4 ms·

And then suddenly this is not something that fascinates people anymore… in 10 years as non-synthetic becomes the new bio or artisan or whatever you like. Human

by larodi 2y ago

And then suddenly this is not something that fascinates people anymore… in 10 years as non-synthetic becomes the new bio or artisan or whatever you like. Humanity has its ways of objecting accelerationism.

turnsout 2y ago
Put another way, over time people devalue things which can be produced with minimal human effort. I suspect it's less about humanity's values, and more about the way money closely tracks "time" (specifically the duration of human effort).
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
  - turnsout 2y ago
    Yes, exactly. Marx had this right. Money is a way to trade time.
- EGreg 2y ago
  I strongly disagree. How many clothes do you buy that have 100 thread count, and are machine-made, vs hand-knit sweaters or something? When did you ask people for directions, or other major questions, instead of Google? You can wax poetic about wanting "the human touch", but at the end of the day, the market speaks -- people will just prefer everything automated. Including their partners, after your boyfriend can remember every little detail about you, notice everything including your pupils dilating, know exactly how you like it, when you like it, never get angry unless it's to spice things up, and has been trained on 1000 other partners, how could you go back? When robots can raise children better than parents, with patience and discipline and teaching them with individual attention, know 1000 ways to mold their behavior and achieve healthier outcomes. Everything people do is being commodified as we speak. Soon it will be humor, entertainment, nursing, etc. Then personal relations. Just extrapolate a decade or three into the future. Best case scenario: if we nail alignment, we build a zoo for ourselves where we have zero power and are treated like animals who have sex and eat and fart all day long. No one will care about whatever you have to offer, because everyone will be surrounded by layers of bots from the time they are born. PS: anything you write on HN can already have been written by AI, pretty soon you may as well quit producing any content at all. No one will care whether you wrote it.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    > PS: anything you write on HN can already have been written by AI, pretty soon you may as well quit producing any content at all. No one will care whether you wrote it. People theoretically would care, but the internet has already set up producing things to be pseudo-anonymous, so we have forgotten the value of actually having a human being behind content. That's why AI is so successful, and it's a damn shame.
    - skeledrew 2y ago
      What exactly is the value of having a human behind content if it gets to the point that content generated by AI is indistinguishable from content generated by humans?
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        > What exactly is the value of having a human behind content if it gets to the point that content generated by AI is indistinguishable from content generated by humans? What would be the point of paying for AI content if nobody did anything to produce it? Just take that shit!
        skeledrew 2y ago
        There won't even be any "paying" or "taking" per se. What is generated by one can be generated by another, making those concepts generally moot in that regard.
      - turnsout 2y ago
        I think "indistinguishable" is a receding horizon. People are already good at picking out AI text, and AI video is even easier. Even if it looks 100% realistic on the surface, the content itself (writing, concept, etc) will have a kind of indescribable "sameness" that will give it away. If there's one thing that connects all media made in human history, it's that humans find humans interesting. No technology (like literally no technology ever) will change that.
echelon 2y ago
Are you kidding? TikTok is one of the easiest platforms to create for, and look at how much human attention it has sucked up. The attention/dopamine magnet is accelerating its transformation into a gravitational singularity for human minds.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  TikTok’s main attraction are the people, not just the videos. Trends, drama and etc. all involve real humans doing real human stuff, so it’s relatable. I might be wrong, but AI videos are on the same path as AI generated images. Cool for the first year, then “ah ok, zero effort content”.
gom_jabbar 2y ago
Sure, humanity has its ways of objecting Accelerationism, but the process fundamentally challenges human identity: "The Human Security System is structured by delusion. What's being protected there is not some real thing that is mankind, it's the structure of illusory identity. Just as at the more micro level it's not that humans as an organism are being threatened by robots, it's rather that your self-comprehension as an organism becomes something that can't be maintained beyond a certain threshold of ambient networked intelligence." [0] See also my research project on the core thesis of Accelerationism that capitalism is AI. [1] [0] https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-impose-is-fragmentation-an-interview-with-nick-land/ https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-... [1] https://retrochronic.com/ https://retrochronic.com/
vouaobrasil 2y ago
> Humanity has its ways of objecting accelerationism. Actually, typically human objection only slows it down and often it becomes a fringe movement, while the masses continue to consume the lowest common denominator. Take the revival of the flip phone, typewriter, etc. Sadly, technology marches on and life gets worse.
- adolph 2y ago
  Does life get worse for the majority of people or do the fruits of new technology rarely address any individual person’s progress toward senescence? (The latter feels like tech moves forward but life gets worse.)
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Of course, it depends on how you define "worse". If you use life expectancy, infant mortality, and disease, then life has in the past gotten better (although the technology of the past 20 years has RARELY contributed to any of that). If you use 'proximity to wild nature', 'clean air', 'more space', then life has gotten worse. But people don't choose between these two. They choose between alternatives that give them analgesics in an already corrupt society creating a series of descending local maximae.

by larodi 2y ago

turnsout 2y ago

Put another way, over time people devalue things which can be produced with minimal human effort. I suspect it's less about humanity's values, and more about the way money closely tracks "time" (specifically the duration of human effort).

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
- turnsout 2y ago
  Yes, exactly. Marx had this right. Money is a way to trade time.
EGreg 2y ago
I strongly disagree. How many clothes do you buy that have 100 thread count, and are machine-made, vs hand-knit sweaters or something? When did you ask people for directions, or other major questions, instead of Google? You can wax poetic about wanting "the human touch", but at the end of the day, the market speaks -- people will just prefer everything automated. Including their partners, after your boyfriend can remember every little detail about you, notice everything including your pupils dilating, know exactly how you like it, when you like it, never get angry unless it's to spice things up, and has been trained on 1000 other partners, how could you go back? When robots can raise children better than parents, with patience and discipline and teaching them with individual attention, know 1000 ways to mold their behavior and achieve healthier outcomes. Everything people do is being commodified as we speak. Soon it will be humor, entertainment, nursing, etc. Then personal relations. Just extrapolate a decade or three into the future. Best case scenario: if we nail alignment, we build a zoo for ourselves where we have zero power and are treated like animals who have sex and eat and fart all day long. No one will care about whatever you have to offer, because everyone will be surrounded by layers of bots from the time they are born. PS: anything you write on HN can already have been written by AI, pretty soon you may as well quit producing any content at all. No one will care whether you wrote it.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > PS: anything you write on HN can already have been written by AI, pretty soon you may as well quit producing any content at all. No one will care whether you wrote it. People theoretically would care, but the internet has already set up producing things to be pseudo-anonymous, so we have forgotten the value of actually having a human being behind content. That's why AI is so successful, and it's a damn shame.
  - skeledrew 2y ago
    What exactly is the value of having a human behind content if it gets to the point that content generated by AI is indistinguishable from content generated by humans?
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      > What exactly is the value of having a human behind content if it gets to the point that content generated by AI is indistinguishable from content generated by humans? What would be the point of paying for AI content if nobody did anything to produce it? Just take that shit!
      - skeledrew 2y ago
        There won't even be any "paying" or "taking" per se. What is generated by one can be generated by another, making those concepts generally moot in that regard.
    - turnsout 2y ago
      I think "indistinguishable" is a receding horizon. People are already good at picking out AI text, and AI video is even easier. Even if it looks 100% realistic on the surface, the content itself (writing, concept, etc) will have a kind of indescribable "sameness" that will give it away. If there's one thing that connects all media made in human history, it's that humans find humans interesting. No technology (like literally no technology ever) will change that.

echelon 2y ago

Are you kidding? TikTok is one of the easiest platforms to create for, and look at how much human attention it has sucked up. The attention/dopamine magnet is accelerating its transformation into a gravitational singularity for human minds.

tokioyoyo 2y ago
TikTok’s main attraction are the people, not just the videos. Trends, drama and etc. all involve real humans doing real human stuff, so it’s relatable. I might be wrong, but AI videos are on the same path as AI generated images. Cool for the first year, then “ah ok, zero effort content”.

gom_jabbar 2y ago

Sure, humanity has its ways of objecting Accelerationism, but the process fundamentally challenges human identity: "The Human Security System is structured by delusion. What's being protected there is not some real thing that is mankind, it's the structure of illusory identity. Just as at the more micro level it's not that humans as an organism are being threatened by robots, it's rather that your self-comprehension as an organism becomes something that can't be maintained beyond a certain threshold of ambient networked intelligence." [0] See also my research project on the core thesis of Accelerationism that capitalism is AI. [1] [0] https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-impose-is-fragmentation-an-interview-with-nick-land/ https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-... [1] https://retrochronic.com/ https://retrochronic.com/

vouaobrasil 2y ago

> Humanity has its ways of objecting accelerationism. Actually, typically human objection only slows it down and often it becomes a fringe movement, while the masses continue to consume the lowest common denominator. Take the revival of the flip phone, typewriter, etc. Sadly, technology marches on and life gets worse.

adolph 2y ago
Does life get worse for the majority of people or do the fruits of new technology rarely address any individual person’s progress toward senescence? (The latter feels like tech moves forward but life gets worse.)
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Of course, it depends on how you define "worse". If you use life expectancy, infant mortality, and disease, then life has in the past gotten better (although the technology of the past 20 years has RARELY contributed to any of that). If you use 'proximity to wild nature', 'clean air', 'more space', then life has gotten worse. But people don't choose between these two. They choose between alternatives that give them analgesics in an already corrupt society creating a series of descending local maximae.