6 ms·
Yes, that’s why they are on the race to building the very advanced robots. To prevent the violence towards them.
by lm2s 8mo ago
Yes, that’s why they are on the race to building the very advanced robots. To prevent the violence towards them.
- satisfice 8mo agoThat is exactly the motivation. The problem with being a billionaire is you still have to associate with poor people. But imagine a world where your wealth completely insulates you from the resentful poor.
- gib444 8mo agoHow does a billionaire have to associate with poor people? They can live in a complete bubble: house in the hills, driven by a chauffeur, private jets, private islands for holidays etc...?
- aspaviento 8mo agoThe people who cook for them, the people who clean for them, the ones who take care of their kids, the one who sell them stuff or serve them in restaurants...
- pbhjpbhj 8mo agoAlso, they're not building the house or the jet, they're not growing the food, ... people close enough can be chosen for willingness to be sycophants and happiness to be servants. Unless you're feeding yourself from your own farm, or manufacturing your own electronics, there are limits to even a billionaires ability to control personnel.
- ceejayoz 8mo agoThey have separate kitchens for the prep, the cleaners work while they’re out on the yacht, they have people to do the buying, and the restaurants they visit have very well trained staff who stay out of the way.
- coldtea 8mo agoAll that is irrelevant to the point: they still need to have those poor people around them, trust them, and even trust their security to them.
- pixl97 8mo agoAnd this is all very easy to control. First is you get a particular group of people to work for you. You tell them they are better than all the other poor people out there, that is get them to be nationalistic/racist, etc. You also give them a little bit more than the abjectly poor so they have something they fear to lose. You also let them know if they upset the situation they are in retribution will be swift and brutal and affect anyone they know and love.
- direwolf20 8mo agoAnd this is how every societal hierarchy is structured.
- coldtea 8mo agoSo easy to control that most rich people throughout history were murdered by their guards and close helper circle.
- pixl97 8mo ago"Most rich people that were murdered" is a different statement from "most rich people"
- kjkjadksj 8mo agoEpstein had a staff of 70 on that island kept mum
- int_19h 8mo agoThe vast majority of rich people don't get murdered. Those that do, yes, usually get murdered by those in position to do that (i.e. those that have physical access to them). That's neither interesting nor relevant though.
- shimman 8mo agonah, if slave owners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington could reorient their entire lives around not seeing the "ick" of chattel slavery I think modern billionaires can do the same thing even easier now if they wanted.
- nkrisc 8mo agoUnless they’re living entirely by themselves, they will always be dependent on poor people.
- sh3rl0ck 8mo agoThe poor maids and servants, the poor chauffeur, the poor chef, etc.
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoThe fact that people see that basically the singularity is happening but can't imagine that humanoid robots get good rapidly is why most people here are bad futurists.
- danaris 8mo ago> the singularity is happening [Citation needed] No LLM is yet being used effectively to improve LLM output in exponential ways. Personally, I'm skeptical that such a thing is possible. LLMs aren't AGI, and aren't a path to AGI. The Singularity is the Rapture for techbros.
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoIf you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way, well, de nile ain't just a river in egypt. Also yes LLMs are indeed AGI: https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-already-here/ https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-... This was Peter Norvig's take. AGI is a low bar because most humans are really stupid.
- danaris 8mo agoWhat rapid acceleration? I look at the trajectory of LLMs, and the shape I see is one of diminishing returns. The improvements in the first few generations came fast, and they were impressive. Then subsequent generations took longer, improved less over the previous generation, and required more and more (and more and more) resources to achieve. I'm not interested in one guy's take that LLMs are AGI, regardless of his computer science bonafides. I can look at what they do myself, and see that they aren't, by most very reasonable definitions of AGI. If you really believe that the singularity is happening now...well, then, shouldn't it take a very short time for the effects of that to be painfully obvious? Like, massive improvements in all kinds of technology coming in a matter of months? Come back in a few months and tell me what amazing new technologies this supposed AGI has created...or maybe the one in denial isn't me.
- 8mo ago
- lbreakjai 8mo agoYou still have to find the kids to rape.
- chii 8mo agoWatch, or read "altered carbon" for a taste of that future.
- coldtea 8mo agoOr the Epstein files, for that matter
- Findecanor 8mo agoThat notion is based on the misconception that for there to be very rich people, other people would need to be poor — that would resent you. Economic science has pretty much proven that when the average income in a society is higher and fewer are poor, the economy moves more money and the rich benefit more as well.
- pixl97 8mo agoMisconception is not really the right word here along with the word 'need'. It comes down to if the people in power think they are playing a zero sum game and are driven by greed. We see plenty of dictatorships that are very resource wealthy and yet their society suffers in abject poverty. Said leaders have zero care about making their peoples life better and will gladly kill them wholesale if they become problematic.
- nosianu 8mo ago> other people would need to be poor Just like billions are not about "being rich", this is about CONTROL. Control of the economy, and how people live, and control over one's own life. Abstraction is a beast, putting everything regardless of what it actually is as some $$ number is terrible for understanding. The billionaires don't have Scrooge McDuck money at home where they swim in coins, they control huge parts of the economy. And as long as they need workers, they will want them to live not too well - that would raise the price of labor, if people wanted to do work in places like Amazon warehouses to begin with, if they had better alternatives not working for the billionaires. Being "poor" in this context means having a lot less control over how you live, not that you live on the streets. Although, as soon as you lose your value, e.g. by getting too sick, that is always on the table too.
- bitwize 8mo agoRelative wealth disparity is what drives lower-class resentment, not absolute poverty. Income inequality is very bad in its own right.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tosapple 8mo ago[dead]
- direwolf20 8mo agoGaza is kept as a testing ground for domestic spying and domestic military technology intended to be used on other groups. Otherwise they'd have destroyed it by now. Stuff like Palantir is always tested in Gaza first.
- cr125rider 8mo ago> Otherwise they'd have destroyed it by now. About that…
- tartoran 8mo agoIsn’t Gaza a mess in ruins already? I’d count that as destroyed aleeady
- direwolf20 8mo agoNot completely. I mean there would be zero living people left. They've been downscaling it.
- squidsoup 8mo agoThe bombs dropped on Gaza are equivalent to six Hiroshimas - I think we can safely say that Gaza has been destroyed. https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2025/gaza-bombing-equivalent-to-six-hiroshimas-says-bradford-world-affairs-expert.php https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/archive/2025/gaza-bombing-eq...
- direwolf20 8mo agoThere are still living people in it
- gom_jabbar 8mo agoSort of. The thing building and being protected is capital, not humans. As Nick Land wrote: "Robotic security. [...] The armed mass as a model for the revolutionary citizenry declines into senselessness, replaced by drones. Asabiyyah ceases entirely to matter, however much it remains a focus for romantic attachment. Industrialization closes the loop, and protects itself." [0] The important part here is that "[i]ndustrialization [...] protects itself". This is not about protecting humans ultimately. Humans are not autonomous, but ultimately functions of (autonomous) capital. Mark Fisher put it like this (summarizing Land's philosophy): "Capital will not be ultimately unmasked as exploited labour power; rather, humans are the meat puppet of Capital, their identities and self-understandings are simulations that can and will be ultimately be sloughed off." [1] Land's philosophy is quite useful for providing a non-anthropocentric perspective on various processes. [0] Nick Land (2016). The NRx Moment in Xenosystems Blog. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition [1] Mark Fisher (2012). Terminator vs Avatar in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, Urbanomic, p. 342.
- quantummagic 8mo agoThis reads like absolute gibberish to me. The capitalistic system does not function without the motivations of the people running it. Ultimately every decision and action is in service of some human, and his or his group's interest.
- pixl97 8mo agoThe motivations of the people running the capitalistic system is making more money. Remember the entire mantra of greed is good? Group interest can be a super-human entity that you can get caught in a loop of serving even though serving said entity is not in your best interest. Humans have only been 'mostly' in control of this because there was no other entities capable of said control themselves. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- gom_jabbar 8mo agoFrom the Landian perspective, initially, sure, the system needs humans. But once you have autonomous and sovereign capital, things could look very different. In Land's own words: "Since capitalism did not arise from abstract intelligence, but instead from a concrete human social organization, it necessarily disguises itself as better monkey business, until it can take off elsewhere. It has to be the case, therefore, that cynical evo-psych reduction of business activity remains highly plausible, so long as the escape threshold of capitalism has not been reached. No one gets a hormone rush from business-for-business while political history continues. To fixate upon this, however, is to miss everything important (and perhaps to enable the important thing to remain hidden). Our inherited purposes do not provide the decryption key." [0] [0] Nick Land (2013). Monkey Business in Xenosystems Blog. Retrieved from github.com/cyborg-nomade/reignition If you're open to explore Land's perspective more deeply, you can read the introduction here: https://retrochronic.com/ https://retrochronic.com/
- overfeed 8mo ago>To prevent the violence towards them. "This morning at 8:00 am Pacific, there were 5 simultaneously assassination attempts on tech executives across the Bay Area. The victims, who are all tech executives known to us have suffered serious injuries . It is reported that Securibot 5000s were involved. Securibot inc declined to comment. This is a developing story"
- XorNot 8mo agoThere is no master plan, there's a hype cycle, environment and the market. Humanoid robots became possible and so people are racing to be first to market assuming that might be a giant market (it's cheap labor potentially so of course it might be huge - the microcomputer was).