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> just burning their goodwill to the ground AI firms seem to be leading from a position that goodwill is irrelevant: a $100bn pile of capital, like an 800lb go

by pjc50 2y ago

> just burning their goodwill to the ground AI firms seem to be leading from a position that goodwill is irrelevant: a $100bn pile of capital, like an 800lb gorilla, does what it wants. AI will be incorporated into all products whether you like it or not; it will absorb all data whether you like it or not.

anthk 2y ago
AI tarpits && lim (human curated contant/mediocre AI answers -> 0) = AI's crumbling into dust by themselves.
UncleMeat 2y ago
Yep. And it is much more far reaching than that. Look at the primary economic claim offered by AI companies: to end the need for a substantial portion of all jobs on the planet. The entire vision is to remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained. All intellectual property belongs to them. All labor belongs to them. Why would they need good will when they own everything? "Why should we care about open source maintainers" is just a microcosm of the much larger "why should we care about literally anybody" mindset.
- chii 2y ago
  > remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained how has this been any different from the past 10,000 years of human conquest and domination?
  - nemomarx 2y ago
    in the past, you had to give some of your spoils to those who did the conquering for you, and laborers after that. if you can automate and replace all work, including maintening the robots that do that and training them, you no longer need to share anything.
  - lithocarpus 2y ago
    In my view it's the same thing, same trajectory -- with more power in the hands of fewer people further along the trajectory. It can be better or worse depending on what those with power choose to do. Probably worse. There has been conquest and domination for a long time, but ordinary people have also lived in relative peace gathering and growing food in large parts of the world in the past, some for entire generations. But now the world is rapidly becoming unable to support much of that as abundance and carrying capacity are deleted through human activity. And eventually the robot armies controlled by a few people will probably extract and hoard everything that's left. Hopefully in some corners some people and animals can survive, probably by being seen as useful to the owners.
    - neutronicus 2y ago
      On the bright side, armies of robot slaves give us an off-ramp from the unsustainable pyramid scheme of population growth. Be fruitful, and multiply, so that you may enjoy a comfortable middle age and senescence exploiting the shit out of numerous naive 25-year-olds! If it's robots, we can ramp down the population of both humans and robots until the planet can once again easily provide abundance.
      - lithocarpus 2y ago
        Sure, the problem though is it won't be "we" deciding what the robots do, it will most likely be a few powerful people of dubious character and motivations since those are the sort of people who pursue power and end up powerful. That's why even though technology could theoretically be used to save us from many of our problems, it isn't primarily used that way.
        neutronicus 2y ago
        True. But presumably petty tyrants with armies of slave robots are less interested than consensus in a long-term vision for humanity that involves feeding and housing a population of 10 billion. So after whatever horrific holocaust follows the AI wars the way is clear for a hundred thousand humans to live in the lap of luxury with minimal impact on the planet. Even if there are a few intervening millennia of like 200 humans living in the lap of luxury and 99,800 living in sex slavery.
- maaaaattttt 2y ago
  I have this line of thought as well but then I wonder, if we are all out of jobs and out of substantial capital to spend, how do these owners make money ultimately? It's a genuine question and I'm probably missing something obvious. I can see a benevolant/post-scarcity spin to this but the non-benevolant one seems self defeating.
  - sevensor 2y ago
    I don’t think you’re missing anything, I think the plan really is to burn it all down and rule over the ashes. The old saw “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” works in reverse too. This is a foolish, shortsighted thing to do, and they’re doing it anyway. Not really thinking about where value actually comes from or what their grandchildren’s lives would be like in such a world.
    - lukevp 2y ago
      Capitalism is an unthinking, unfeeling force. The writing is on the wall that AI is coming, and being altruistic about it doesn’t do jack to keep others from the land grab. Their thinking is, might as well join the rush and hope they’re one of the winners. Every one of us sitting on the sidelines will be impacted in some way or the other. So who’re the smart ones, the ones who grab shovels and start digging, or the ones who watch as the others dig their graves and do nothing?
      - billy99k 2y ago
        I already started incorporating AI into my workflow. It's definitely helped with productivity. At some point in the future, if you aren't using AI, you won't be able to compete in the job market.
        sozforex 2y ago
        At some point in the future, if you aren't AI, you won't be able to compete in the job market.
- pkdpic 2y ago
  And how could they possibly base their actions on good when their technology is more important than fire? History is depending on them to do everything possible to increase their market cap.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    Careful, I think you're being sarcastic, but you're in a space where a lot of people believe what you just said unironically.
    - anon373839 2y ago
      Ha! Comment of the week.
  - nancyminusone 2y ago
    More important than fire? AI runs on fire.
- rectang 2y ago
  > Look at the primary economic claim offered by AI companies: to end the need for a substantial portion of all jobs on the planet. And this is why AI training is not "fair use". The AI companies seek to train models in order to compete with the authors of the content used to train the models. A possible eventual downfall of AI is that the risk of losing a copyright infringement lawsuit is not going away. If a court determines that the AI output you've used is close enough to be considered a derivative work, it's infringement.
  - WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
    I've pointed this out to a few people in this space. They tend to suggest that the value in AI is so great this means we should get rid of copyright law entirely.
    - dbingham 2y ago
      That value is only great if it's shared equitably with the rest of the planet. If it's owned by a few, as it is right now, it's an existential threat to the life, liberty, and pursuit of a happiness of everyone else on the planet. We should be seriously considering what we're going to do in response to that threat if something doesn't change soon.
      - UncleMeat 2y ago
        Yep. The "wouldn't it be great if we had robots do all the labor you are currently doing" argument only works if there is some plan to make sure that my rent gets paid other than me performing labor.
        Spivak 2y ago
        It depends if you're the only one out of a job. If it really is everyone then the answer will likely be some variant of metaphorically or literally killing your landlord in favor of a different resource allocation scheme. I put these kinds of things in a "in that world I would have bigger problems" bucket.
- outside1234 2y ago
  The thing is that this will be their destruction as well. If workers don't have any money (because they don't have jobs), nobody can afford what the owners have to sell?
  - BigParm 2y ago
    The human population will be decimated just as the work horse population was.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  > The entire vision is to remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained. I agree with you in the case of AI companies, but the desire to own everything an bee completely unconstrained is the dream of every large corporation.
davidmurdoch 2y ago
We, the people, might need to come up with a few proverbial tranquilizer guns here soon
ferguess_k 2y ago
That's pretty much what our future would look like -- you are irrelevant. Well I mean we are already pretty much irrelevant nowadays, but the more so in the "progressive" future of AI.
huijzer 2y ago
I think the logic is more like “we have to do everything we can to win or we will disappear”. Capitalism is ruthless and the big techs finally have some serious competition, namely: each other as well as new entrants. Like why else can we just spam these AI endpoints and pay $0.07 at the end of the month? There is some incredible competition going on. And so far everyone except big tech is the winner so that’s nice.
Sharlin 2y ago
Maxim 1: "Pillage, then burn."
- Coffeewine 2y ago
  Another Schlock Mercenary fan? Or does this adage have many adherents?
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    The adage predates the longest continuous webcomic, but not as a maxim.
  - Sharlin 2y ago
    Yep, a fan I am.
yubblegum 2y ago
They are also gutting the profession of software engineering. It's a clever scam actually: to develop software a company will need to pay utility fees to A"I" companies and since their products are error prone voila use more A"I" tools to correct the errors of the other tools. Meanwhile software knowledge will atrophy and soon ala WALE we'll have software "developers" with 'soft bones' floating around on conveyed seats slurping 'sugar water' and getting fat and not knowing even how to tie their software shoelaces.
kordlessagain 2y ago
> AI will be incorporated into all products whether you like it or not AI will be incorporated into the government, whether you like it or not. FTFY!
slowmovintarget 2y ago
"... you have the lawyers clean it all up later." - Eric Schmidt
b112 2y ago
Yes, like the Pixel camera app, which mangles photos with AI processing, and users complain that it won't let people take pics. One issue was a pic with text in it, like a store sign. Users were complaining that it kept asking for better focus on the text in the background, before allowing a photo. Alpha quality junk. Which is what AI is, really.
asveikau 2y ago
Rules and laws are for other people. A lot of people reading this comment having mistaken "fake it til you make it" or "better to not ask permission" for good life advice are responsible for perpetrating these attitudes, which are fundamentally narcissistic.
speerer 2y ago
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs-say-ai-crawlers-dominate-traffic-forcing-blocks-on-entire-countries/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs-say-ai-crawlers-domi... links to this comment.

by pjc50 2y ago

anthk 2y ago

AI tarpits && lim (human curated contant/mediocre AI answers -> 0) = AI's crumbling into dust by themselves.

UncleMeat 2y ago

Yep. And it is much more far reaching than that. Look at the primary economic claim offered by AI companies: to end the need for a substantial portion of all jobs on the planet. The entire vision is to remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained. All intellectual property belongs to them. All labor belongs to them. Why would they need good will when they own everything? "Why should we care about open source maintainers" is just a microcosm of the much larger "why should we care about literally anybody" mindset.

chii 2y ago
> remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained how has this been any different from the past 10,000 years of human conquest and domination?
- nemomarx 2y ago
  in the past, you had to give some of your spoils to those who did the conquering for you, and laborers after that. if you can automate and replace all work, including maintening the robots that do that and training them, you no longer need to share anything.
- lithocarpus 2y ago
  In my view it's the same thing, same trajectory -- with more power in the hands of fewer people further along the trajectory. It can be better or worse depending on what those with power choose to do. Probably worse. There has been conquest and domination for a long time, but ordinary people have also lived in relative peace gathering and growing food in large parts of the world in the past, some for entire generations. But now the world is rapidly becoming unable to support much of that as abundance and carrying capacity are deleted through human activity. And eventually the robot armies controlled by a few people will probably extract and hoard everything that's left. Hopefully in some corners some people and animals can survive, probably by being seen as useful to the owners.
  - neutronicus 2y ago
    On the bright side, armies of robot slaves give us an off-ramp from the unsustainable pyramid scheme of population growth. Be fruitful, and multiply, so that you may enjoy a comfortable middle age and senescence exploiting the shit out of numerous naive 25-year-olds! If it's robots, we can ramp down the population of both humans and robots until the planet can once again easily provide abundance.
    - lithocarpus 2y ago
      Sure, the problem though is it won't be "we" deciding what the robots do, it will most likely be a few powerful people of dubious character and motivations since those are the sort of people who pursue power and end up powerful. That's why even though technology could theoretically be used to save us from many of our problems, it isn't primarily used that way.
      - neutronicus 2y ago
        True. But presumably petty tyrants with armies of slave robots are less interested than consensus in a long-term vision for humanity that involves feeding and housing a population of 10 billion. So after whatever horrific holocaust follows the AI wars the way is clear for a hundred thousand humans to live in the lap of luxury with minimal impact on the planet. Even if there are a few intervening millennia of like 200 humans living in the lap of luxury and 99,800 living in sex slavery.
maaaaattttt 2y ago
I have this line of thought as well but then I wonder, if we are all out of jobs and out of substantial capital to spend, how do these owners make money ultimately? It's a genuine question and I'm probably missing something obvious. I can see a benevolant/post-scarcity spin to this but the non-benevolant one seems self defeating.
- sevensor 2y ago
  I don’t think you’re missing anything, I think the plan really is to burn it all down and rule over the ashes. The old saw “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” works in reverse too. This is a foolish, shortsighted thing to do, and they’re doing it anyway. Not really thinking about where value actually comes from or what their grandchildren’s lives would be like in such a world.
  - lukevp 2y ago
    Capitalism is an unthinking, unfeeling force. The writing is on the wall that AI is coming, and being altruistic about it doesn’t do jack to keep others from the land grab. Their thinking is, might as well join the rush and hope they’re one of the winners. Every one of us sitting on the sidelines will be impacted in some way or the other. So who’re the smart ones, the ones who grab shovels and start digging, or the ones who watch as the others dig their graves and do nothing?
    - billy99k 2y ago
      I already started incorporating AI into my workflow. It's definitely helped with productivity. At some point in the future, if you aren't using AI, you won't be able to compete in the job market.
      - sozforex 2y ago
        At some point in the future, if you aren't AI, you won't be able to compete in the job market.
pkdpic 2y ago
And how could they possibly base their actions on good when their technology is more important than fire? History is depending on them to do everything possible to increase their market cap.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Careful, I think you're being sarcastic, but you're in a space where a lot of people believe what you just said unironically.
  - anon373839 2y ago
    Ha! Comment of the week.
- nancyminusone 2y ago
  More important than fire? AI runs on fire.
rectang 2y ago
> Look at the primary economic claim offered by AI companies: to end the need for a substantial portion of all jobs on the planet. And this is why AI training is not "fair use". The AI companies seek to train models in order to compete with the authors of the content used to train the models. A possible eventual downfall of AI is that the risk of losing a copyright infringement lawsuit is not going away. If a court determines that the AI output you've used is close enough to be considered a derivative work, it's infringement.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
  I've pointed this out to a few people in this space. They tend to suggest that the value in AI is so great this means we should get rid of copyright law entirely.
  - dbingham 2y ago
    That value is only great if it's shared equitably with the rest of the planet. If it's owned by a few, as it is right now, it's an existential threat to the life, liberty, and pursuit of a happiness of everyone else on the planet. We should be seriously considering what we're going to do in response to that threat if something doesn't change soon.
    - UncleMeat 2y ago
      Yep. The "wouldn't it be great if we had robots do all the labor you are currently doing" argument only works if there is some plan to make sure that my rent gets paid other than me performing labor.
      - Spivak 2y ago
        It depends if you're the only one out of a job. If it really is everyone then the answer will likely be some variant of metaphorically or literally killing your landlord in favor of a different resource allocation scheme. I put these kinds of things in a "in that world I would have bigger problems" bucket.
outside1234 2y ago
The thing is that this will be their destruction as well. If workers don't have any money (because they don't have jobs), nobody can afford what the owners have to sell?
- BigParm 2y ago
  The human population will be decimated just as the work horse population was.
DrillShopper 2y ago
> The entire vision is to remake the entire world into one where the owners of these companies own everything and are completely unconstrained. I agree with you in the case of AI companies, but the desire to own everything an bee completely unconstrained is the dream of every large corporation.

davidmurdoch 2y ago

We, the people, might need to come up with a few proverbial tranquilizer guns here soon

ferguess_k 2y ago

That's pretty much what our future would look like -- you are irrelevant. Well I mean we are already pretty much irrelevant nowadays, but the more so in the "progressive" future of AI.

huijzer 2y ago

I think the logic is more like “we have to do everything we can to win or we will disappear”. Capitalism is ruthless and the big techs finally have some serious competition, namely: each other as well as new entrants. Like why else can we just spam these AI endpoints and pay $0.07 at the end of the month? There is some incredible competition going on. And so far everyone except big tech is the winner so that’s nice.

Sharlin 2y ago

Maxim 1: "Pillage, then burn."

Coffeewine 2y ago
Another Schlock Mercenary fan? Or does this adage have many adherents?
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  The adage predates the longest continuous webcomic, but not as a maxim.
- Sharlin 2y ago
  Yep, a fan I am.

yubblegum 2y ago

They are also gutting the profession of software engineering. It's a clever scam actually: to develop software a company will need to pay utility fees to A"I" companies and since their products are error prone voila use more A"I" tools to correct the errors of the other tools. Meanwhile software knowledge will atrophy and soon ala WALE we'll have software "developers" with 'soft bones' floating around on conveyed seats slurping 'sugar water' and getting fat and not knowing even how to tie their software shoelaces.

kordlessagain 2y ago

> AI will be incorporated into all products whether you like it or not AI will be incorporated into the government, whether you like it or not. FTFY!

slowmovintarget 2y ago

"... you have the lawyers clean it all up later." - Eric Schmidt

b112 2y ago

Yes, like the Pixel camera app, which mangles photos with AI processing, and users complain that it won't let people take pics. One issue was a pic with text in it, like a store sign. Users were complaining that it kept asking for better focus on the text in the background, before allowing a photo. Alpha quality junk. Which is what AI is, really.

asveikau 2y ago

Rules and laws are for other people. A lot of people reading this comment having mistaken "fake it til you make it" or "better to not ask permission" for good life advice are responsible for perpetrating these attitudes, which are fundamentally narcissistic.

speerer 2y ago

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs-say-ai-crawlers-dominate-traffic-forcing-blocks-on-entire-countries/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs-say-ai-crawlers-domi... links to this comment.