111–120 of 145 posts
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It seems to have worked out alright for the French.
It worked out very badly for them. See "Reign of Terror". The Revolution ended when Napoleon declared himself a hereditary monarch. Things went full circle.
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Average labour hours in a year dramatically increased with the Industrial Revolution. They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress. During the early phase of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760–1850): Agricultural workers who once labored seasonally were pushed into factory schedules of 12–16 hours per day, 6 days per week. Annual labor h…
The labour struggle for rights we see as basic today (40h work weeks, free weekends) was bloody and deadly. And this was without surveillance tech and automated police drones or w/e else Palantir is working on right now. If we're going by historical precedent this transition won't be pretty, even if you're hoping for a nice optimistic end result. I'm not so sure having a beefy 401k and maybe a couple of rental proper…
"Class privilege" doesn't go far enough. If the class war is a war then AI may be its Manhattan project: a weapon that destroys the value of, and the ruling elite's need for, labor. I continue to be shocked by the way people (with platforms) talk up to the (speculative) line where AI replaces most or all jobs, and then lamely suggest that this will be bad for the people who've lost their jobs because they will be poo…
"Class privilege" doesn't go far enough. If the class war is a war then AI may be its Manhattan project: a weapon that destroys the value of, and the ruling elite's need for, labor. I continue to be shocked by the way people (with platforms) talk up to the (speculative) line where AI replaces most or all jobs, and then lamely suggest that this will be bad for the people who've lost their jobs because they will be poo…
Once money loses value, sociopathic trillionaire brains become immeditally obsolete and power migrates to the men with guns and a very thin technocratic class.
> men with guns and a very thin technocratic class
Bold of you to assume these are disjoint. In the US we're spiraling toward oligarchy with a billionaire president whose primary goal in office is evidently to enrich himself and his family, and his regime is (with the $encouragement of AI titans) aggressively pushing integration of AI in various government and military applications.
If I was somebody like Sam Altman and I had indeed been thinking about this, I'm not sure things could be going much better for me wrt. that scenario.
"Class privilege" doesn't go far enough. If the class war is a war then AI may be its Manhattan project: a weapon that destroys the value of, and the ruling elite's need for, labor. I continue to be shocked by the way people (with platforms) talk up to the (speculative) line where AI replaces most or all jobs, and then lamely suggest that this will be bad for the people who've lost their jobs because they will be poo…
"Class privilege" doesn't go far enough. If the class war is a war then AI may be its Manhattan project: a weapon that destroys the value of, and the ruling elite's need for, labor. I continue to be shocked by the way people (with platforms) talk up to the (speculative) line where AI replaces most or all jobs, and then lamely suggest that this will be bad for the people who've lost their jobs because they will be poo…
And if money loses value why would the guys with guns and the guys who run the AI still take orders from the oligarchs?
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arguably the history of humanity was about automating humanity. - teeth and nails with knives (in various shapes from bones to steel) - feet with carriages and bicycles and cars - hands with mills and factories on steam engines to industrial robots Literaly every automation was meant to help humans somehow so, this naturally entailed an automation of some human function. This automation is an automation of the human…
The term you're looking for is externalisation not automation. Check out "the fault of epimetheus"; & on the alienation of the machine by automation ca. 19late7s one of its intellectual predecessors: gilbert simondon
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The assumption in your comment is that those changes were all net good. In hindsight though, the automobile has had possibly existential costs for humanity, the internet has provided most benefit to those who most abuse its power, and so on. In the end, it doesn’t seem as though you’ve actually made any sort of case.
The set of people who believe the automobile (or the Internet) are net negatives taken as a whole for society is extremely small, for good reason
Coal miners will fight for coal mines, the oil industry will fight for dependence on oil, and so on. Sometimes they’re aware of what they’re doing, but in the case of a comment like the above, apparently not so much.