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AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

thealgorithmicbridge.com

421–430 of 694 posts

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#421
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the key point. It threatens nearly everything in the limit, not one particular industry. There will be no "leveling up" into higher-order jobs, because the machines will be better at those too.

They thought that too in the industrial revolution. You can look back and see the jobs that came out of it. But at the time, it wasn't obvious to the people effected that there would be jobs again. We may have hindsight bias in evaluating something that happened, but to the people that it happened to it was terrifying.

I guess the people in Wall-E didn't really seem unhappy so perhaps you're right. My gut instinct though, is that there is a qualitative difference in the level of abundance and concentration of wealth, power, and influence we have today that needs to be taken seriously on its merits and not hand-waved away with tenuous historical analogies.

Yes, two hundred years ago, many people thought reading was a dangerous distraction for young people, just as film, radio, TV and the internet became later. But there is a qualitative difference to having social media in your pocket with vibrating notifications. Pretending its just more of the same honestly feels like slightly willful blindness at this point.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#422
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you keep going with that math. I'll use the numbers from here [0]. 924 billionaires with an overall wealth of 7.5 trillion. Split among 300 million people, that's about $25k for everyone. Here are some points of consideration: 1. They don't have $7.5T in liquid. The average american won't be able to use that $25k to pay a hospital bill or eat. Also note that one-time wealth transfer won't even pay in full f…

The power and influence (and damage caused) does not scale linearly with net worth. And you don’t need to have money on hand to be able to use it to harm others, you can e.g. use it as a collateral for loans and funding to build your child crushing machine. Personally I wager society would be better if the excess wealth of billionaires was simply deleted, or burned. It would be better yet if that wealth was used in o…

Why not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? e.g. Jeff Bezos has to build some subway stations in NYC or something.

That way you get somebody with a proven track record of building big projects who is also motivated by money, so the common infrastructure and services is handled competently.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#423

[flagged]

Ok, so what are you doing?

I’m telling people maybe they should organise politically if they’re so concerned about all of this.

I don’t know if I really believe all the AI doom myself or if it’s just the hype train. Sometimes I think I do, sometimes I think it’s a bit bullshitty. I wonder if others actually think the same and that’s why nobody takes action, because people don’t really believe the various apocalyptic scenarios enough to take action on them.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#424
I was running the other day, and I was thinking how can this AI thing be used to something good instead of ending up in violence. Needed to get it out of my chest, sorry if this is too much (down vote is ok :). The big problem I find with AI is really rent-seeking behavior and big tech in my mind. I also think something like what I propose could solve the issue that AI is standing on the shoulders of free OSS, and that feels unfair to many (me). Without this, after AI claims the easy-pickings of the "personalized-cake-as-a-service" companies (and the like), we would be left with the actual interesting problems that, by definition AI won't be able to do (at least until AGI). And make sure as many minds can work on it as possible.

Imagine a world with true competition / free market, where all users own their own data and where promotion of apps / hosting is free. Like urbit, but no weird "OS" and much less... ehm... moldbuggy. You build mechanisms in such a way where rent-seeking is basically impossible due to market dynamics and backed by gov instead of big tech. AI is the driving force that gets us there: since it would be / is (already?) easy to replicate mail, maps, etc. We just need to loosen those network effects.

So more concretly I am thinking that data is hosted on "app stores". In democraties, we might have an app store driven by gov, one per each country. Countries might arrange themselves differently. Google / Apple for example could own the US ones (so no changes there), in China something else. There are standard / bi-lateral agreements between different entities to make sure people in non-democratic countries get less screwed. You can chose which app store you want (free internet required), and you can always move data from one to another (again: based on agreements between the different app stores). This is managed on the app store level.

The app store pays salaries to people ("devs") who produce the different apps. Salaries could be based on a certain amount of usage, but max out on a high, but not insane wage (top 10% earner in country?). The devs may organize in companies, but there's a cap how much an company / a dev can make and be valued at. I was thinking 5 people per company at the max. The rest goes to app store to pay other devs and hosting. Basically the way it works today, but the app stores would again be gov owned and not-for-profit. There could be different types of way devs might organize around: app (UX), services (APIs) and "vertical integrators". The "vertical integrators" take multiple apps and services and bundle them together to a more consistent "package" (think Gmail / Google Drive / Proton whatever). They could be responsible for making sure to drive prices down on the individual pieces of the package. There would have to be some counter-corruption mechanisms (transparency) to make sure that is fair. Some markets might be interested in national ad platforms (for national security for example).

If devs want to create something for the benefit of everyone for free they can do that. You can even build closed source things for the benefit of all, since hosting is free. Permissions on data is managed on app store level so you do not need the same level of insight - I think this is already partially handled in Apple eco system.

Anyways, the goal here is to avoid rent-seeking behavoir, network effects, ads going haywire and make sure the devs that do the work can both give back and get something back (a decent, but not insane wage). I think there's lots of fun mechanismes that could be designed to make sure people that actually contribute to software development get a decent wage, while disheartning those who do not. First post here, and, yes, I know I am a dreamer.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then who pays for it?

Raising taxes is the only possible way a UBI would be feasible, and even then it wouldn't be a large enough amount for most people to live off of. Also, a UBI is likely to cause inflation.

I don’t understand why welfare is the answer. To me it seems we’ve super failed if that’s the case — just brings everyone down except a few ultra rich people.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#426
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. It’s striking to me how many adults can’t conceive of “violence” as an abstraction that results in certain effects and fall back on “violence is dealing direct physical injury to a person’s body or building.”

[flagged]

Weirdly enough, I find that victims of violence who weren’t engaged in a greater act of violence (i.e., the domestic abuse victim versus a soldier in a conflict) are often the staunchest advocates for unwarranted harm towards others to preserve their personal sense of safety. They will carefully carve out a definition of violence that speaks to the specific harm they suffered and requires explicit physical action, and then use that qualifier to reject any other notions of violence.

A recent example is the domestic abuse victim in my complex who has setup private surveillance cameras in the indoor common areas that are heavily trafficked by other neighbors, none of whom have given their consent. She does not consider warrantless surveillance of others (or calling the police on those of us who do not wish to be surveilled in a secure area of the building by her personal cloud camera) to be a violent act, nor does she consider threats of calling the police on those who shield themselves from her camera’s view to be an act of violence.

Violence is not limited to physical actions that induce physical harm, it is any action intentionally designed to reduce the safety or security of others - physical, mental, fiscal, political, etc.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree with and encourage this kind of academic distinction. However... Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money to offset the financial hardship that they're knowingly - and gleefully - bringing to others... The distinction has no practical use. (And before someone says "that's the government's job!", consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and compa…

How much actual money do you think the “people with billions of dollars” have in comparison to the needs of the population as a whole? I think you’re very confused about where the actual income in the economy goes.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index publishes daily net worth for the top 500 globally. As of end of 2025, the top 500 totaled $11.9 trillion, with $2.2 trillion added in 2025.

Forbes Real-Time Billionaires covers the full ~3,000-person list. The 2025 annual snapshot: 3,028 billionaires with combined net worth of $16.1 trillion

Forbes 400 (US only): 2025 cutoff was $3.8 billion to make the list. Forbes publishes the aggregate annually and recent years the total net worth was over $5.4T for the 400.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like what happened with UnitedHealthcare?

That had nothing to do with AI

I mean, no shit? I was referring to how people are starting to feel powerless and marginalized. And the government, which is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people, clearly doesn't give a fuck about them.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not at all proposing that "people with billions of dollars" somehow directly pay for "the needs of the population as a whole". I'm considering "actual power", rather than "actual income".

Then who pays for it?

A national dividend from the combined profits of all companies.

Re: AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

#430
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money… Or until actual people take the billions of dollars sitting behind those weak man-children. The US has fewer than 1000 billionaires now, and more than 300,000,000 people. That seems like a solvable problem.

I suggest you keep going with that math. I'll use the numbers from here [0]. 924 billionaires with an overall wealth of 7.5 trillion. Split among 300 million people, that's about $25k for everyone. Here are some points of consideration: 1. They don't have $7.5T in liquid. The average american won't be able to use that $25k to pay a hospital bill or eat. Also note that one-time wealth transfer won't even pay in full f…

Literal money transfer is not the point. It's about power and concentration of it to insulate future consolidation of power.

Money is made up system to provide a relatively stable society; if that stops working it's not good; violence becomes what's left.

Maria Sam Antoinette and brethren saying let them eat cake (or everyone will just build new things with (our) AI) without a sense of what is happening / about to happen to the broader populous is on a similar track.

The "billionaires" should use their influence to help with this transition invest figuring out how these new system will work.

No one should care if that means more "millionaires" vs less billionaires these numbers as social constructs; the point is power and self determination. History shows lacking that for too many will breakdown to broad violence and or dystopic robot overloads guarding a diminishing small and isolated elite.

The time to course correct is now.

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