Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

eyeofthesquid.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 195 posts

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#141

Post by pu_pe »

tinypieman wrote: post #137
pu_pe wrote: post #128

> “I own the compute infrastructure” or “I owned the company that bought the AI systems early”, on the other hand, is just being in the right place at the right time. It’s not about your talents, effort, or contribution. It’s pure capital ownership divorced from any human quality. The article is not about AI, it's about this stage of capitalism. Unlike the author, I would argue that it is very much in line with the c…

My take on this: Ultimately the industrial revolution has been beneficial to the majority, but when it occurred it triggered violent changes that pushed many communities toward hardship. From artisans owning or co-owning their means of production, with a significant creative license over their work and the possibility to take their own initiatives… to the efficiency of atomized labor, which strips away the creativity…

Yeah, I mostly agree with your opinion. It's true that in the short-term there will be tons of disruption and likely more bad than good will come out of it. I guess my point was that ultimately how the upsides and downsides of a new technology will be distributed depend a lot on how societies organize themselves. The industrial revolution allowed the concentration of wealth and robber barons, but also unions and social democracy as a reaction to that.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#142

Post by simianwords »

theshrike79 wrote: post #129
simianwords wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't get it, what does USofA or subscription have to do with anything

AI is the ultimate "someone else's computer". If you're doing work in The Cloud and the servers are in America, you can still move all that to physically reside in whatever jurisdiction you live in. The tech is there. But if you build stuff on top of Anthropic, OpenAI or Google AIs, their data resides and will always reside in the US. They have very specific laws that allow them to grab data from anywhere and nobody…

But what does this have to do with meritocracy???

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#143

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

r33b33 wrote: post #118
barrell wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but what happens to society when art, labor, "intelligence" and productivity all become abundant? These are not comparable to salt. You are comparing an apple to every orange tree that has ever existed.

We focus on colonisation of Universe and becoming a Kardashev Type III civilisation. Literally that.

More likely we devolve into Kardashian Type society of shallow attention seekers. Or worse, we move towards a permanent divide of the insanely rich who own the machines and everyone else who struggle to make it through the day.

There are some who would say that both of these have already happened.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#144

Post by theshrike79 »

simianwords wrote: post #142
theshrike79 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is the ultimate "someone else's computer". If you're doing work in The Cloud and the servers are in America, you can still move all that to physically reside in whatever jurisdiction you live in. The tech is there. But if you build stuff on top of Anthropic, OpenAI or Google AIs, their data resides and will always reside in the US. They have very specific laws that allow them to grab data from anywhere and nobody…

But what does this have to do with meritocracy???

Is it a meritocracy if you need to pay a monthly fee for a chance to access it?

Someone in northern India definitely can't afford a Max tier Claude subscription, no matter how smart they are. Hell, even many so called middle class people in "the west" can't justify the cost.

That's not a "meritocracy" where people advance purely on merit.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#145

Post by gaigalas »

barrell wrote: post #115
danmaz74 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When something becomes abundant, we focus on something else which is still scarce. That's human nature. Salt used to be scarce and very valuable, but nowadays who thinks about it?

Yes but what happens to society when art, labor, "intelligence" and productivity all become abundant? These are not comparable to salt. You are comparing an apple to every orange tree that has ever existed.

we stole the promethean fire

humans won't have to work again

the spark of intelligence is now living in machines

by the way, we still have to make small annoying interruptions to digital content to display ads, everything falls apart if we don't do that

--

Something feels off in this whole idea. I think you guys are overestimating the importance of AI. It's just another commodity.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#146

Post by Balgair »

barrell wrote: post #5

An idea that has been living rent free in my head is that "AI is ultimately nothing but a pure destruction of value". It's promise is unlimited value to everyone on demand; but if everyone can do everything without any effort, it is no longer valuable. Value and scarcity go hand in hand. I realize the hyperbolic framing of the idea, but none-the-less I haven't been able to get it out of my head. This article feels li…

All value is derived from labor.

Marx agrees on this, Adam Smith agrees on this, John Locke agrees on this, heck even Keynes agrees on this; all (sensible) economists agree on this. If you do not have labor somewhere in the process, you do not have value.

“Equal quantities of labor, at all times and places, may be said to be of equal value to the laborer. In his ordinary state of health, strength and spirits; in the ordinary degree of his skill and dexterity, he must always lay down the same portion of his ease, his liberty, and his happiness. The price which he pays must always be the same, whatever may be the quantity of goods which he receives in return for it. Of these, indeed, it may sometimes purchase a greater and sometimes a smaller quantity; but it is their value which varies, not that of the labor which purchases them.” says Smith.

From this Smith concludes that “labor alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.”

It's a bit long winded (brief by his standards, though), but the essence is that labor ultimately determines if there is value. But, critically, not the amount of value. Marx would say that the amount of value is the amount of effort that goes into the commodity, something we now know not to be true.

Still, the point here with AI:

If the labor in the products and services that AI produces goes to 0, then the value of those goods and services must also go to 0.

As a brief example, look at chess or F1 racing. There are chessbots that can beat any human, there are F1 robots that can outrace and win against any human. Yet still, we find no value in watching a robot beat up on a human or on another robot. No-one watches or cares to watch those kinds of competitions. We only care to watch other humans compete against each other. There are many reasons for this, but one is that there is labor involved in the competition.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#147

Post by tinypieman »

pu_pe wrote: post #141
tinypieman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on this: Ultimately the industrial revolution has been beneficial to the majority, but when it occurred it triggered violent changes that pushed many communities toward hardship. From artisans owning or co-owning their means of production, with a significant creative license over their work and the possibility to take their own initiatives… to the efficiency of atomized labor, which strips away the creativity…

Yeah, I mostly agree with your opinion. It's true that in the short-term there will be tons of disruption and likely more bad than good will come out of it. I guess my point was that ultimately how the upsides and downsides of a new technology will be distributed depend a lot on how societies organize themselves. The industrial revolution allowed the concentration of wealth and robber barons, but also unions and soci…

I agree, it really depends on how society organizes. For this reason I tend to be a bit frustrated by how AI narratives are often framed. They are often described as only technological. As if a tool could wield itself without anyone behind to operate it. We talk about the impact of AI as if it was inevitable progress. Those issues are in fact deeply political, but the valley mentality doesn’t like to see it that way. Probably because it is uncomfortable to see our work as contributing to a complex system with winners and losers, it’s much nicer to see ourselves as stewards of progress. The question “the progress of what?” is often pushed in the background.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#148

Post by lucyjojo »

gaigalas wrote: post #145
barrell wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but what happens to society when art, labor, "intelligence" and productivity all become abundant? These are not comparable to salt. You are comparing an apple to every orange tree that has ever existed.

we stole the promethean fire humans won't have to work again the spark of intelligence is now living in machines by the way, we still have to make small annoying interruptions to digital content to display ads, everything falls apart if we don't do that -- Something feels off in this whole idea. I think you guys are overestimating the importance of AI. It's just another commodity.

we currently technically do not need to work much (as a specie).

it s a societal choice (we're not the ones making it but it is still a choice).

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#149

Post by gaigalas »

lucyjojo wrote: post #148
gaigalas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we stole the promethean fire humans won't have to work again the spark of intelligence is now living in machines by the way, we still have to make small annoying interruptions to digital content to display ads, everything falls apart if we don't do that -- Something feels off in this whole idea. I think you guys are overestimating the importance of AI. It's just another commodity.

we currently technically do not need to work much (as a specie). it s a societal choice (we're not the ones making it but it is still a choice).

That specific phrase is not load-bearing to my argument. It's just an sample of things AI enthusiasts say.

Re: AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

#150

Post by woile »

Ekaros wrote: post #86
woile wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota, part of what transforms society into an utopia is the development of some kind of flying car that can take you anywhere in the world in under 2hrs, making borders irrelevant. This transit system is coordinated by a special group. I would suspect The Culture would have some means to travel very fast. But you are right that it's never explained. In "The player of games" I think the main ch…

I think in that same book there was scene about going far fast. Essentially doing that was still huge energy expenditure and done rarely. Just it being done for main character told that it was something Minds considered important. Culture is bit weird post-scarcity utopia. The space habitats are big and housing in such are plentiful. And basically just given away as toys to placate the fleshbags.

You reminded me that in the culture series a mind can teleport people through "Displacement". It's a very fast, but at the same time I don't think it serves for what OP wants, as it's very risky. It's like planes, we don't hand them spite of being very fast haha
Post reply on HN