• wraekscadu@vargar.org
    1312·
    12 days ago

    “AI” is a tool to move towards labor post scarcity. That’s all that it is. Billionaires using and owning AI is the problem. Billionaires scamming people with AI related buzzwords is the problem. BILLIONAIRES are the problem. Not AI.

    Is nuclear tech a problem? No. It can be used for electricity generation. It can also be used to make bombs. The tech in itself is not a problem.

    Sadly, most people on the left have taken the stance of blind opposition, without engaging in good faith arguments, without even attempting to understand the technology. These folks have opinions that range from:

    • AI is not actually “intelligence”, where they try to show how it has 0 uses anywhere. These opinions are blatantly dissociated from reality, as professionals do indeed use AI to delegate a lot of tasks.
    • “AI will take our jobs, creating a permanent underclass”. This is assuming that all of us live under authoritarianism. This is mostly Americans spreading their doomerism. Still a valid critique, though one that often incorrectly assumes that this new underclass will not riot and cause change through violence.
    • AI damages the environment: True, but some additional context is required. The oil industry, the transportation industry and so on causes much much more environmental damage. Coming up with valid, constructive solutions to regulate the tech industry’s emissions makes sense. However, calling for total bans and moratoriums for development and research in AI is so so dumb.

    Anywho, this comment is likely going to invite a lot of trolls. I won’t engage with anyone not arguing in good faith.

    • ynthrepic@lemmy.world
      131·
      12 days ago

      If the technology was energy efficient that’d be one thing, but we’re accelerating climate change and poisoning the planet in order to automate what are in many cases creative or intellectual jobs, not hard labor, and society isn’t even seeing any gains from it. Cost of living is higher than ever, and social programs are being cut like crazy.

      So who actually benefits? See OP.

      You’re right for the most part, but I find it hard to find much positivity.

      When efficient “AI” models run locally and solve specific tasks without insane energy use, that’ll be different. That’s probably coming, once the bubble bursts. But the bubble isn’t going to take the people who created it down with them, as usual.

    • Deme@sopuli.xyz
      111·
      12 days ago

      AI has huge potential for surveilance. Palantir exists.

      To continue on the nuclear analogy: Yes it resulted in bombs that can kill us all multiple times over, but nuclear energy isn’t completely neutral either. It encourages centralization of infrastructure and the dangers associated with it result in regulation by governments. Both of these shaped societies.

      To quote a piece of text I read just recently that I feel put this quite neatly:

      We are told that “guns don’t kill people, people do”, or that a component is just a component, indifferent to what its combinatorial potential is. This is a convenient lie. It serves only to allow the builders to wash their hands of responsibility.

      But we know better now. We know that architecture is politics, and politics is control. The way you build a system determines how it will be used. If you build a system optimized for mass surveillance, you will get a panopticon. If you build a system optimized for centralized control, you will get a dictatorship. If you build a system optimized for extraction, you will get a parasite.

      The current LLM boom is primed to deskill current and especially future workers and the biggest business case is to invade the workplace with even more technological feudalism through subscription services than is already in place.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
      51·
      12 days ago

      calling for total bans and moratoriums for development and research in AI is so so dumb.

      The point of the ban is to stop the spread while we start to make intelligent decisions. It’s a lesson we should have learned with fossil fuels. It took too long to get regulations in place and by then it was too convenient and useful for them to have any teeth.