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Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

harpers.org

11–20 of 284 posts

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#11

"What I discovered, though, is that behind all these small complaints, there’s something much more serious. Roy Lee is not like other people. He belongs to a new and possibly permanent overclass. One of the pervasive new doctrines of Silicon Valley is that we’re in the early stages of a bifurcation event. Some people will do incredibly well in the new AI era. They will become rich and powerful beyond anything we can…

It's all about the pathetic rationalization we have placed on greed and profit. We can make millions redundant with AI and still have a social safety net that keeps society stable and healthy. But no, that wouldn't be "fair" to the people who generate millions of net worth every 5 minute.

If you could confiscate 100% of the assets of every billionaire in the country, and sell all of them for market rate without putting any downward pressure on prices at all, that sum would not fund 10 months of the federal government's current spending levels, and even less if you wanted new programs.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#12

AI can’t function without instructions from humans, but an increasing number of humans seem incapable of functioning without AI.

Does it become circular?

A 2-cycle ouroboros. Man-machine-man-etc. Consuming each-other's secretions. Forever.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#13

"What I discovered, though, is that behind all these small complaints, there’s something much more serious. Roy Lee is not like other people. He belongs to a new and possibly permanent overclass. One of the pervasive new doctrines of Silicon Valley is that we’re in the early stages of a bifurcation event. Some people will do incredibly well in the new AI era. They will become rich and powerful beyond anything we can…

It's all about the pathetic rationalization we have placed on greed and profit. We can make millions redundant with AI and still have a social safety net that keeps society stable and healthy. But no, that wouldn't be "fair" to the people who generate millions of net worth every 5 minute.

"World’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity", as “the shadow of global oligarchy hangs over UN General Assembly”, says Oxfam: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-top-1-own-mor...

Billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate three times faster than the previous five years since the election of Donald Trump in November 2024. While US billionaires have seen the sharpest growth in their fortunes, billionaires in the rest of the world have also seen double digit increases. The number of billionaires has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, and the level of billionaire wealth is now higher than at any time in history. Meanwhile, one in four people globally face hunger. https://www.oxfam.org/en/resisting-rule-rich

And I believe this is useful and thought-provoking reading in this context of how unbridled Capitalism is exacerbating the divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and have nots.

Wage slavery: The illusion of freedom: Exploitation Under Capitalism: Marx’s Analysis of Labor and Profit:

https://philosophy.institute/social-political/exploitation-u...

https://davidlingenfelter.substack.com/p/the-normalization-o...

And no, the solution to the problems are not blind unchecked communism (which itself leads to fascism), but perhaps some more ethical & humane methods are needed for an overhaul of world society, and economic & geopolitical regimes.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the pathetic rationalization we have placed on greed and profit. We can make millions redundant with AI and still have a social safety net that keeps society stable and healthy. But no, that wouldn't be "fair" to the people who generate millions of net worth every 5 minute.

If you could confiscate 100% of the assets of every billionaire in the country, and sell all of them for market rate without putting any downward pressure on prices at all, that sum would not fund 10 months of the federal government's current spending levels, and even less if you wanted new programs.

[deleted]

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#18

AI can’t function without instructions from humans, but an increasing number of humans seem incapable of functioning without AI.

A really weird symbiotic relationship. I'm glad I went to school when people learned how to think.

It'll benefit established folks as the pipeline withers but at the expense of society - things were already sufficiently borked before this phenomenon.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#19

> "The future won’t reward effort. It’ll reward leverage." (From the Cluely ad) JFC kill me now that is NOT a future I want to live in.

This became clear to me over the last few years. We are quickly returning to a world of entrenched social hierarchy where there are lords and peasants and little room even for social mobility.

With the corpse of meritocracy too rotted to deny at this point the elite simply seem to have run out of lies for placating the people.

Or, more likely the people are so sickeningly impotent, that’s there’s no need for the lies anymore. The new aristocracy will prevail over liberalism and everything the west lied of being part of the their values for years.

Re: Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking

#20

>The city is temperate and brightly colored, with plenty of pleasant trees, but on every corner it speaks to you in an aggressively alien nonsense. Here the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup. You are not a passive consumer. You are making something. I recently traveled to San Francisco and as an o…

I've been to SF three times, and each time the oddest thing was going down 101 from the airport and seeing cURL commands and "you sped past that just like we sped past Snowflake" and such on billboards. It's like being on another planet where everyone is at work.

(on the other hand, in DC there's ads on the metro for new engine upgrades for fighter jets, and i've gotten used to that.)

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