3 ms·

The first third of the article is kinda polemic, it won't really convince anyone needing convincing. This however I thought was the substance of it: > The VCs

The first third of the article is kinda polemic, it won't really convince anyone needing convincing. This however I thought was the substance of it: > The VCs’ actual use case for AI is treating workers badly. > The Writer’s Guild of America, a labor union representing writers for TV and film in the US, is on strike for better pay and conditions. One of the reasons is that studio executives are using the threat of AI against them. Writers think the plan is to get a chatbot to generate a low-quality script, which the writers are then paid less in worse conditions to fix. [Guardian] > Executives at the National Eating Disorders Association replaced hotline workers with a chatbot four days after the workers unionized. “This is about union busting, plain and simple,” said one helpline associate. The bot then gave wrong and damaging advice to users of the service: “Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder.” The service has backtracked on using the chatbot. [Vice; Labor Notes; Vice; Daily Dot] > Digital blackface: instead of actually hiring black models, Levi’s thought it would be a great idea to take white models and alter the images to look like black people. Levi’s claimed it would increase diversity if they faked the diversity. One agency tried using AI to synthesize a suitably stereotypical “Black voice” instead of hiring an actual black voice actor. [Business Insider, archive]

Spivak 3y ago
Which really is just the latest in the time honored "capitalism was the real villain all along" tradition. Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. When you capture the value it means you can either do more or have more leisure. When you don't capture the value it means the treadmill of "being valuable to my employer" just got faster.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. Yes, but also it still does "require a human's time and effort", what else is the required training data for these models except a large amount of "human time and effort". It's just scraped for free and all munged together. Bulk, unpaid labour.
- maxbond 3y ago
  I can see you understand the criticism being made, and I can see you're dismissing it, but I don't see why. You've accurately described mechanisms at play, but you don't justify them. Why should VCs continue to "capture the value" of our leisure time and drive it towards zero? I understand that makes them lots of money, but why is that a good way to run society? Consider the same reasoning in a different scenario: I'm so tired of people complaining about their cancer. Yeah, your cells divide. When they divide the way they're intended to, you live a normal life. When they divide out of control, your health suffers. Thems the breaks. I think we can all agree this argument is ridiculous. It describes the mechanism at work, acknowledges the harm that's taking place, but ultimately the argument here is "if we have an explanation for what's happening, then it isn't a problem, it's a fact of life." Clearly that's not so - just because we understand cancer, doesn't mean we accept it. Help me understand why your argument is different?

Spivak 3y ago

Which really is just the latest in the time honored "capitalism was the real villain all along" tradition. Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. When you capture the value it means you can either do more or have more leisure. When you don't capture the value it means the treadmill of "being valuable to my employer" just got faster.

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. Yes, but also it still does "require a human's time and effort", what else is the required training data for these models except a large amount of "human time and effort". It's just scraped for free and all munged together. Bulk, unpaid labour.
maxbond 3y ago
I can see you understand the criticism being made, and I can see you're dismissing it, but I don't see why. You've accurately described mechanisms at play, but you don't justify them. Why should VCs continue to "capture the value" of our leisure time and drive it towards zero? I understand that makes them lots of money, but why is that a good way to run society? Consider the same reasoning in a different scenario: I'm so tired of people complaining about their cancer. Yeah, your cells divide. When they divide the way they're intended to, you live a normal life. When they divide out of control, your health suffers. Thems the breaks. I think we can all agree this argument is ridiculous. It describes the mechanism at work, acknowledges the harm that's taking place, but ultimately the argument here is "if we have an explanation for what's happening, then it isn't a problem, it's a fact of life." Clearly that's not so - just because we understand cancer, doesn't mean we accept it. Help me understand why your argument is different?