass cancellations but it's not happening, is it? So what exactly will lead to people walking away as opposed to grumbling as things keep getting worse and worse? Reminds…

If tech and the customers hate each other, they wouldn't be making revenue. Of course, there's a couple of exceptions (e.g. monopolies, addictions) but that doesn't really describe AI for example. I think the answer is that people simply do like the tech. We voluntarily use social media platforms (nosurfing is possible), and the average person clearly finds great use in ChatGPT, MidJourney, Character and AI in genera…

[dead]

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#88

Post by disqard »

Bengalilol wrote: post #30

To anyone interested, I deeply (no pun intended) recommend reading this essay which goes back in time in order to pinpoint the reasons we are all stranded. https://arturoduran.com/2023/07/18/the-era-of-the-tyrant-ind...

Thanks so much for sharing this resource! It looks like much of Eric's work remains untranslated into English -- have you read the original works in French?

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#89

Post by Bengalilol »

disqard wrote: post #88
Bengalilol wrote: post #30

To anyone interested, I deeply (no pun intended) recommend reading this essay which goes back in time in order to pinpoint the reasons we are all stranded. https://arturoduran.com/2023/07/18/the-era-of-the-tyrant-ind...

Thanks so much for sharing this resource! It looks like much of Eric's work remains untranslated into English -- have you read the original works in French?

Yes, I've read all his works. He sounds like obvious, but the build-up he provides is quite "to the point". There are some videos / interviews of him on youtube. Although those are in french, with the automatic translator you _could_ get some good points out of these. Search for "eric sadin thinkerview" https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eric+sadin+thin... I recommend 'La fin d’un monde commun', 'Éric Sadin : l'asservissement par l'Intelligence Artificielle ? ' and finally 'IA : le devenir légume de l’humanité ?'. I hope you this can be of any value.

Re: They Praised AI at SXSW–and the Audience Started Booing

#90

Post by disqard »

Bengalilol wrote: post #89
disqard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for sharing this resource! It looks like much of Eric's work remains untranslated into English -- have you read the original works in French?

Yes, I've read all his works. He sounds like obvious, but the build-up he provides is quite "to the point". There are some videos / interviews of him on youtube. Although those are in french, with the automatic translator you _could_ get some good points out of these. Search for "eric sadin thinkerview" https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eric+sadin+thin... I recommend 'La fin d’un monde commun', 'Éric Sadin…

Sorry about the delayed ack, but Many Thanks for sharing those pointers!
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