5 ms·

Incredibly sad how many people have no concept of collective achievement, or an understanding of what technological progress buys all of humanity. It always com

Incredibly sad how many people have no concept of collective achievement, or an understanding of what technological progress buys all of humanity. It always comes at a cost, and it's the reason we aren't dying of starvation and plague in a cold winter field at the age of 45. I guess cynicism is trendy.

microtonal 6mo ago
Technology is not value-less. There is technology with good effects on society and technology with bad effects on society. I think very few people who are against, say, surveillance capitalism are against antibiotics. It is a completely coherent position to like most technological progress, but at the same time be critical of some uses of ML/AI. You are just making straw men here by suggesting that people that are critical of AI are critical of all technology.
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  AI is fundamentally automation of labor, and to be opposed to AI instead of preparing our systems for a post-labor world is dangerously misguided - especially with historical context on what automation of labor has done for humanity.
  - microtonal 6mo ago
    AI is fundamentally automation of labor, Well, yes, but if humans need to stay in the loop (as most previous automations of labor), it is also moving the means of production into the hands of a small number of tech companies. In 2010 or 2020, anyone with a laptop could create a startup. It might be the case that in 2030, you could only do so if the major frontier model providers allow you to do so and do not make it so expensive that it's only usable by entrenched players. I am not fundamentally against AI, on the contrary, but I think the models should be in the hands of the wider population (i.e. open weight models), so that everyone has the means of production and can benefit from the automation. Also, it would only be fair, since the models are trained on the collective output of humanity. Of course, there are several barriers currently. There are pretty good open models, but running the near-frontier versions requires a lot of capital in the form of GPUs.
  - financltravsty 6mo ago
    How do I never see your posts again because it's clear you have more free time than sense on your hands.
2ndorderthought 6mo ago
Out of curiosity. How can you explain to a Gen z fresh graduate with 50k in student loans, 5 dollar gasoline (and rising), no healthcare, housing prices at an all time high, and competing with their entire age group for the honor of holding multiple minimum wage jobs that are below the survivability wage that they should feel a collective sense of achievement? UBI isn't coming and we have multiple individuals who own measurable percentages of all of the worlds wealth. Those same people are investing heavily in automating all work these young people could hope to provide while waxing poetic about changing laws and owning media companies with cold hard cash. It's not an anomalous sense of cynicism, hundreds of thousands of people are looking at their options and feeling hopeless. I'm glad I am not in that camp. The reason I'm not is because I was born sooner than they were. I don't blame them at all, it's looking a lot like the generation after them is cannon fodder if things trend the way they are now.
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  > UBI isn't coming I would tell them this is the problem to fix. Taking your anger out on AI is the most shortsighted thing. When faced with a powerful new capability, disavowing the capability instead of enabling society to leverage it is absurd. AI is fundamentally the automation of labor, and we can all see the incredible fruits we all reap from similar past leaps in capability. Structure your society for a post-labor world. Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition. To do so is a disservice to the species and all future humans - concretely, your own loved ones and especially your children.
  - arvid-lind 6mo ago
    > Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition. You clearly accept this as Progress, but isn't the core debate here that it doesn't improve life for humans?
    - solenoid0937 6mo ago
      You can't say a technology isn't improving life for humans, what, just 4 years into the introduction of the technology? That is not even the blink of an eye. Does literally no one look at things from a historical perspective? The history of automation is right there on the Internet, for you to peruse at will.
roxolotl 6mo ago
This is actually a solid comment because ideally it would be the case. I think it's the opposite though. The problem with LLMs is they are marketed not as a collective achievement. They are at their heart a tool which should belong to collective humanity. We should all be getting dividends from them and they should be collectively owned. But instead we're seeing them explicitly marketed as tools for capital centralization. Of course no one sees it as a collective achievement when the announcements are aimed at either scaring people about how even the team behind them is worried about releasing it or for CEOs to replace workers. Artemis II, at least in the states, was an example of people genuinely feeling collective achievement. There is absolutely no reason this AI moment couldn't be that. Instead though the companies involved have explicitly chosen fear and capital as their marketing tools. We should be seeing this as an incredible time but those involved do not want us to and plan to keep the spoils for themselves so we shouldn't.
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  Throughout history, automation has rarely been "marketed" as a collective achievement. That doesn't make it not one. > But instead we're seeing them explicitly marketed as tools for capital centralization. And labor automation, which is the single most valuable thing any technology can do. But if your answer is "kill the technology" instead of "structure society to live with it," of course you will experience pain.
  - surgical_fire 6mo ago
    Zyklon B was also fundamentally an automation of labor. Technology is value neutral. What you call cynicism is actually people thinking more critically about technology. Technology is not a fundamental good. It can be detrimental and destructive. It can be used to oppress, to kill, to harm. Approaching this following a "we can fix things later" stance is horribly reductive and misguided. You spoke of History in other replies. History is littered with technological advancements that caused immeasurable harm to society.
    - solenoid0937 6mo ago
HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
Interest on the national debt now costs over $1T/yr - 14% of the budget. Trump is talking about cutting social security. The reason the US economy is in a death spiral is because of moving jobs overseas, both physical and outsourcing. Wages that should have gone to US workers to be spent in the US economy are now being used to boost overseas economies like India instead. "AI" is an achievement alright (so was designing a nuclear bomb), but if it is allowed to further gut the middle class, lowering wages, and hence spending (and tax receipts, to extent that matters any more) then it will only hasten the spiraling of the US economy down the toilet.
- solenoid0937 6mo ago
  The way to fix that is with structural changes to society, not stopping AI.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
    Companies are going to do what it best for their quarterly results, and for the C-suites bonuses. They are going to carry on outsourcing, damaging the US, if allowed to, and will replace workers with AI too, inflicting exactly the same type of harm, if that turns out to be possible. The only way to prevent either of these is with legislation.
ThrowawayR2 6mo ago
There's a hidden unproven assertion that LLMs are net positive technological progress. Leaded gasoline was effective at improving engine performance, asbestos was an effective and low cost insulation, DDT was a very useful insecticide used in immense quantities, and thalidomide was an effective sedative. LLMs may yet join them.
insane_dreamer 6mo ago
> what technological progress buys all of humanity I have yet to read a reasonable and logically sound explanation of how "AI" -- not the LLM technology itself, the tool, but rather its implementation as the promise to corporations that they can (eventually) replace most human labor -- is benefitting "all of humanity" (I'd even settle for "most of humanity"). You're welcome to try.
nicbou 6mo ago
It's a collective achievement. It was trained on humanity's creative output. The value, however, is being captured by a very small segment of the population, at the expense of everyone else. These tools are a very explicit threatening working people, artists and the independent web. A lot of the things we love are getting killed not as a side effect, but deliberately.

microtonal 6mo ago

Technology is not value-less. There is technology with good effects on society and technology with bad effects on society. I think very few people who are against, say, surveillance capitalism are against antibiotics. It is a completely coherent position to like most technological progress, but at the same time be critical of some uses of ML/AI. You are just making straw men here by suggesting that people that are critical of AI are critical of all technology.

solenoid0937 6mo ago
AI is fundamentally automation of labor, and to be opposed to AI instead of preparing our systems for a post-labor world is dangerously misguided - especially with historical context on what automation of labor has done for humanity.
- microtonal 6mo ago
  AI is fundamentally automation of labor, Well, yes, but if humans need to stay in the loop (as most previous automations of labor), it is also moving the means of production into the hands of a small number of tech companies. In 2010 or 2020, anyone with a laptop could create a startup. It might be the case that in 2030, you could only do so if the major frontier model providers allow you to do so and do not make it so expensive that it's only usable by entrenched players. I am not fundamentally against AI, on the contrary, but I think the models should be in the hands of the wider population (i.e. open weight models), so that everyone has the means of production and can benefit from the automation. Also, it would only be fair, since the models are trained on the collective output of humanity. Of course, there are several barriers currently. There are pretty good open models, but running the near-frontier versions requires a lot of capital in the form of GPUs.
- financltravsty 6mo ago
  How do I never see your posts again because it's clear you have more free time than sense on your hands.

2ndorderthought 6mo ago

Out of curiosity. How can you explain to a Gen z fresh graduate with 50k in student loans, 5 dollar gasoline (and rising), no healthcare, housing prices at an all time high, and competing with their entire age group for the honor of holding multiple minimum wage jobs that are below the survivability wage that they should feel a collective sense of achievement? UBI isn't coming and we have multiple individuals who own measurable percentages of all of the worlds wealth. Those same people are investing heavily in automating all work these young people could hope to provide while waxing poetic about changing laws and owning media companies with cold hard cash. It's not an anomalous sense of cynicism, hundreds of thousands of people are looking at their options and feeling hopeless. I'm glad I am not in that camp. The reason I'm not is because I was born sooner than they were. I don't blame them at all, it's looking a lot like the generation after them is cannon fodder if things trend the way they are now.

solenoid0937 6mo ago
> UBI isn't coming I would tell them this is the problem to fix. Taking your anger out on AI is the most shortsighted thing. When faced with a powerful new capability, disavowing the capability instead of enabling society to leverage it is absurd. AI is fundamentally the automation of labor, and we can all see the incredible fruits we all reap from similar past leaps in capability. Structure your society for a post-labor world. Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition. To do so is a disservice to the species and all future humans - concretely, your own loved ones and especially your children.
- arvid-lind 6mo ago
  > Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition. You clearly accept this as Progress, but isn't the core debate here that it doesn't improve life for humans?
  - solenoid0937 6mo ago
    You can't say a technology isn't improving life for humans, what, just 4 years into the introduction of the technology? That is not even the blink of an eye. Does literally no one look at things from a historical perspective? The history of automation is right there on the Internet, for you to peruse at will.

roxolotl 6mo ago

This is actually a solid comment because ideally it would be the case. I think it's the opposite though. The problem with LLMs is they are marketed not as a collective achievement. They are at their heart a tool which should belong to collective humanity. We should all be getting dividends from them and they should be collectively owned. But instead we're seeing them explicitly marketed as tools for capital centralization. Of course no one sees it as a collective achievement when the announcements are aimed at either scaring people about how even the team behind them is worried about releasing it or for CEOs to replace workers. Artemis II, at least in the states, was an example of people genuinely feeling collective achievement. There is absolutely no reason this AI moment couldn't be that. Instead though the companies involved have explicitly chosen fear and capital as their marketing tools. We should be seeing this as an incredible time but those involved do not want us to and plan to keep the spoils for themselves so we shouldn't.

solenoid0937 6mo ago
Throughout history, automation has rarely been "marketed" as a collective achievement. That doesn't make it not one. > But instead we're seeing them explicitly marketed as tools for capital centralization. And labor automation, which is the single most valuable thing any technology can do. But if your answer is "kill the technology" instead of "structure society to live with it," of course you will experience pain.
- surgical_fire 6mo ago
  Zyklon B was also fundamentally an automation of labor. Technology is value neutral. What you call cynicism is actually people thinking more critically about technology. Technology is not a fundamental good. It can be detrimental and destructive. It can be used to oppress, to kill, to harm. Approaching this following a "we can fix things later" stance is horribly reductive and misguided. You spoke of History in other replies. History is littered with technological advancements that caused immeasurable harm to society.
  - solenoid0937 6mo ago

HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago

Interest on the national debt now costs over $1T/yr - 14% of the budget. Trump is talking about cutting social security. The reason the US economy is in a death spiral is because of moving jobs overseas, both physical and outsourcing. Wages that should have gone to US workers to be spent in the US economy are now being used to boost overseas economies like India instead. "AI" is an achievement alright (so was designing a nuclear bomb), but if it is allowed to further gut the middle class, lowering wages, and hence spending (and tax receipts, to extent that matters any more) then it will only hasten the spiraling of the US economy down the toilet.

solenoid0937 6mo ago
The way to fix that is with structural changes to society, not stopping AI.
- HarHarVeryFunny 6mo ago
  Companies are going to do what it best for their quarterly results, and for the C-suites bonuses. They are going to carry on outsourcing, damaging the US, if allowed to, and will replace workers with AI too, inflicting exactly the same type of harm, if that turns out to be possible. The only way to prevent either of these is with legislation.

ThrowawayR2 6mo ago

There's a hidden unproven assertion that LLMs are net positive technological progress. Leaded gasoline was effective at improving engine performance, asbestos was an effective and low cost insulation, DDT was a very useful insecticide used in immense quantities, and thalidomide was an effective sedative. LLMs may yet join them.

insane_dreamer 6mo ago

> what technological progress buys all of humanity I have yet to read a reasonable and logically sound explanation of how "AI" -- not the LLM technology itself, the tool, but rather its implementation as the promise to corporations that they can (eventually) replace most human labor -- is benefitting "all of humanity" (I'd even settle for "most of humanity"). You're welcome to try.

nicbou 6mo ago

It's a collective achievement. It was trained on humanity's creative output. The value, however, is being captured by a very small segment of the population, at the expense of everyone else. These tools are a very explicit threatening working people, artists and the independent web. A lot of the things we love are getting killed not as a side effect, but deliberately.