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

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

#541

Post by don_esteban »

peyton wrote: post #422
runarberg wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, wouldn't it be better to just have proper labour laws so that people are not worked to exhaustion in Amazon warehouses, for miserable pay?

Similarly properly regulate the gig economy.

And actually pay servers properly so that they don't have to rely on tips?

The today's life is enshittified by thousand cuts ... why not fix them?

All that is required is a legislative body that is not bought by big $$$.

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

#542

Post by SoftTalker »

fwipsy wrote: post #366
gherkinnn wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial Spanish conquest of the Inca empire by 168! Spaniards was not a question of disease as much a war of succession the Incas fought amongst themselves that Pizarro knew to exploit. Throw in horses, steel, and gunpowder and you have a one-sided affair.

Actually this is another good counterexample! As I recall, Incas lost battles against the Spaniards where they had something like 100x the numbers. It's true that they were initially divided, but they quickly united against the Spanish--and it didn't really help. The technological advantage was insurmountable.

> The technological advantage was insurmountable

How's that playing out in the Middle East in 2026?

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

#543

Post by runarberg »

card_zero wrote: post #436
runarberg wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Uh-huh. It brings clarity to say you'd be happy to have the wealth destroyed. These are two different concepts, and the second one (about redistribution) always muddles these conversations. 1. Billionaires shouldn't wield lots of wealth, because it's scary. Sticking to that concept makes the discussion a lot clearer. Never mind concept 2, it's haunted by the futile spirit of Marx and he's throwing crockery around.

Personally I am a fan of logistical taxation, where the mean income (including capital gains) pays 50% in tax and every standard deviation σ above (or below) pays extra (or less) according to 1 / (1 + e^-σ).

What will happen with this taxation is that if everybody makes the same income, then everybody pays 50% in tax. If some rich dude is making a lot more money then everybody else, they will lower the tax for everybody else while paying a lot more them selves. At some point (say 3 standard deviations above the mean) you end up getting less after taxes then had your income been lower (say 2 SD above), in other words, the limit is 100% tax for extremely high incomes (and 0% for extremely low incomes). That is, I favor a system that has maximum income, and you are actively punished for making more.

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

#544

Post by tim333 »

bluegatty wrote: post #30

'Rogue super intelligence' is the most ridiculous sci-fi nonsense of the AI hype, worse than the pro AI hype. AI will be 'dangerous' because humans will use it irresponsibly, and that's all of the risk. - giving it too much trust, being lazy, improper guards and accidents - leveraging it for negative things (black hats, military targetting) - states and governments using it as instrument of control etc. That's it. St…

>ridiculous sci-fi nonsense

Give it a decade.

I think it may be like saying atomic bombs were sci-fi nonsense in the 1930s.

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

#545

Post by SequoiaHope »

0xpiguy wrote: post #511
DavidPiper wrote: post #198

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…

I do think there is a good chance that, in the not-so-distant future, universal basic income will become the norm. In previous industrial revolutions, large numbers of jobs were created to offset those that were lost. But there are very few things AI cannot perform faster and cheaper. Best case scenario, we will be in a world with both high productivity and high unemployment. Governments may have no choice but to pro…

UBI requires a wealthy elite class to tax from that also does not capture the government and reduce or eliminate the UBI. The status quo shows us that if a wealthy class exists they will capture the government and eliminate benefits for the masses. Thats why minimum wage does not rise and as another commenter said we do not have universal healthcare.

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

#546

Post by brikil »

9x39 wrote: post #514
jfengel wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently more than enough total production for people to live quite well. If AIs simply replace people, the same total work gets done. It's just a matter of who gets the profits from it. It won't be that simple, to be sure. Nonetheless we already produce far more than subsistence, and there's no reason why a UBI would change that. If it increases the price of some commodities because now everyone can buy th…

If that were true, we wouldn’t see the inflation we do from more dollars chasing the same (or less) goods. Even if it were true, you still have distribution. You can’t get goods across a nation, let alone the globe, without significant inputs. Are you checking the local grocery store and extrapolating globally?

Inflation is more likely when the net number of dollars increases without a corresponding increase to production. Taxing earners at a higher rate doesn’t do this. Printing money at the central bank does.

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

#547

Post by [deleted] »

dd8601fn wrote: post #317
softwaredoug wrote: post #199

Highly recommend people learn the history of the Industrial Revolution. I recently discovered the Industrial Revolutions Podcast[1] and have been enjoying it. What's happening today isn't unprecedented. The pace of change that's happening IS similar to periods of the industrial revolution. For example, the flying jenny, overnight, basically put an entire craft industry of weaving into question. Probably more dramatic…

At the start I think everyone thought the industrial revolution could be a useful historical reference. But what AI is selling is the obliteration of human knowledge work. It just isn’t informative for that.

[deleted]

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

#548

Post by jimbo808 »

Avicebron wrote: post #150

I feel like if people keep using AI as a blanket term for "inequality" and "inequality accelerants" then yeah, it's "AI"'s fault. When in reality the whole thing needs to be decoupled.. "Gleefully taking away people's livelihoods will be met with violence, and nothing good will come of it." - fixed.

AI is massively asymmetric in its benefits, which are overwhelmingly concentrated among those with extreme capital, and the authoritarians they're aligned with.

The benefits for them include:

- replacing workers with lower quality (but good enough) AI solutions, which degrade the quality of nearly every product or service for the consumer, but not by enough to offset the labor cost savings

- mass surveillance at low cost, a way to take the absurd amounts of data humanity now produces, and use to subjugate them

- propaganda/deception/misinformation, a new vector for propaganda which people are naively inclined to trust. bonus points for the "flooding the zone" strategy which AI makes easier

Benefits to the worker:

- lower cost of goods and services (but not for you, silly - they'll still be taxing you via inflation to fund their wars of conquest)

- you won't have to work anymore

- you won't have to eat anymore

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

#549

Post by WarmWash »

daveguy wrote: post #379
rayiner wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the top 10% richest people control 67% of the wealth, and top 1% richest have 30% of the wealth in the US. The top half has > 97% of the wealth. It appears you are the one very confused about wealth distribution in the US. Maybe you are confusing "income" with "wealth hoarding". The hoarding is happening to a gross amount, and this is why there should be a 1% tax on fortune portions over 100 million and 2% on p…

I'm more curious who with a NW >$100M is hoarding it? Everyone I have come across is hoarding approximately 0% of it.

Maybe Notch when he sold Minecraft, apparently he had $2B sitting in a bank account, but I'm sure by now he has deployed it.

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

#550

Post by smallmancontrov »

Ray20 wrote: post #462
smallmancontrov wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ownership of the economy is split roughly 30/30/30 between the top 10%/1%/.1% with the bottom 90% of people making an entrance as the rounding error. If you picture "the owners" by drawing a representative sample of 10 people: 1 Normal person 3 Doctors / Lawyers / Engineers ($1M+ net worth) 3 Successful Entrepreneurs ($10M+ net worth) 3 Ultrawealthy ($50M+ net worth) It's worth putting these through the fundamental t…

[flagged]

It's simply true.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40176

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN09149

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBS99T999259

There's more to say, of course. The role of housing, the role of the government, using DCFs for apples-to-apples comparisons of assets, jobs, social services, and the incentives thereof, behavioral economics, and so on. If you reflexively recoil at the notion that assets have returns, however, you aren't even at the starting line.

> mentioning passive income in this context isn't even idiotic, it's a clinical diagnosis

We could use the IRS term if you prefer: "unearned income"

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