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Do we just want slaves?

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Re: Do we just want slaves?

#11

Post by singingtoday »

skippyfish wrote: post #6

The thesis of the article is spot on. The title is weird - I don't know what's the point of bringing such an emotionally charged term into it. Unless your point is that LLMs are sentient creatures capable of suffering, but I don't think that's what the author is trying to say. I agree with the author that almost everyone wants to use AI to do the things they have no interest in and don't want to pay someone else to d…

Is the ai hate a global or western thing? A friend of mine in Japan says people don't hate it there. Maybe she's just in a bubble?

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#12

Post by js8 »

The problem is the idea of the job. The idea that you're worthy of existence only if some other person certifies you're worthy of existence, based on how much they have been certified themselves.

Of course this converges to a system, where this certification is the most sought thing. And if you look who can certify in the real world and why, it's not a fair picture. These eigenpeople SEOed the capitalist form of pagerank.

We need unconditional basic income. It used to be that some leftist thinkers from the turn of the 19th century considered a wage job being not much better than slavery.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#13

Post by skippyfish »

singingtoday wrote: post #11
skippyfish wrote: post #6

The thesis of the article is spot on. The title is weird - I don't know what's the point of bringing such an emotionally charged term into it. Unless your point is that LLMs are sentient creatures capable of suffering, but I don't think that's what the author is trying to say. I agree with the author that almost everyone wants to use AI to do the things they have no interest in and don't want to pay someone else to d…

Is the ai hate a global or western thing? A friend of mine in Japan says people don't hate it there. Maybe she's just in a bubble?

Possibly. I think the US is a lot more exposed to the apocalyptic narratives from the bosses of AI labs, who sort of painted themselves into that corner in the pursuit of valuations.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#14

Post by PacificSpecific »

singingtoday wrote: post #11
skippyfish wrote: post #6

The thesis of the article is spot on. The title is weird - I don't know what's the point of bringing such an emotionally charged term into it. Unless your point is that LLMs are sentient creatures capable of suffering, but I don't think that's what the author is trying to say. I agree with the author that almost everyone wants to use AI to do the things they have no interest in and don't want to pay someone else to d…

Is the ai hate a global or western thing? A friend of mine in Japan says people don't hate it there. Maybe she's just in a bubble?

Anecdotally it does seem to be the case in my experience with extended family.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#15

Post by ludston »

This is bait right? Obviously the answer to this question is there is some population that are happy for there to be suffering so long as it benefits them, and then there is another population that is vehemently against this, and then there is one that is apathetic and tries to just get on with their lives.

Like with every major ethical crises ever.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#17

Post by js8 »

yunwal wrote: post #2

It seems like maybe this person missed why slavery is bad. Which is that it takes away the freedom of a human being. The fact that it takes away work from you is not the problem

No, you missed what makes AI bad in our culture. It doesn't just take your work, by your choice. It also takes your self-worth (because our culture is based on working being worthy) and for many people also a job (which is a material representation of that cultural value).

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#18

Post by jaza »

I think the author's main point is bemoaning the loss of human-crafted works (he mentions coding and the paintbrush). (Putting "slaves" in the title is IMHO a poorly worded distraction from that point.)

I get it (with coding at least), I too have spent decades hand-crafting code, and I take pride in the fruit of my labour, and it saddens me to think that I and my peers are perhaps like the blacksmiths of a century or so ago, ie the final generation doing what we do in significant numbers. But I have faith that there will always be a new kind of blacksmith.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#19

Post by EagnaIonat »

skippyfish wrote: post #6

The thesis of the article is spot on. The title is weird - I don't know what's the point of bringing such an emotionally charged term into it. Unless your point is that LLMs are sentient creatures capable of suffering, but I don't think that's what the author is trying to say. I agree with the author that almost everyone wants to use AI to do the things they have no interest in and don't want to pay someone else to d…

Interesting (short read) but the premise can be applied to everything.

Automation, Programming module/libraries.

But for replacing others we don't care about, often the doorman fallacy is hit.

Re: Do we just want slaves?

#20

Post by cognitiveinline »

some_furry wrote: post #10
cognitiveinline wrote: post #4

Is a calculator a slave? Is a car a slave? What a silly blogpost. We have always been automating away the things we don't want to do, even before AI.

It's not that silly of a blogpost. See: "permanent underclass", a term popular among people that believe that an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is imminent and desirable .

I don't know where you imagine these people to congregate and coin these terms, but I've not come across anything like that.
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