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Well of course it does. This is the industrial revolution and Luddism all over again.

ben_w 3y ago
Many of the Luddites' issues were taken up by Marx. I wonder if, and how, the analogy would play out with AI. Free software, even if not open sourced, is putting the means (and memes) of production into the hands of the workers.
- dartos 3y ago
  I don’t think non open source software fits the FSF definition of free software
  - ben_w 3y ago
    And that's why I added the clause, this is a case where I think gratis is more important than libre — when it comes to putting the means of production into the hands of the workers.
    - dartos 3y ago
      > free software, even when not open source is never “free software” is all.
ElevenLathe 3y ago
Power looms were just putting skilled weavers out of work. AI is going to be used to decide if you can go to college or take out a loan, what kinds of culture are produced, provide mass-customized propaganda to everyone at the whim of anyone with a nickel's worth of AWS credits, and it goes on. They're fundamentally different. I'm in IT and don't think there is much to be done about it "taking my job", but certainly we need to keep it out of the path of important society-defining decisions. It's important to separate these two things, and AFAICT the public debate about this -- such as it is -- is not.
yoyohello13 3y ago
I hate this comparison because the tone of it discounts the real human suffering caused by these events. Yes, we are better off now. But the transition through the industrial revolution caused a lot of pain. The rise of AI is going to cause real human suffering. Sure, we will probably be better off in 100 years. But that's little comfort the those that lose their jobs or the ones that get crushed under the new AI powered Noble class.
- SamPatt 3y ago
  It's good to be empathetic towards anyone suffering, but you must also consider how much suffering is avoided when technology advances. Yes, washing machines caused suffering for women who made a living manually washing clothes. But they alleviated far, far more suffering by automating a physically difficult task. My guess is that widespread adoption of new technology almost always reduces net suffering in the long term. Prioritizing the reduction of suffering today at the cost of more suffering in the future seems short-sighted.
dorkwood 3y ago
I suppose I missed the part where the mechanised loom makers harvested hundreds of millions of books and images without permission in order to make their machines work.
siidjdkaksin 3y ago
Well, the Luddites were right about a lot of things...and AI is not qualitatively the same as what happened during the industrial revolution, which was a revolution in physical production. For one thing, there is little evidence of similar vast productivity increases. And there is similarly little evidence of what happens when you replace one set of workers with an equivalent or even slightly worse artificial set, and invest all the money in that instead...without a similar increase in productivity or the accessibility of natural resources. In other words, it seems obvious to me that AI is far less defensible than the industrial revolution, and also obvious that the bulk of the issues the Luddites took with technology have been vindicated by history and sometimes in much more severe terms than what the Luddites thought.

Many of the Luddites' issues were taken up by Marx. I wonder if, and how, the analogy would play out with AI. Free software, even if not open sourced, is putting the means (and memes) of production into the hands of the workers.

dartos 3y ago
I don’t think non open source software fits the FSF definition of free software
- ben_w 3y ago
  And that's why I added the clause, this is a case where I think gratis is more important than libre — when it comes to putting the means of production into the hands of the workers.
  - dartos 3y ago
    > free software, even when not open source is never “free software” is all.

ElevenLathe 3y ago

Power looms were just putting skilled weavers out of work. AI is going to be used to decide if you can go to college or take out a loan, what kinds of culture are produced, provide mass-customized propaganda to everyone at the whim of anyone with a nickel's worth of AWS credits, and it goes on. They're fundamentally different. I'm in IT and don't think there is much to be done about it "taking my job", but certainly we need to keep it out of the path of important society-defining decisions. It's important to separate these two things, and AFAICT the public debate about this -- such as it is -- is not.

yoyohello13 3y ago

I hate this comparison because the tone of it discounts the real human suffering caused by these events. Yes, we are better off now. But the transition through the industrial revolution caused a lot of pain. The rise of AI is going to cause real human suffering. Sure, we will probably be better off in 100 years. But that's little comfort the those that lose their jobs or the ones that get crushed under the new AI powered Noble class.

SamPatt 3y ago
It's good to be empathetic towards anyone suffering, but you must also consider how much suffering is avoided when technology advances. Yes, washing machines caused suffering for women who made a living manually washing clothes. But they alleviated far, far more suffering by automating a physically difficult task. My guess is that widespread adoption of new technology almost always reduces net suffering in the long term. Prioritizing the reduction of suffering today at the cost of more suffering in the future seems short-sighted.

dorkwood 3y ago

I suppose I missed the part where the mechanised loom makers harvested hundreds of millions of books and images without permission in order to make their machines work.

siidjdkaksin 3y ago

Well, the Luddites were right about a lot of things...and AI is not qualitatively the same as what happened during the industrial revolution, which was a revolution in physical production. For one thing, there is little evidence of similar vast productivity increases. And there is similarly little evidence of what happens when you replace one set of workers with an equivalent or even slightly worse artificial set, and invest all the money in that instead...without a similar increase in productivity or the accessibility of natural resources. In other words, it seems obvious to me that AI is far less defensible than the industrial revolution, and also obvious that the bulk of the issues the Luddites took with technology have been vindicated by history and sometimes in much more severe terms than what the Luddites thought.