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Most alarmingly, many of the fruits of SV can be used to make dictatorships even more capable in crushing dissenters and extending the aegis of state into every

Most alarmingly, many of the fruits of SV can be used to make dictatorships even more capable in crushing dissenters and extending the aegis of state into everyday life. Technology is morally neutral, it can be used for ill as well as good, and our worship of it as a panacea has blinded us to this possibility

fidotron 2y ago
It is worse than that: the most efficient way to make money in SV is to make the tools for enabling totalitarianism while covering them in a twee veneer of folksiness so people don’t notice.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Add in the time tested classic of simultaneously gaslighting the customers by claiming to be doing it for their own good.
  - holonsphere 2y ago
    While building the knowledge, skills, and staff required to apply these exact same tools towards ordinary americans.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the most efficient way to make money in SV is to make the tools for enabling totalitarianism Any specificity to this example that doesn’t apply to any game-changing technology?
  - fidotron 2y ago
    You mean the Unabomber was right? Technology inevitably leads to totalitarianism? Cars are not inherently tools of government, it's just they've been regulated such that that is their direction of development. Personal computers were similarly not that way either. The key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over My point is we can do this for anything. Clocks enabled capitalists to exploit workers. Lights took the night from rebels. Steam engines took farmers out of the daylight and put them in mechanised factories. Hell, agriculture enabled modern civilisation but also created such a wave of oppression and anxiety we're still worshiping the gods we invented to save us from it. None of those statements is wrong. But they're also incomplete.
      - fidotron 2y ago
        Clocks did not succeed because of their ability to exploit workers (they were way more useful on ships), nor lights because of rebels, but SV companies do succeed, spectacularly, once their utility for totalitarianism has been demonstrated. For example, the price of nVidia over time, the TikTok hysteria, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Palantir, Tesla, even Figma is like in a secondary market of helping to provide the veneer. Conversely, if you are of no use to such a regime you will not get very far. The only meaningful question here is how organic this phenomenon is.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        You're claiming nVidia, Facebook, Google and Tesla only started to become successful when they proved their value to totalitarians?
        fidotron 2y ago
        They wouldn't be behemoths if they were not. nVidia - existed for years before most people noticed just what they were up to, and their change in valuation reflects that. For them AI was the point from the start, games was just the bootstrapping mechanism. Prior to the AI explosion they were a decent business but not a spectacular success. Facebook - succeeded where almost every other social media app failed before by enabling data gathering and narrative control for the most important demographics in society (MySpace, for example, did not) Google - a gov funded research project to organise and index information Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    >> Any specificity to this example that doesn’t apply to any game-changing technology? To answer your question with the clarity in which it was posed... 'definitely'
- itronitron 2y ago
  Yeah, we're long past "Technology is morally neutral"
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I remember running into a programmer at a MacHack conference (so you know it was a long time ago). He was an Australian contractor, working for the UAE. He was working on a database system, for tracking citizens. He flat-out told me it was a tool for their monarchy, to wield power. In the US, people keep talking about the Second Amendment, as some kind of guarantor of liberty, but their eyes glaze over, when I tell them that the computer database is the biggest threat to human rights in history, and now, AI will make it much worse.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  What liberties are you worried about (in the context of the US)?
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Not the OP, but the US has a shitton of laws that make basically everyone a felon [0] and only the sheer impossibility of tracking everyone everywhere makes ad-hoc prosecution complicated/impractical. The advent of AI may bring down this last obstacle. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      Assuming I don't want to pay money for that book, can you give me a single example of a law that your average American is likely to feloniously violate by accident?
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      I don't think it's the lack of tracking. It's that almost all of those "3 a day" violations are only technically violations. If you try to actually charge someone in front of a jury, they're going to return something along the lines of "not guilty because the prosecutor is an idiot". That's assuming that the judge doesn't find a way to throw it out long before it ever sees a jury. Courts don't like wasting their time on stupid stuff.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

fidotron 2y ago

It is worse than that: the most efficient way to make money in SV is to make the tools for enabling totalitarianism while covering them in a twee veneer of folksiness so people don’t notice.

dotnet00 2y ago
Add in the time tested classic of simultaneously gaslighting the customers by claiming to be doing it for their own good.
- holonsphere 2y ago
  While building the knowledge, skills, and staff required to apply these exact same tools towards ordinary americans.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the most efficient way to make money in SV is to make the tools for enabling totalitarianism Any specificity to this example that doesn’t apply to any game-changing technology?
- fidotron 2y ago
  You mean the Unabomber was right? Technology inevitably leads to totalitarianism? Cars are not inherently tools of government, it's just they've been regulated such that that is their direction of development. Personal computers were similarly not that way either. The key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement to be connected to the internet, after which it's game over My point is we can do this for anything. Clocks enabled capitalists to exploit workers. Lights took the night from rebels. Steam engines took farmers out of the daylight and put them in mechanised factories. Hell, agriculture enabled modern civilisation but also created such a wave of oppression and anxiety we're still worshiping the gods we invented to save us from it. None of those statements is wrong. But they're also incomplete.
    - fidotron 2y ago
      Clocks did not succeed because of their ability to exploit workers (they were way more useful on ships), nor lights because of rebels, but SV companies do succeed, spectacularly, once their utility for totalitarianism has been demonstrated. For example, the price of nVidia over time, the TikTok hysteria, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Palantir, Tesla, even Figma is like in a secondary market of helping to provide the veneer. Conversely, if you are of no use to such a regime you will not get very far. The only meaningful question here is how organic this phenomenon is.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        You're claiming nVidia, Facebook, Google and Tesla only started to become successful when they proved their value to totalitarians?
        fidotron 2y ago
        They wouldn't be behemoths if they were not. nVidia - existed for years before most people noticed just what they were up to, and their change in valuation reflects that. For them AI was the point from the start, games was just the bootstrapping mechanism. Prior to the AI explosion they were a decent business but not a spectacular success. Facebook - succeeded where almost every other social media app failed before by enabling data gathering and narrative control for the most important demographics in society (MySpace, for example, did not) Google - a gov funded research project to organise and index information Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
- itronitron 2y ago
  >> Any specificity to this example that doesn’t apply to any game-changing technology? To answer your question with the clarity in which it was posed... 'definitely'
itronitron 2y ago
Yeah, we're long past "Technology is morally neutral"

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I remember running into a programmer at a MacHack conference (so you know it was a long time ago). He was an Australian contractor, working for the UAE. He was working on a database system, for tracking citizens. He flat-out told me it was a tool for their monarchy, to wield power. In the US, people keep talking about the Second Amendment, as some kind of guarantor of liberty, but their eyes glaze over, when I tell them that the computer database is the biggest threat to human rights in history, and now, AI will make it much worse.

silverquiet 2y ago
What liberties are you worried about (in the context of the US)?
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Not the OP, but the US has a shitton of laws that make basically everyone a felon [0] and only the sheer impossibility of tracking everyone everywhere makes ad-hoc prosecution complicated/impractical. The advent of AI may bring down this last obstacle. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Assuming I don't want to pay money for that book, can you give me a single example of a law that your average American is likely to feloniously violate by accident?
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    I don't think it's the lack of tracking. It's that almost all of those "3 a day" violations are only technically violations. If you try to actually charge someone in front of a jury, they're going to return something along the lines of "not guilty because the prosecutor is an idiot". That's assuming that the judge doesn't find a way to throw it out long before it ever sees a jury. Courts don't like wasting their time on stupid stuff.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]