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The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

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31–40 of 146 posts

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#31

I'll just keep repeating this: There are three options: 1. AI owned by everyone 2. No AI 3. AI owned by billionaires If you can make the masses fight for 2 instead of 1, then you guarantee that you don't get 1. If instead, the masses fight for 1, they've got a chance of getting it. You present AI as a false dichotomy: no AI or AI for billionaires. But 2 is a fantasy. There will be AI. Any of us arguing for (1) get sh…

#1 seems like the worst possible dystopia. We should shoot for #2 and have #3 as a fallback. The Culture is the worst dystopia I am capable of imagining.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#32
post #2

Americans aren’t in favor of being driven into unemployment and poverty? How dare they! Companies have their relationship with people, specifically employees, backwards. What percentage of companies out there are truly needed? What percentage solely exist because people have some surplus money to play with? No one needs Microsoft or Google products. No one needs overpriced Apple crap. AI means jack shit to almost 100…

[flagged]

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#33

I often wonder how different AI sentiment would be today if all of the layoffs that were opportunistically blamed on AI by the company CEOs were instead blamed on the real reason (likely pandemic related over hiring). The root of the backlash started as a result of all those “AI” layoffs and the hyperscaler CEOs gloating how everybody was going to lose their job due to AI. So in the end, they reap what they sow. A gr…

The only way AI recoups the investment is if it replaces all our jobs.

It might be literally impossible but that's what the numbers are.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#34
post #16

All that's going to happen is people will "voluntarily" take it away from themselves. The fearmongers will tell stories about biological or chemical weapons. It'll be things you could learn from a textbook - something like mercury molecules or cultivating rabies. People will vote to ban AI. The puritans will clutch their pearls because it can be used to make porn they don't like. They'll vote to ban AI. People who ar…

There are many cheap, open models available on the vLLM engine: https://huggingface.co/models?other=vllm. This includes gpt-oss, LLaMa, and Gemma. This is in addition to Qwen, Deepseek, Mistral, Kimi, GLM, and Poolside.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#35
post #7

I often wonder how different AI sentiment would be today if all of the layoffs that were opportunistically blamed on AI by the company CEOs were instead blamed on the real reason (likely pandemic related over hiring). The root of the backlash started as a result of all those “AI” layoffs and the hyperscaler CEOs gloating how everybody was going to lose their job due to AI. So in the end, they reap what they sow. A gr…

I think you'll find the American public is less motivated by how well-treated Mag7 software developers believe themselves to be.

It’s not about that.

It’s the constant drumbeat of “AI will take your job.”

It’s the constant news of “layoffs because AI makes us more productive.”

It’s the constant background discussion of UBI because no one will have jobs anymore.

It’s knowing that, in the US, UBI will never come.

It’s the feeling that the billionaires of Silicon Valley are getting rich and there isn’t even a “learn to code” path to wealth anymore.

It’s knowing that data centers will create problems in your neighborhood: the price of power and water will go up, the amount of undeveloped land down, and you don’t even get jobs out of it.

For fuck’s sake, it’s not about the thousands of Mag7 tech workers losing their jobs. That’s just a symptom, like all the other symptoms, of this weirdly dystopian future that the AI companies keep telling us is inevitable.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#36

I'll just keep repeating this: There are three options: 1. AI owned by everyone 2. No AI 3. AI owned by billionaires If you can make the masses fight for 2 instead of 1, then you guarantee that you don't get 1. If instead, the masses fight for 1, they've got a chance of getting it. You present AI as a false dichotomy: no AI or AI for billionaires. But 2 is a fantasy. There will be AI. Any of us arguing for (1) get sh…

What does #1 actually mean in practical terms? Collective ownership of a giant data center and all the CPUs, GPUs, and DRAM needed to do AI?

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#37
post #2

Americans aren’t in favor of being driven into unemployment and poverty? How dare they! Companies have their relationship with people, specifically employees, backwards. What percentage of companies out there are truly needed? What percentage solely exist because people have some surplus money to play with? No one needs Microsoft or Google products. No one needs overpriced Apple crap. AI means jack shit to almost 100…

As Musk said, they were the bootloaders of AI. Finally we get gargantuan monster battles akin to Godzilla vs. King Kong.

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#38

I'll just keep repeating this: There are three options: 1. AI owned by everyone 2. No AI 3. AI owned by billionaires If you can make the masses fight for 2 instead of 1, then you guarantee that you don't get 1. If instead, the masses fight for 1, they've got a chance of getting it. You present AI as a false dichotomy: no AI or AI for billionaires. But 2 is a fantasy. There will be AI. Any of us arguing for (1) get sh…

4. regulation... well, that's a no go in the US. So what is the 5th option?

Re: The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam

#40
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find the American public is less motivated by how well-treated Mag7 software developers believe themselves to be.

It’s not about that. It’s the constant drumbeat of “AI will take your job.” It’s the constant news of “layoffs because AI makes us more productive.” It’s the constant background discussion of UBI because no one will have jobs anymore. It’s knowing that, in the US, UBI will never come. It’s the feeling that the billionaires of Silicon Valley are getting rich and there isn’t even a “learn to code” path to wealth anymor…

You left out the computer gamers crowd are mad about the high price of memory, a group that is a very vocal crowd in all the tech circles.
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