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

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

thealgorithmicbridge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 694 posts

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

#641

Post by jjav »

rayiner wrote: post #626
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to emphasize that the above should be immediately obvious. The fact that it's not does not bode well for humanity's future. Billionaires simply _should not exist_. The fact that the power to shape societies is concentrated in so few can account for many of the existential threats we face today. AI is not "the problem", it's merely the latest symptom of our broken system and the prioritization of the wrong go…

> Billionaires simply _should not exist Billionaires who inherit their wealth shouldn’t exist. But I have no problem with people like Bezos owning a sizable percentage share of valuable companies they created. When I was a kid, getting something ordered by mail took a week or two, even if you called in the order. UPS and FedEx existed, warehouses and storage trucks existed, but Bezos reduced that to a matter of hours…

> If we just had school teachers, or whoever else you idealize, we’d all be living in mud huts.

Let's just look at countries which have high income and very low income unequality, like Finland.

Turns out they don't live in mud huts, and most aspects of society work far better than in the USA.

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

#642

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

ajam1507 wrote: post #632
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT's motto is mens et manus : mind and hand. These are, basically, the two primary attributes of human labor. They're the reason almost anyone gets hired to do anything. Our brains and our opposable thumbs are what set us ahead of the animal kingdom. The industrial revolution first attempted to replace our hands. But the labor that was displaced had places to go: into smaller-scale manual work, where mass-production…

Why do you need a job in the scenario where machines have replaced all human labor? You're forgetting that work is a means, not an end, for humanity.

You don't need a job, if you can maintain purchasing power without selling your labor. I didn't forget that, I just didn't take such an outcome for granted.

In other comments I have expressed support for UBI, as well as for paying parents to stay home and spend time with their children. I think the more automated our society gets, the less people should need to work to earn a living. But I look around and I just don't see anyone implementing such policies.

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

#643

Post by tkel »

All the people that say "I disapprove of violence" come across as incredibly naive. This entire society is based on violence.

In the US, You live in the most militarized society in history. More than 80 countries with US military bases, many of which have experienced the unaccountable violence of the US military. More than $1 trillion every year, the most on the planet, and half of the discretionary federal budget. That is a huge amount of normalized violence.

The US police are full of military weaponry (1033 program) and veterans. Similarly many municipalities spend half of their general fund on the police. There is an incomprehensibly huge amount of violence done by the police on a daily basis that is necessary to maintain this society. That is a huge amount of normalized violence.

The US also has the largest system of incarceration on the planet. Prisons and jails house over 2M people, per capita far larger than any other country on the planet. That is a huge amount of normalized violence. [1]

Then there is the structural violence and social murder of our current economic and legal system. People are put through preventable, lethal living and working conditions. Contaminated water, unhealthy foods, increased rates of disease, bad healthcare, lack of public health infrastructure. No public bathrooms! People are abandoned on the streets next to houses and apartments that sit vacant. People who steal food are jailed instead of fed. That is a huge amount of normalized violence.

Then, an attempted molotov is thrown at a metal gate, and all of a sudden people are condemning violence? Give me a break.

When you only condemn that type of violence, you are reifying the dogma of the status quo which is to imply that violence by powerful people and instutitions is acceptable and not to be condemned.

[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2026.html

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

#644

Post by chewz »

DavidPiper wrote: post #198
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.

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…

Keeping lid on boiling peasants rage have always been chief qualification of aristocracy.

Plus I don't believe in violence from tech bros and white collar workers - they have been raised too docile...

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

#645

Post by lumost »

akarii wrote: post #538
lumost wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, AI is a "unique" technology in that the main use case is "work replacement." Consumer applications have only existed to "destroy human creative media with low quality slop". The vast majority of individuals derive no value from AI, they are instead told to do their jobs faster and own the mistakes of the AI for flat/declining pay. It's a bad deal for most people.

AI is not unique in this at all. It's also the goal of almost every technological advancement. The only difference with AI is that it's replacing jobs that people thought could never get replaced.

industrialization gave us cheaper goods, and new types of goods (the automobile). What new consumer features has ai delivered? So far, I've seen mostly slop.

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

#646

Post by micik »

nailer wrote: post #533
stego-tech wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

[flagged]

I’m sorry but what you’re saying is the reason why we won’t overturn systems of oppression.

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

#647

Post by TFYS »

rayiner wrote: post #626
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to emphasize that the above should be immediately obvious. The fact that it's not does not bode well for humanity's future. Billionaires simply _should not exist_. The fact that the power to shape societies is concentrated in so few can account for many of the existential threats we face today. AI is not "the problem", it's merely the latest symptom of our broken system and the prioritization of the wrong go…

> Billionaires simply _should not exist Billionaires who inherit their wealth shouldn’t exist. But I have no problem with people like Bezos owning a sizable percentage share of valuable companies they created. When I was a kid, getting something ordered by mail took a week or two, even if you called in the order. UPS and FedEx existed, warehouses and storage trucks existed, but Bezos reduced that to a matter of hours…

Bezos didn't create that wealth alone. He had help from thousands upon thousands of people. It's impossible to calculate how much of the value of Amazon was actually created by the work Bezos did, how much by other people in the company, and how much was just natural evolution brought about by technological and societal change. Bezos gets billions because he is in a position of power where he gets to take it, not because he created that much value.

But even if Bezos actually creates billions of value on his own, it doesn't mean that he should get those billions. The reward for such high value work should be high enough that Bezos chooses to do it instead of something else, but it doesn't need to be higher than that. In a world where the highest paid position would reward a few million instead of a few billion, I'm sure Bezos and people like him would still gravitate towards that work since it'd still be work with the best rewards.

People who have some revolutionary ideas wouldn't abandon them if the potential highest reward was millions instead of billions. Or do you believe that there are people with good ideas right now that abandon them because they can't earn trillions with the idea? What people expect as a reward for their work is what decides whether they do it or not. If we can lower the expectation, we can get the high value work without creating dangerous levels of power concentration.

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

#649

Post by sph »

deaux wrote: post #473
dasil003 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Tristan Harris' take on the situation, which is both more nuanced and more actionable. The idea being that the system and incentives are set up to select amoral technologists who will make money for shareholders, so inevitably the ones that come into power will be the ones don't see a problem with replacing all of human labor (because that's the only outcome that can justify the investment made). Reading Cory…

I question how universal that is. There seems to be a meaningful difference between Altman and Amodei, for one. The Whatsapp founder was a decent guy as well, and I believe him when he claims to genuinely regret selling out. I'm sure there's more examples. I think that framing at is "the system is set up this way" reads too passive. It reads as if it excuses the likes of Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter…

If I had a dime for every “good guy founder regrets selling out to Evil Corp, despite making billions in the process”, I’d be a billionaire myself

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

#650

Post by trymas »

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.

How can you decouple this, when there's a flood of headlines saying something like: "Company X layoffs Y% of workforce, betting on AI productivity".

For that Y% of people (and their dependants like kids, spouses and aging parents) - AI[1] is direct reason for "inequality accelerant".

-----

[1] Lets not discuss if AI in these layoff reasonings is actually true or not.

Post reply on HN