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I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. Thi

I fear that outside of cataclysmic global warfare or some sort of butlerian jihad (which amounts to the same) this genie is not going back into the bottle. This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it, and almost all of the negatives cited by Kyle and likeminded (such as myself) are in fact positives for them in context of massive population reduction to eliminate "useless eaters" and technological societal control over the "NPCs" of the world that remain since they will likely be programmed by their peered AI that will do the thinking for them. So what to do entirely depends on whether you feel we are responsible to the future generations or not. If the answer is no, then what to do is scoped to the personal concerns. If yes, we need a revolution and it needs to be global.

underlipton 6mo ago
Gonna beat this drum till it breaks: General strike and bank runs. Not to collapse the economic system, but to present a credible threat of collapsing the economic system which AI development, as these elite and their platforms know it, relies on. When they're freaking out, we call for negotiations. This only works if people with "secure" livelihoods not just participate, but drive the effort. Getting paid six figures or more in a layoff-proof position? Cool, you need to be the first person walking out the door on May 1st (or whenever this happens), and the first person at the bank counter requesting your max withdrawal.
- yubblegum 6mo ago
  Geopolitical realities and considerations require that the effort is synchronized and global. Assume great power X's society revolts and decides to reign in the financial and technological barons and lords, and do away with such things. Meanwhile, great powers Y, Z etc. are not doing this and one day people in X will wake up to AI drone swarms of these powers taking them over and they're back to square 1 and now not even a great power. Collective humanity needs to think this matter through and take global action. This is the only way I fear, short of natural calamities (act of God) that unplugs humanity from advanced tech for a few generations again.
- nradov 6mo ago
  You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead. As for bank runs, no one cares. The big banks no longer need retail customer deposits as a source of capital for fractional reserve lending. Modern bank funding mechanisms are more sophisticated than that.
  - underlipton 6mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban... In which the FDIC took unprecedented action, drawing down the DIF to backstop depositors beyond the insured $250k and offering a credit facility to other banks, in order to prevent "contagion" - a panic, a bank run - which was presumed to be likely after the 3rd largest bank collapse in US history. A bank almost no one outside of California had heard of before it died. Bank runs are serious business, and far from being something "no one cares" about, even just talking about them makes banks nervous, because they can happen to even "healthy" banks. The big banks have been undercapitalized for more than a decade, and even a moderate run on a regional institution threatens the entire system. Which is why it should be done, or at least signaled as incoming; it's good leverage. >You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead. The implicit, "I'll stay here, where I'm nice and secure," is delusion. People care about your outcomes even if you don't care about ours. Take the invitation to organize with others to secure your own future, to show just how much you're needed before your employer decides that you're not (however erroneously).
    - nradov 6mo ago
      You really missed the point. SVB was undone by their own failure to manage interest rate risk, and then by the actions of corporate depositors. Retail banking customers had little to do with it. Corporations certainly aren't going to participate in some sort of pointless consumer protest.
      - underlipton 6mo ago
        It's a liquidity problem. Retail absolutely can drop any given bank into a liquidity crunch by pulling out too many funds, too quickly. It doesn't even need to put a given bank at risk of insolvency, if the situation is read as widespread and/or growing, because as the event expands, so does the likelihood that someone else is mismanaging their books. Someone who is hooked into another institution, and another, and another. Contagion. Anyway, corporate depositors have a duty to safeguard their capital. That means that if a bank run is underway by retail depositors, they're in line too, willing participants or not. This is why, again, even discussion of bank runs is discouraged, and their likelihood and effectiveness downplayed. They're built on turning the imperative of self-interest, which the financial industry is built on, on its head.
- Ifkaluva 6mo ago
  > layoff-proof position What? I don’t know anybody who has a layoff-proof position.
  - underlipton 6mo ago
    Should have been in quotes. People who think that they're secure (they're not).
geremiiah 6mo ago
> This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it If AI is smart enough to replace the 99.999% it's also smart enough to replace the 0.001%.
- yubblegum 6mo ago
  I have given this serious thought over the years. I even have an unfinished novel exactly around that topic. Energy. The key is controlling their access to energy.
- layer8 6mo ago
  That fact doesn’t prevent the 0.001% from continuing to control it.
  - geremiiah 6mo ago
    Point is, if an AGI becomes powerful and capable enough of replacing 99.999% of humanity, the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk won't be able to control it.
    - nradov 6mo ago
      An electrician with access to a circuit breaker will be able to control it.
      - defterGoose 6mo ago
        It's only a little bit comforting that computers still live in meatspace when you consider something like an AI-controlled Metal Gear roaming around though.
      - geremiiah 6mo ago
        The AI would have redundancy, both in terms of its power source and also because it can literally replicate itself and have multiple instances running all over the world. Also, an army of drones that you'd have to dodge just to go anywhere near any critical infrastructure.
repelsteeltje 6mo ago
I'm tempted to (bitterly) point out that feeling responsible for future generations was already off the table decades ago when we decided to ignore our ecological footprints.
- Tarq0n 6mo ago
  Ecological footprints are more about the distribution of resource burdens between first and third world countries. Predictions about resource exhaustion have proved mostly false.
ernst_klim 6mo ago
> to eliminate "useless eaters" It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people. It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replacement are a fuss, a pile of lies to justify layoffs and worsening financial situation. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-openclaw-ai-agent-accidentally-deleted-her-emails https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-opencla...
- MarcelOlsz 6mo ago
  People have this misconception that first it was one way, and then <tech was released>, and they'll wake up and suddenly it is another. It's a slow creep. 10 years ago there were 5 of us on a team each responsible for something specific. Now I can do all of that. Teams and companies will downsize. How do you see AI creating more jobs? (I need some hope right now lol).
  - nradov 6mo ago
    A few hundred years ago it took a team of 5 plus draft animals plough a field. Now one guy with a tractor can do it. Some teams and companies will downsize. New companies will appear doing things that we can't even imagine yet.
    - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
      > New companies will appear doing things that we can't even imagine yet. I read this take a lot but I don't buy it. This isn't guaranteed by any means. And even if it does happen, isn't it just as likely that AI is deployed into those companies too and they don't actually result in any job growth?
      - nradov 6mo ago
        [flagged]
mrdependable 6mo ago
It would be difficult, but not necessarily THAT difficult. With enough pushback from the public, AI would start getting regulated in meaningful ways. The problem is too many people love it, and see no problem with it. Because the momentum and money is on their side, it feels like it is impossible. Maybe things will turn out fine and we will just live in a similar but more depressing future, but if the pro-AI crowd gets bit and changes sides that could be a turning point.
- munksbeer 6mo ago
  > Maybe things will turn out fine and we will just live in a similar but more depressing future Or things could turn out more than fine and we progress as we've always progressed, towards more abundance and humans in 30 years will live massively better lives than we live today, just as we live massively better lives than people at just about any previous point in history.
  - cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - joquarky 6mo ago
    > more abundance This is blatantly unsustainable. > just about any previous point in history The late 1990s is an exception for most people. It sounds like things are going well for you. Be mindful of psychological projection.
    - munksbeer 6mo ago
      > It sounds like things are going well for you. Be mindful of psychological projection. It sounds like things might not be going well for you. I'm sorry. But be mindful of bias or seductive doomerism. The median person in the world today lives a much better life than about any previous point in history.
tim333 6mo ago
The article skips the potential upsides of an AI future - like curing diseases, abundance, merge type immortality. I'm keen myself with nothing to do with the goals of the 0.001% really. I think the future generations will like the above and look back on now like we look back at medieval dentistary.
- mrdependable 6mo ago
  Those upsides are currently just a fantasy and ignore the very real current downsides. They also do not in any way rely on AI to become a reality.
- nradov 6mo ago
  I have nothing against AI as a technology but the notion of it "curing diseases" is so silly. The limiting factors are largely in fundamental biology research and then human clinical trials. There is no plausible way that LLMs will make those activities 10× faster or cheaper. Hard work still has to be done in the messy real world outside of computers.
  - tim333 6mo ago
    Re. disease cures I am hoping more for AlphaFold type stuff and simulating cells in silico rather than ChatGPT type LLMs. There is some progress like >“There are people sitting in our office in King’s Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. “That’s happening right now.” https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/research-news/isomorphic-labs-nears-first-trials-of-ai-drugs-ddev25/ https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/research-news/isomorphic-labs... and >...enables researchers to move seamlessly from AI-generated sequences to functional antibodies in just days https://the-decoder.com/googles-ai-drug-discovery-spinoff-isomorphic-labs-claims-major-leap-beyond-alphafold-3/ https://the-decoder.com/googles-ai-drug-discovery-spinoff-is...
    - ted_dunning 6mo ago
      And none of that doesn't improve the throughput of the clinical trials. It just decrease the cost of coming up with things to put into trial.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

underlipton 6mo ago

Gonna beat this drum till it breaks: General strike and bank runs. Not to collapse the economic system, but to present a credible threat of collapsing the economic system which AI development, as these elite and their platforms know it, relies on. When they're freaking out, we call for negotiations. This only works if people with "secure" livelihoods not just participate, but drive the effort. Getting paid six figures or more in a layoff-proof position? Cool, you need to be the first person walking out the door on May 1st (or whenever this happens), and the first person at the bank counter requesting your max withdrawal.

yubblegum 6mo ago
Geopolitical realities and considerations require that the effort is synchronized and global. Assume great power X's society revolts and decides to reign in the financial and technological barons and lords, and do away with such things. Meanwhile, great powers Y, Z etc. are not doing this and one day people in X will wake up to AI drone swarms of these powers taking them over and they're back to square 1 and now not even a great power. Collective humanity needs to think this matter through and take global action. This is the only way I fear, short of natural calamities (act of God) that unplugs humanity from advanced tech for a few generations again.
nradov 6mo ago
You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead. As for bank runs, no one cares. The big banks no longer need retail customer deposits as a source of capital for fractional reserve lending. Modern bank funding mechanisms are more sophisticated than that.
- underlipton 6mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban... In which the FDIC took unprecedented action, drawing down the DIF to backstop depositors beyond the insured $250k and offering a credit facility to other banks, in order to prevent "contagion" - a panic, a bank run - which was presumed to be likely after the 3rd largest bank collapse in US history. A bank almost no one outside of California had heard of before it died. Bank runs are serious business, and far from being something "no one cares" about, even just talking about them makes banks nervous, because they can happen to even "healthy" banks. The big banks have been undercapitalized for more than a decade, and even a moderate run on a regional institution threatens the entire system. Which is why it should be done, or at least signaled as incoming; it's good leverage. >You're free to take a vacation or quit working if you want to. Go ahead. The implicit, "I'll stay here, where I'm nice and secure," is delusion. People care about your outcomes even if you don't care about ours. Take the invitation to organize with others to secure your own future, to show just how much you're needed before your employer decides that you're not (however erroneously).
  - nradov 6mo ago
    You really missed the point. SVB was undone by their own failure to manage interest rate risk, and then by the actions of corporate depositors. Retail banking customers had little to do with it. Corporations certainly aren't going to participate in some sort of pointless consumer protest.
    - underlipton 6mo ago
      It's a liquidity problem. Retail absolutely can drop any given bank into a liquidity crunch by pulling out too many funds, too quickly. It doesn't even need to put a given bank at risk of insolvency, if the situation is read as widespread and/or growing, because as the event expands, so does the likelihood that someone else is mismanaging their books. Someone who is hooked into another institution, and another, and another. Contagion. Anyway, corporate depositors have a duty to safeguard their capital. That means that if a bank run is underway by retail depositors, they're in line too, willing participants or not. This is why, again, even discussion of bank runs is discouraged, and their likelihood and effectiveness downplayed. They're built on turning the imperative of self-interest, which the financial industry is built on, on its head.
Ifkaluva 6mo ago
> layoff-proof position What? I don’t know anybody who has a layoff-proof position.
- underlipton 6mo ago
  Should have been in quotes. People who think that they're secure (they're not).

geremiiah 6mo ago

> This tech is 100% aligned with the goals of the 0.001% that own and control it If AI is smart enough to replace the 99.999% it's also smart enough to replace the 0.001%.

yubblegum 6mo ago
I have given this serious thought over the years. I even have an unfinished novel exactly around that topic. Energy. The key is controlling their access to energy.
layer8 6mo ago
That fact doesn’t prevent the 0.001% from continuing to control it.
- geremiiah 6mo ago
  Point is, if an AGI becomes powerful and capable enough of replacing 99.999% of humanity, the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk won't be able to control it.
  - nradov 6mo ago
    An electrician with access to a circuit breaker will be able to control it.
    - defterGoose 6mo ago
      It's only a little bit comforting that computers still live in meatspace when you consider something like an AI-controlled Metal Gear roaming around though.
    - geremiiah 6mo ago
      The AI would have redundancy, both in terms of its power source and also because it can literally replicate itself and have multiple instances running all over the world. Also, an army of drones that you'd have to dodge just to go anywhere near any critical infrastructure.

repelsteeltje 6mo ago

I'm tempted to (bitterly) point out that feeling responsible for future generations was already off the table decades ago when we decided to ignore our ecological footprints.

Tarq0n 6mo ago
Ecological footprints are more about the distribution of resource burdens between first and third world countries. Predictions about resource exhaustion have proved mostly false.

ernst_klim 6mo ago

> to eliminate "useless eaters" It can't. It can't even deal with emails without randomly deleting your email folder [1]. Saying that it can make decisions and replace humans is akin of saying that random number generator can make decisions and can replace people. It's just an automation tool, and just like all automation tools before it it will create more jobs than destroy. All the CEOs' talks about labor replacement are a fuss, a pile of lies to justify layoffs and worsening financial situation. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-openclaw-ai-agent-accidentally-deleted-her-emails https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-security-researchers-opencla...

MarcelOlsz 6mo ago
People have this misconception that first it was one way, and then <tech was released>, and they'll wake up and suddenly it is another. It's a slow creep. 10 years ago there were 5 of us on a team each responsible for something specific. Now I can do all of that. Teams and companies will downsize. How do you see AI creating more jobs? (I need some hope right now lol).
- nradov 6mo ago
  A few hundred years ago it took a team of 5 plus draft animals plough a field. Now one guy with a tractor can do it. Some teams and companies will downsize. New companies will appear doing things that we can't even imagine yet.
  - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
    > New companies will appear doing things that we can't even imagine yet. I read this take a lot but I don't buy it. This isn't guaranteed by any means. And even if it does happen, isn't it just as likely that AI is deployed into those companies too and they don't actually result in any job growth?
    - nradov 6mo ago
      [flagged]

mrdependable 6mo ago

It would be difficult, but not necessarily THAT difficult. With enough pushback from the public, AI would start getting regulated in meaningful ways. The problem is too many people love it, and see no problem with it. Because the momentum and money is on their side, it feels like it is impossible. Maybe things will turn out fine and we will just live in a similar but more depressing future, but if the pro-AI crowd gets bit and changes sides that could be a turning point.

munksbeer 6mo ago
> Maybe things will turn out fine and we will just live in a similar but more depressing future Or things could turn out more than fine and we progress as we've always progressed, towards more abundance and humans in 30 years will live massively better lives than we live today, just as we live massively better lives than people at just about any previous point in history.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
- joquarky 6mo ago
  > more abundance This is blatantly unsustainable. > just about any previous point in history The late 1990s is an exception for most people. It sounds like things are going well for you. Be mindful of psychological projection.
  - munksbeer 6mo ago
    > It sounds like things are going well for you. Be mindful of psychological projection. It sounds like things might not be going well for you. I'm sorry. But be mindful of bias or seductive doomerism. The median person in the world today lives a much better life than about any previous point in history.

tim333 6mo ago

The article skips the potential upsides of an AI future - like curing diseases, abundance, merge type immortality. I'm keen myself with nothing to do with the goals of the 0.001% really. I think the future generations will like the above and look back on now like we look back at medieval dentistary.

mrdependable 6mo ago
Those upsides are currently just a fantasy and ignore the very real current downsides. They also do not in any way rely on AI to become a reality.
nradov 6mo ago
I have nothing against AI as a technology but the notion of it "curing diseases" is so silly. The limiting factors are largely in fundamental biology research and then human clinical trials. There is no plausible way that LLMs will make those activities 10× faster or cheaper. Hard work still has to be done in the messy real world outside of computers.
- tim333 6mo ago
  Re. disease cures I am hoping more for AlphaFold type stuff and simulating cells in silico rather than ChatGPT type LLMs. There is some progress like >“There are people sitting in our office in King’s Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. “That’s happening right now.” https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/research-news/isomorphic-labs-nears-first-trials-of-ai-drugs-ddev25/ https://www.htworld.co.uk/news/research-news/isomorphic-labs... and >...enables researchers to move seamlessly from AI-generated sequences to functional antibodies in just days https://the-decoder.com/googles-ai-drug-discovery-spinoff-isomorphic-labs-claims-major-leap-beyond-alphafold-3/ https://the-decoder.com/googles-ai-drug-discovery-spinoff-is...
  - ted_dunning 6mo ago
    And none of that doesn't improve the throughput of the clinical trials. It just decrease the cost of coming up with things to put into trial.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]