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AI optimism is a class privilege

joshcollinsworth.com

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Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#81

Post by ungovernableCat »

elzbardico wrote: post #62
isahers wrote: post #36

I disagree with most of this article. Disclaimer: I'm a junior engineer and I believe both that: 1. AI is going to take my job, 2. AI is going to do incredible good for the world. I don't see how these are distinct. It's a technology shift, of course it's going to make certain jobs obsolete - that's how technology shifts work. I'm not going to go through every quote I disagree with, but unlike some AI negativity disc…

Average labour hours in a year dramatically increased with the Industrial Revolution. They would only decrease much later, after a long period of social conflict, economic growth, and technological progress. During the early phase of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1760–1850): Agricultural workers who once labored seasonally were pushed into factory schedules of 12–16 hours per day, 6 days per week. Annual labor h…

The labour struggle for rights we see as basic today (40h work weeks, free weekends) was bloody and deadly.

And this was without surveillance tech and automated police drones or w/e else Palantir is working on right now. If we're going by historical precedent this transition won't be pretty, even if you're hoping for a nice optimistic end result.

I'm not so sure having a beefy 401k and maybe a couple of rental properties will be enough to insulate some of the more comfortable HN posters from all the potential chaos.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#82

Post by WalterBright »

NoOn3 wrote: post #56
WalterBright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviets used the "iron broom" (i.e. murder) on the wealthy people. It didn't make anyone better off.

The Soviets history is not so simple. ;)

The Soviets aren't the only country that tried that. It's never worked out anywhere it was tried.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#83

Post by EA-3167 »

WalterBright wrote: post #82
NoOn3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviets history is not so simple. ;)

The Soviets aren't the only country that tried that. It's never worked out anywhere it was tried.

I’m not arguing in favor of it, I’m just aware of how the world works.

You also seem to have forgotten France among other places where the history wasn’t as grim as Russia. Frankly nothing Russia has ever done seems to make their lot better.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#84

Post by scarmig »

tptacek wrote: post #68
hyperadvanced wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to tell such a story, you’d have to find examples of companies spending bazillions on new AI tooling, but failing to hit their top level OKRs. I suspect there will be at least a few of these by the end of 2026 - even a great technology can seem like an abacus in the hands of a disorganized and slow moving org.

The story only matters if it produces an industry-wide displacement in jobs. Failed billion-dollar IT projects are not a new thing, and don't disrupt the entire labor market. To be clear: I'm not claiming that AI rollouts won't be billion-dollar failed IT projects! They very well could be. But if that's the case, they aren't going to disrupt the labor market. Again: you have to pick a lane with the pessimism. Both la…

There's a coherent story that straddles both lanes, by assuming that the human economy is in some weird place where the vast majority of humans don't create real economic value and mostly get employment through inertia and custom, and that AI, despite being worthless, provides an excuse for employers to break through taboos and traditions and eliminate all those jobs. Quite a stretch, but it's coherent at least.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#85

Post by biophysboy »

d_burfoot wrote: post #9

> they mimic and amplify the inherent racism present in their own training data LLMs turn out to be biased against white men: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/me7wFrkEtMbkzXGJt/race-and-g... > When present, the bias is always against white and male candidates across all tested models and scenarios. This happens even if we remove all text related to diversity.

Looking at the paper, the effect is significant but weak (5-7%), even with the conditionals that magnify the effect. I would be curious to see the effect if this experiment were performed on a slightly different categorical variable (e.g. how are two white ethnicities treated). I do think its bad if preferences are "baked in" to the default though - prompting them away seems like a bad solution.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#86

Post by biophysboy »

small_model wrote: post #21

It seems like the author hasn't really used the latest models, I wrote my last line of code about a month ago after 20+ years coding. Claude Code can do it for me, better faster and never gets tired etc. Yes I have to keep it on leash but humans coding is over, unless its to learn or for fun. Actually it's the lower classes that will escape the longest from AI replacing their jobs, unskilled physical work will remain…

A lot of low wage work isn't physical

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#88

Post by bsder »

nomdep wrote: post #10

(I feel that I write a comment like this every few years) The author catalog of harms is real. But it's worth noting that nearly identical catalogs were compiled for every major technological shift in modern history. The Internet destroyed print journalism, local retail, and enabled cyberbullying and mass surveillance. If we applied the same framework used here, Internet optimism in 2005 was also a form of "class pri…

> enabled cyberbullying

The problem here is that adults do not take bullying seriously and they take cyberbullying even less seriously.

This is the fairly standard problem that we do not apply the existing rules and laws online with the same vigor as offline.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#89

Post by small_model »

lowsong wrote: post #79
small_model wrote: post #21

It seems like the author hasn't really used the latest models, I wrote my last line of code about a month ago after 20+ years coding. Claude Code can do it for me, better faster and never gets tired etc. Yes I have to keep it on leash but humans coding is over, unless its to learn or for fun. Actually it's the lower classes that will escape the longest from AI replacing their jobs, unskilled physical work will remain…

> It seems like the author hasn't really used the latest models The author addresses this point. > While I’m sure the technology and its costs will continue to improve, it’s hard to see how that would mitigate most of these harms. Many would just as likely be intensified by greater speed, efficiency, and affordability. > This sort of technology distributes instability to the many at the bottom, while consolidating be…

The world changes, you either adapt or not. People who saw this coming could have positioned themselves with plan a b/c. No different from when other societal changing technologies arrived in the past. What does crying about it in blog posts achieve.

Re: AI optimism is a class privilege

#90

Post by NonHyloMorph »

random3 wrote: post #29
nomdep wrote: post #10

(I feel that I write a comment like this every few years) The author catalog of harms is real. But it's worth noting that nearly identical catalogs were compiled for every major technological shift in modern history. The Internet destroyed print journalism, local retail, and enabled cyberbullying and mass surveillance. If we applied the same framework used here, Internet optimism in 2005 was also a form of "class pri…

arguably the history of humanity was about automating humanity. - teeth and nails with knives (in various shapes from bones to steel) - feet with carriages and bicycles and cars - hands with mills and factories on steam engines to industrial robots Literaly every automation was meant to help humans somehow so, this naturally entailed an automation of some human function. This automation is an automation of the human…

The term you're looking for is externalisation not automation. Check out "the fault of epimetheus"; & on the alienation of the machine by automation ca. 19late7s one of its intellectual predecessors: gilbert simondon
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