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AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

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Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#321

Post by tedivm »

falcor84 wrote: post #245
tedivm wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if productivity gains tied to general well being, but instead it's being concentrated in the hands of a few.

I can't think of any period in time where it was so easy to go into business yourself and to generally have access to the same "means of production" as the biggest companies have. If you want to use LLMs, you can either use cloud resources at what I think are really reasonable per-token prices compared to the value, or to set up your own server with an open-weights model at a comparable level of quality (though gener…

I'm well aware of this: I bought a pretty beefy (consumer grade beefy) GPU machine and run all sorts of open weight models. I do think there is potential.

But are you expecting 360m Americans to start their own businesses? That is a solution that doesn't scale. Consumer grade GPUs aren't going to scale all that much either, and the cost of the models are going up rather than down as vendors start seeking profits. We already see the memory and storage markets exploding in cost due to the rise in demand as well.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#322

Post by RugnirViking »

fwipsy wrote: post #293
zkmon wrote: post #261

History has shown that an alien invasion can only happen because of the internal competition and in-fighting of the natives. Colonial empires proved it only a few centuries back. The invading alien powers are fuelled by the inviting natives. AI (and computing technology in general) is an alien as it defies all wordly norms. It can have exact identical copies, can replicate, can exist everywhere, communicate across hu…

> internal competition and in-fighting of the natives. What about diseases which killed up to 95% of the population? I think you are basically correct, except for the historical analogy.

This is not true of everywhere that was colonized. See Africa, or India. It would not be possible, even with very great tech advantage, to sustain millitary campaigns so far from europe without a safe port to base supplies etc, not to mention the manpower etc. These were very much made possible by what was essentially a standard playbook of allying with some natives against others, and using trade imbalance, violence, strongarming and other things to turn those "allies" into protectorates, and eventually colonies

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#323

Post by Rury »

theseanz wrote: post #137
quantummagic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a truism. But it ignores The Iron Law of Oligarchy, Pareto Principle, and dozens more that remind us that power tends towards centralization. It's currently fashionable to call out the billionaires, but if you removed them, they'd just be replaced by corrupt government officials, or something else. That's not to say we should just throw up our hands and accept every social injustice. But IMHO we shouldn't go a…

“But IMHO we shouldn't go around simplistically implying that all social ills will be solved by neutering the billionaire class.” You’re right. Instead of implying, we should be taking active steps to do it.

Right, giving up is actually how these things end up becoming principles/laws. Power centralizes because people become complacent and ignorant on matters of power, so there ends up being a power vacuum, to which others seize the opportunity. But absolute power centralization almost never occurs, due to the delegation that is necessary to wield that power in practice, and so these two forces end up balancing each other. As such, the equilibrium point (or point of maximum entropy) ends up being some type of oligarchy. But anyone can take steps to address this and adjust this equilibrium point, but it takes active work.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#324

Post by phpnode »

glerk wrote: post #298
phpnode wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This categorisation of evil as stupidity lets the evil off the hook, there are plenty of smart, evil people.

I disagree, but it's probably a matter of definitions. I don't want to play with words, so I will concede that cognitive ability is independent from moral reasoning (which is socially enforced). However, this is not what I'm getting at. Cognitive ability ("intelligence") is correlated with optionality and power. Your ability to change this reality is correlated with your cognitive ability. If you truly are an intelli…

I think this is overly simplistic. e.g. Hans Reiser is clearly a pretty smart guy, but how else would you describe his actions, other than evil?

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#325

Post by djeastm »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #153
conartist6 wrote: post #114

I have said repeatedly that when AI eliminates the need for human creativity and work, the only thing left as the natural domain of humans will be bloodshed. The fact that we're using AI killer robots to wipe each other out in droves doesn't bode well for that future does it...

I think you underestimate just how much we value human achievement. Why do we watch Olympic runners, when cars on your average city street easily exceed Usain Bolt's top speed on their morning drive to Starbucks? Why do we watch the Tour de France, when we can watch Uber Eats drivers on their 150cc scooters easily outpace top cyclists? I'm sure within a couple years a Boston Dynamics robot will be able to out-gymnast…

Ironic seeing as how we canceled the Olympics during the world wars instead of the other way around.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#327

Post by Lerc »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #282
Lerc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you hope for anything better if you consider it an us versus them situation? When they say "We don't want to increase inequality" and the response is "We don't believe you". Where do you go from there? It seems like a lot of people want a revolution so that they can rotate who will be able to take advantage of the vulnerable. What are the suggestions for something better? I don't see a lot. I'd like to see mo…

The billionaires could start to earn trust by lobbying for laws and programs that help the poor and displaced. Put money in to retraining programs to help people who lose their jobs. So far they seem to be doing the opposite, CEOs are publicly declaring ‘fuck you, got mine’ and leaving it at that.

Nick Hanauer has lobbied for higher minimum wages.

Michael Bloomberg has lobbied for healthcare.

Pierre Omidyar has spent about a billion on economic advancement non-profits

Gates Foundation - Bunch of stuff.

Warren Buffet - Too much to count

George Soros - For all the antisemitism, the kernel of truth in the lie is that he spends a lot of money trying to make the world better.

Chuck Feeny gave away $8B I'm sure some of it went to lobbying for better policies

A large number Advocate for a Universal Basic Income.

More advocate for things that they clearly think are good things for the world, even if you, personally do not.

Jack Dorsey, Reid Hoffman, hell even Elon Musk (he may be wrong about everything, but he's openly advocating for what he believes is good)

Sam Altman has done WorldCoin and is heavily invested in Nuclear Fusion. You can criticise the effectiveness or even the desirability of the projects, but they are definitely efforts that if worked as claimed would be beneficial.

Many billionaires spend money on non-profits to push for change, often they do not put their name on it because it makes them a target for attack, or simply that by openly advocating for something the lack of trust causes people to assume whatever they suggest has the opposite intention.

I'm not arguing that they are doing the right thing. I'm arguing that for the most part they are advocating for and investing in what they believe to be the right thing. Why treat them as the enemy, when a dialog might cause them to reach common ground about what is the right thing.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#328

Post by speff »

username223 wrote: post #237
DavidPiper wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with and encourage this kind of academic distinction. However... Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money to offset the financial hardship that they're knowingly - and gleefully - bringing to others... The distinction has no practical use. (And before someone says "that's the government's job!", consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and compa…

> Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money… Or until actual people take the billions of dollars sitting behind those weak man-children. The US has fewer than 1000 billionaires now, and more than 300,000,000 people. That seems like a solvable problem.

I suggest you keep going with that math. I'll use the numbers from here [0]. 924 billionaires with an overall wealth of 7.5 trillion. Split among 300 million people, that's about $25k for everyone.

Here are some points of consideration:

1. They don't have $7.5T in liquid. The average american won't be able to use that $25k to pay a hospital bill or eat. Also note that one-time wealth transfer won't even pay in full for one major surgery.

2. You've wiped away the incentive for getting-big mentality which drove some of the billionaires to innovate which advances society to this point. Think - discouraging a future Jobs from making another iPhone-like device.

3. After the one-time transfer, it turns out we need more money for the common folks. "Why is the line at $1B? Isn't $900m enough? The line should be $100m." And so on and so forth.

[0]: https://fortune.com/2025/12/08/how-many-billionaires-does-am...

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#329

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #220
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's my thought too. People, especially Americans (I am one) have this weird belief that violence never has any place, ever, at any time. I'd argue that the unwillingness to commit violence in certain situations is actually a character flaw. If someone threatens my child with physical violence, an unwillingness to commit violence on my child's behalf isn't better morality; it's cowardice. All this to say, I ag…

> [E]specially Americans (I am one) have this weird belief that violence never has any place, ever, at any time. So why isn't there a huge opposition in the USA against the wars that the USA started (currently: Iran; before: Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, ...). The only famous exception of cultural impact I am aware of where there was a huge opposition against war in the USA was the Vietnam war.

[dead]

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#330

Post by ryandrake »

jacquesm wrote: post #273
rayiner wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much actual money do you think the “people with billions of dollars” have in comparison to the needs of the population as a whole? I think you’re very confused about where the actual income in the economy goes.

[flagged]

I really don't understand this "simping online for billionaires" hobby. Is there a signup I missed somewhere, where they pay $100 for every post one makes glazing and defending them as a class?
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