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

thealgorithmicbridge.com

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

#411

Post by moron4hire »

Avicebron wrote: post #150

I feel like if people keep using AI as a blanket term for "inequality" and "inequality accelerants" then yeah, it's "AI"'s fault. When in reality the whole thing needs to be decoupled.. "Gleefully taking away people's livelihoods will be met with violence, and nothing good will come of it." - fixed.

My question to you is, are you willing to give up the tools of the oppressor in that pursuit of combatting the true villain of "gleefully taking away people's livelihoods"? What I mean is, yes, you are right, technically AI itself is not the problem. But it is the tool by which the oppressors are working their oppression.

Do you make this distinction that it's not the AI that is doing this to us so that you can be more clear in where to target your ire, or are you making the distinction so you can continue to use LLMs with a clear conscience?

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

#412

Post by losteric »

speff wrote: post #328
username223 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

The problem with billionaires is they have a vastly disproportionate voice in the political system, which leads to ineffective politicians and policies not aligned with a thriving society.

eg: cutting funding to the IRS and advanced science, both of which have long proven positive dividends… or advancing new wars abroad to directly blow up money.

Plus wbillionaires are nothing special. Right time, right place.

Steve Jobs is a perfect example of someone who was in it for the love of the game. He wouldn’t have been any different if his income was taxed at 90%.

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

#413

Post by smallmancontrov »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #396
estimator7292 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone . That includes the small number of people hoarding a majority of the wealth. Everyone needs to contribute to the wellbeing of society as a whole and nobody is exempt.

I'd like to emphasize that the above should be immediately obvious. The fact that it's not does not bode well for humanity's future. Billionaires simply _should not exist_. The fact that the power to shape societies is concentrated in so few can account for many of the existential threats we face today. AI is not "the problem", it's merely the latest symptom of our broken system and the prioritization of the wrong go…

AI, automation, and globalization would all be uncontroversially brilliant if the benefits weren't distributed like "150% of net benefit to capital, -50% net benefit to labor, better hope some of it trickles down brokie!"

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

#415

Post by stego-tech »

dasil003 wrote: post #393
stego-tech wrote: post #365

Maybe it’s my own lived experience coloring my perspective, but man the author feels like a centrist sitting upon an imagined moral high ground. “Violence is bad but inevitable” is the kind of milquetoast non-committal position one takes when they have nothing else to contribute to the discussion at hand. My own take goes that one step further, as I said in a prior comment rebutting Altman’s whinging blog post: > You…

I like Tristan Harris' take on the situation, which is both more nuanced and more actionable. The idea being that the system and incentives are set up to select amoral technologists who will make money for shareholders, so inevitably the ones that come into power will be the ones don't see a problem with replacing all of human labor (because that's the only outcome that can justify the investment made). Reading Cory…

That’s an excellent take that’s framed far better than my wordsmithing skills permit at present. Systemically, the incentives are there to maximize long-term harms for short-term gains, and the personalities who thrive in said systems are who currently run the very institutions who could change them. Absent a willful surrender of their agency to change the system in a way that would harm them in a limited financial way while improving the lives of everyone (themselves included), violence is, historically, the only way such toxic incentive schemes have been reformed.

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

#416

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#417

Post by jplusequalt »

rayiner wrote: post #223
DavidPiper wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not at all proposing that "people with billions of dollars" somehow directly pay for "the needs of the population as a whole". I'm considering "actual power", rather than "actual income".

Then who pays for it?

Raising taxes is the only possible way a UBI would be feasible, and even then it wouldn't be a large enough amount for most people to live off of.

Also, a UBI is likely to cause inflation.

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

#418

Post by [deleted] »

speff wrote: post #328
username223 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

[deleted]

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

#419

Post by jMyles »

guzfip wrote: post #370
jMyles wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...are you suggesting that horses would prefer to endure the conditions under which they built much of the modern world on their backs? I hate cars way more than I hate AI, but relieving horses of the burden which they carried and the gruesome lives they lived... that's not one of my objections. If AI can do for humans what cars did for horses (but without the flooding cities with traffic violence part), I'll feel ju…

> I hate cars way more than I hate AI, but relieving horses of the burden which they carried and the gruesome lives they lived... that's not one of my objections. I’m so glad those horses got a peaceful retirement at the glue factory. I wonder what they’ll process your corpse into. Soylent green? Or do you think you’re one of the lucky horses that a wealthy owner take care of?

Not sure if you're able to set your snark aside for a moment, but are we really just talking about fewer humans being economically needed? Perhaps biological human population decreasing?

Is that... so bad?

Do you think that horses are upset that there are fewer of them today, and that somehow they'd rather their population increase but bear the industrial age burdens again?

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

#420

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dd8601fn wrote: post #317
softwaredoug wrote: post #199

Highly recommend people learn the history of the Industrial Revolution. I recently discovered the Industrial Revolutions Podcast[1] and have been enjoying it. What's happening today isn't unprecedented. The pace of change that's happening IS similar to periods of the industrial revolution. For example, the flying jenny, overnight, basically put an entire craft industry of weaving into question. Probably more dramatic…

At the start I think everyone thought the industrial revolution could be a useful historical reference. But what AI is selling is the obliteration of human knowledge work. It just isn’t informative for that.

Nah, it's obliterating the distinction -- made by middle class folks and only temporarily true -- between physical labour and intellectual labour.

You as a blue collar machine operator, shoving punch cards in and getting answers out, is precisely what your boss always saw you as, or wanted you to be.

Our necessity as pseudo-craftsmen holding an intellectual high ground and wizardly/magical skills was always resented by investors, owners, and sometimes customers.

Blacksmithing and leather tanning and shoe making and seamstressing and furniture making was human knowledge work, too.

The Alvin Toffler stuff was always bullshit, but it's even more bullshit now.

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