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Bernie Sanders: "AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear"
- fortran77 7mo agoWSJ gift link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-a-threat-to-everything-the-american-people-hold-dear-a3286459?st=PqKc29&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-is-a-threat-to-everything-the...
- mitchbob 7mo agoDoesn't work for me, unfortunately.
- KetoManx64 7mo ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 7mo agoIt takes a special, uniquely American type of politician to look at a war in Iran and conclude that domestic AI policy is the real threat to American people.
- Trasmatta 7mo agoBoth of those things can be a threat to the American people
- Nevermark 7mo agoThe US once had a strong reputation for a can-do cooperative spirit, and solving big problems. Today, it has an equally significant reputation for divisiveness and creating potentially existential (in various senses) threats to itself.
- treetalker 7mo agoPray tell, for which special-interest groups is the venerable senator a mouthpiece?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- KetoManx64 7mo agoThe AI companies, obviously. They use government puppets to create regulation that put competitors out of business under the guide of "child safety" and "threat to everything you hold dear". https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/openai-secretly-funded-child-safety-164135813.html https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/openai...
- bko 7mo agoBootleggers and Baptists is a concept put forth by regulatory economist Bruce Yandle, derived from the observation that regulations are supported both by groups that want the ostensible purpose of the regulation, and by groups that profit from undermining that purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
- robotburrito 7mo agoPeople who want healthcare and maybe kids who would like school lunch I guess?
- treetalker 7mo agoThis was my sense as well. I was unaware of Sanders's being in the pocket of any AI companies or folks, and I don't see any evidence to the contrary from the other commenters.
- boznz 7mo ago[flagged]
- verdverm 7mo agoI would not call him an existential threat, but he is certainly not representative being on one of the extremes and old af
- garbawarb 7mo agoWhat do the American people hold dear?
- neonstatic 7mo ago[flagged]
- rdevilla 7mo agoIt's extremely prevalent in Canada as well; almost certainly even more so. It's really a North American thing. I expect copious downvotes with no actual replies. Then the comment will be flagged by the bot armies so the administration here can preserve its dearly held national identity of being "diverse" while never having elected an ethnic minority PM.
- nozzlegear 7mo agoI would expect more downvotes for your needless "I'm going to get downvoted because the sheep hate when wolves tell the truth!" persecution complex. Your comment was at least mildly interesting before you got to that.
- kelseyfrog 7mo agoPathological demand avoidance.
- rdevilla 7mo agoIn Canada, demands are not actually demands. That way if the demand is avoided, there never was a demand to begin with; however, if it was fulfilled, then of course there was always a demand all along.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- EricHolden12 7mo ago[flagged]
- neonstatic 7mo agoBrilliant
- Ancalagon 7mo agowow why are so many comments in this thread against Bernie's stance?
- rdevilla 7mo agoHN will flag and downvote anti AI sentiment. There is lots of it here, you just aren't allowed to see it.
- lizardking 7mo agoI feel like we must be visiting different websites.
- sph 7mo agoHave you seen how overwhelmingly anti-AI the non-software-engineering world is? (despite the hypocrisy as plenty use a chatbot these days) The resistance in here is pitiful. I'm lurking in the indie game dev scene, and any mention of using LLMs for anything is downvoted and laughed at.
- fireant 7mo agoGamedevs are vehemently against genai art, but code generation seems more accepted from what I've seen
- sph 7mo agoMost discussion of using code generation on gamedev forums is taboo. As in, do what you want in the privacy of your own home, but in public, try to have some self-respect as an artist. I've seen some "devs" livestreaming themselves coding a game using LLMs, and it's not pretty. But that's my opinion of vibecoding in general — it's the tool one uses when they don't want to think too much, which is the furthest path to greatness. Some random examples off reddit (try to compare the sentiment if it had been posted on Hacker News): - https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rvafee/using_claude_to_help_build_a_small_godot_game_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rvafee/using_clau... - https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1erb39r/is_it_possible_for_someone_with_zero_programming/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1erb39r/is_it_poss... - https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1qll8jr/has_anyone_tried_aillm_tools_for_game_development/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1qll8jr/has_anyone... - https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1jitfbi/im_tired_of_the_vibe_game_coding_trend_good_games/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1jitfbi/im_tired_o... In general, interest in AI-assisted coding is associated with people that have no experience whatsoever and just want to make a game out of thin air without putting in the effort.
- johannesrexx 7mo ago[flagged]
- bko 7mo agoFew notes: The author uses polls that people are negative on AI, but people use it. All the time. And it's organic. Much like people started bringing Excel into the workplace and IT departments had to catch up, people are using personal AI and IT departments are freaking out. It's obvious that people find it useful (it's the fastest growing product in history). Why go off some polls that spread doomer nonsense? Billionaires investing money in creating products that nearly a billion people use rather than improving the lives of working families? Are the billionaires elected leaders? Why is that burden on them. The government gets trillions every year, yet try to get people to believe they are just a few billion shy of providing medicare for all and free childcare. Give me a break AI will create a police state? We've had cameras pretty much everywhere for decades, yet somehow unsolved killings reach a record high in 2023. We don't even bother locking up the people that get arrested. The number of prisoners that have had 15 or more prior arrests is over 26% No one's buying it from these politicians anymore. You're in politics, you have trillions to spend. Just get your shit together, actually help people and stop with these hysterics. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unsolved-killings-record-high https://www.npr.org/2023/04/29/1172775448/people-murder-unso... https://substack.com/home/post/p-149002604 https://substack.com/home/post/p-149002604
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- stonyrubbish 7mo agoAI is probably in need of far more legal safeguards than we have now, but I am sort of tired of the "everyone will lose their jobs" narrative. There are so few jobs LLMs can fully automate. I think what will actually happen is that corporate CEOs will try to cut staff, it won't work, people will be rehired, and AI will largely make people's jobs easier and less labor-intensive.
- ragequittah 7mo agoThe way this always works in a corporation is people's jobs will be just as hard or harder and they'll hire far less people. As always happens productivity per person will skyrocket and median wages will somehow be lower.
- namr2000 7mo agoReal median wages have been increasing pretty consistently since the FRED started recording it: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
- ragequittah 7mo agoApologies median wages was the wrong statistic to choose because the top x% rise has been astronomical. The productivity has gone up along with CEO wages. That money does get made even if the workers never see it. Or if they do see it they immediately give it back (and then some) when they pay their rent.
- anon7000 7mo agoNo, my job is already highly LLM assisted and I just have more work to do. Because now I can tackle things on the backlog we thought could never be prioritized.
- wolvoleo 7mo agoFor now yes. But you will end up finishing the backlog and once competitors get rid of employees and become more profitable your employer will do the same. Right now we're in a transitional space. Doesn't mean things will stay this way.
- SilverElfin 7mo agoIt’s a threat to employment, stability, and democracy. AI is going to solidify the concentration of wealth and power like never before. It’s why so many young people fear being in the “permanent underclass”. I haven’t agreed with socialists historically but we need to change our economic and political system to have more socialism than before, and especially to reduce the concentration in the hands of a few individuals and companies. So he’s not wrong.
- 0xy 7mo agoExplain why this stance, repeated often throughout history at the first sight of innovation (the plow, the car, electricity, phones, the internet, etc), and wrong every single time, is correct now.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo agoThe plow was regarded as a threat to democracy? I'm going to need to see some references for that claim...
- georgemcbay 7mo ago> Explain why this stance, repeated often throughout history at the first sight of innovation (the plow, the car, electricity, phones, the internet, etc), and wrong every single time, is correct now. The scale and the speed of the changes brought about by AI are almost certainly going to be far greater than anything we've ever seen in the past. Scale matters. The entire value of LLMs is proof that scale matters.
- therobots927 7mo ago[flagged]
- fortran77 7mo agoI think flagging an op-ed by a sitting Senator that appeared in the WSJ is an abuse of the flagging system. I don’t like Bernie at all, but I thought it was a very relevant item to post.
- therobots927 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Reubend 7mo agoAI is the best thing that happened to America in the last decade, and I dearly hope that politicians don't try to ruin it the way they're ruining other parts of the country. I respect some of Bernie's positions, but his stance on tech is dangerous.
- adrian_b 7mo agoAI is the best thing that happened for a relatively few number of privileged people, most of them being located in USA. This includes the programmers that may have benefited from using AI assistants. AI has already stolen great amounts of money from a very large number of people all around the world, due to the huge increases in the prices of DRAM, SSDs and HDDs. Moreover, there have already been a great number of layoffs, which truly or not have been blamed on AI. AI may have not been the true reason for those, but it certainly has provided a convenient justification. There is no doubt that the number of people who have already been harmed by AI greatly exceeds the number of people who have benefited from AI. There is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue. When used in the right way, there is no doubt that LLMs and other ML/AI tools can ensure a significant progress, but from the recent history it seems almost certain that they will be more often used in the wrong way than in the right way, so most people will be negatively affected, not positively. The problem is not AI itself, but the fact that AI is a tool controlled by extremely evil people, e.g. Sam Altman and Larry Ellison. It is very unlikely that this will change and this is the reason why AI will do more harm than good. (There are a lot of examples that prove that individuals like those that I have named are truly evil, but I will just quote from TFA: "Larry Ellison predicts an AI-powered surveillance state in which “citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on”". Even only this is enough to prove that Ellison is an enemy.)
- fireant 7mo agoWell it's not like AI investment money is coming out of thin air - ultimately normies are buying stuff that AI enhanced companies produce which allows those companies to feed this money to the actual winners/1% that truly benefits. I don't think that it's fair to say that AI has been only negative to the normies, when they need to be the ones willingly feeding the beast with their money for the whole thing to perpetuate. That said I obviously also see a bunch of negative consequences, and perhaps agree that the negatives outweigh the positives.