Live data from Hacker News

Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

wsj.com

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#71

AI is probably in need of far more legal safeguards than we have now, but I am sort of tired of the "everyone will lose their jobs" narrative. There are so few jobs LLMs can fully automate. I think what will actually happen is that corporate CEOs will try to cut staff, it won't work, people will be rehired, and AI will largely make people's jobs easier and less labor-intensive.

No, my job is already highly LLM assisted and I just have more work to do. Because now I can tackle things on the backlog we thought could never be prioritized.

For now yes.

But you will end up finishing the backlog and once competitors get rid of employees and become more profitable your employer will do the same.

Right now we're in a transitional space. Doesn't mean things will stay this way.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#73
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we must be visiting different websites.

Have you seen how overwhelmingly anti-AI the non-software-engineering world is? (despite the hypocrisy as plenty use a chatbot these days) The resistance in here is pitiful. I'm lurking in the indie game dev scene, and any mention of using LLMs for anything is downvoted and laughed at.

Gamedevs are vehemently against genai art, but code generation seems more accepted from what I've seen

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#74
post #52

AI is the best thing that happened to America in the last decade, and I dearly hope that politicians don't try to ruin it the way they're ruining other parts of the country. I respect some of Bernie's positions, but his stance on tech is dangerous.

AI is the best thing that happened for a relatively few number of privileged people, most of them being located in USA. This includes the programmers that may have benefited from using AI assistants. AI has already stolen great amounts of money from a very large number of people all around the world, due to the huge increases in the prices of DRAM, SSDs and HDDs. Moreover, there have already been a great number of la…

Well it's not like AI investment money is coming out of thin air - ultimately normies are buying stuff that AI enhanced companies produce which allows those companies to feed this money to the actual winners/1% that truly benefits. I don't think that it's fair to say that AI has been only negative to the normies, when they need to be the ones willingly feeding the beast with their money for the whole thing to perpetuate.

That said I obviously also see a bunch of negative consequences, and perhaps agree that the negatives outweigh the positives.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#76
post #73
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how overwhelmingly anti-AI the non-software-engineering world is? (despite the hypocrisy as plenty use a chatbot these days) The resistance in here is pitiful. I'm lurking in the indie game dev scene, and any mention of using LLMs for anything is downvoted and laughed at.

Gamedevs are vehemently against genai art, but code generation seems more accepted from what I've seen

Most discussion of using code generation on gamedev forums is taboo. As in, do what you want in the privacy of your own home, but in public, try to have some self-respect as an artist.

I've seen some "devs" livestreaming themselves coding a game using LLMs, and it's not pretty. But that's my opinion of vibecoding in general — it's the tool one uses when they don't want to think too much, which is the furthest path to greatness.

Some random examples off reddit (try to compare the sentiment if it had been posted on Hacker News):

- https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rvafee/using_clau...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1erb39r/is_it_poss...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1qll8jr/has_anyone...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1jitfbi/im_tired_o...

In general, interest in AI-assisted coding is associated with people that have no experience whatsoever and just want to make a game out of thin air without putting in the effort.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way this always works in a corporation is people's jobs will be just as hard or harder and they'll hire far less people. As always happens productivity per person will skyrocket and median wages will somehow be lower.

Real median wages have been increasing pretty consistently since the FRED started recording it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Apologies median wages was the wrong statistic to choose because the top x% rise has been astronomical. The productivity has gone up along with CEO wages. That money does get made even if the workers never see it. Or if they do see it they immediately give it back (and then some) when they pay their rent.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#78
post #52

AI is the best thing that happened to America in the last decade, and I dearly hope that politicians don't try to ruin it the way they're ruining other parts of the country. I respect some of Bernie's positions, but his stance on tech is dangerous.

AI is the best thing that happened for a relatively few number of privileged people, most of them being located in USA. This includes the programmers that may have benefited from using AI assistants. AI has already stolen great amounts of money from a very large number of people all around the world, due to the huge increases in the prices of DRAM, SSDs and HDDs. Moreover, there have already been a great number of la…

> AI has already stolen great amounts of money from a very large number of people all around the world, due to the huge increases in the prices of DRAM, SSDs and HDDs.

None of that is stealing. That's the free market.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#79
post #52

AI is the best thing that happened to America in the last decade, and I dearly hope that politicians don't try to ruin it the way they're ruining other parts of the country. I respect some of Bernie's positions, but his stance on tech is dangerous.

To America as a whole? How? AI is certainly powerful, but despite tech CEO whitewashing, none of them are planning for how the economy will recover from a potential devastation of white collar jobs. Token bills fund rich investors & executives, not everyday Americans. For AI to give me abundant free time & happiness, I need to have money, and I don’t see UBI anywhere on OpenAI’s roadmap.

> I don’t see UBI anywhere on OpenAI’s roadmap.

Do you really think it's OpenAI's job to create UBI? Surely, if you feel that it's a good idea, then it should be the government who sets it up.

We can't just magically freeze the economy in time. If we conduct our industries inefficiently just to keep jobs around, we won't be competitive on a global market.

I have strong concerns around the inflationary effects of UBI, but whatever the solution there is, it's not the responsibility of private companies to organize their own welfare systems.

Re: Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"

#80
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally said “I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production.” https://pjmedia.com/ron-radosh/2016/01/18/no-new-york-post-b...

The grocery store thing is a red herring, although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.” “public ownership of the major means of production and their conversion…

> The grocery store thing is a red herring

How? He said he doesn't think the government should seize the means of production. That's directly relevant to what we're talking about.

> In a 1976 interview, Sanders said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries,” and when told that sounded like socialism, he replied, “Of course.”

I don't really care what his economic beliefs were 50 years ago. We have a long political career we can draw from. We don't need to cherry pick quotes from when he was 30 to try and find hidden belief systems. He's been pretty consistent his entire career.

> More recently, Sanders has also been described as backing worker ownership plans, with reporting that he was encouraging workers to take control of the means of production

A work ownership plan in a company is completely different from what you implied, which was "Bernie Sanders wants to seize the means of production." You made it sound like he wants to nationalize everything under the sun.

> although its supported by nyc who by your logic is a communist? Thats hardly a definitive test. There are more relevant industries

I can't make out what you're trying to say here.

Post reply on HN