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I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use

• lacunary 4mo ago
  yes it's called "actually having democratic elections"
  • merelydev 4mo ago
    What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics?
    • rebolek 4mo ago
      Then vote for politicians who do.
      • xp84 4mo ago
        Few of those are ever running. Mostly we have just two brands of smooth-brains whose only policy aim is “preventing that other group of assholes from gaining any power, because they and their supporters are pure evil!”
        • Joker_vD 4mo ago
          Not a true democracy, then /s
        • steveBK123 4mo ago
          Each side gets the smooth brains they crave because for ~50% of the population it's become a team sport / religion situation. A majority of people have not thought through 1/10th of the policy positions they automatically support/reject based on the team hat color. There's a quote I will mangle and I forget the source of that's something like "If you agree with all the positions of your chosen political party, either you have thought through every option and came to the same conclusions on dozens of topics, or you haven't thought through anything".
          • xp84 4mo ago
            Comment is spot on, though I'd like to point out: > because for ~50% of the population it's become a team sport / religion situation It's kinda even worse. We can only have two parties because of FPTP, and turnout is about 60% of voting-eligible population on average. We know from recent popular vote that that 60% is split roughly 50-50. So 30% of the voting population is Team Blue Hat, and 30% is Team Red Hat. If you can get 15.1% of the population to vote for an unserious clown, they'll win their respective party's nomination. And in most states, one of the parties is a pretty sure lock in the general. 15% is a pretty low bar. Compare: Up to 30% of people think "chemtrails" are at least a "somewhat" real thing, and 5% of people believe vaccines contain microchips. So the bar for getting a guaranteed win is somewhere between those two wacky and easily disproven beliefs. https://www.cnn.com/us/chemtrails-conspiracy-theory-explained-cec#:~:text=10%25%20of%20Americans%20believed%20the%20conspiracy%20%E2%80%9Ccompletely%2C%E2%80%9D%20while%20upwards%20of%2030%25%20of%20Americans%20at%20least%20found%20it%20%E2%80%9Csomewhat%E2%80%9D%20true. https://www.cnn.com/us/chemtrails-conspiracy-theory-explaine... https://www.rutgers.edu/news/nearly-half-americans-still-unsure-about-popular-vaccine-misinformation#:~:text=5%20percent%20of%20respondents%20thought%20vaccines%20contained%20microchips%2C https://www.rutgers.edu/news/nearly-half-americans-still-uns...
            • xp84 4mo ago
              Correction: "So 30% of the voting population is Team Blue Hat, and 30% is Team Red Hat." should have said "of the voting-eligible population"
• ricardo81 4mo ago
  I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps. Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism. The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.
  • krapp 4mo ago
    What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.
    • ricardo81 4mo ago
      The point being that's the solution. I didn't say it is decentralised.
      • krapp 4mo ago
        How is it possible to decentralize a technology that needs data centers the size of Manhattan? It doesn't seem like a reasonable solution. A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense.
        • ricardo81 4mo ago
          Because it has extremely plausible uses beyond the example you gave. More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything. If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model. It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP.
    • mike_hearn 4mo ago
      Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download.
• sealeck 4mo ago
  > The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.
  • SilverElfin 4mo ago
    > a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) What the hell is a “cum-captain”? Search isn’t helping.
    • huhkerrf 4mo ago
      Probably this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum I.e. finance man as well as captain of industry
      • whimsicalism 4mo ago
        the correct usage is dashes on both sides of the word, the usage above was extra confusing because it was incorrect
    • sealeck 4mo ago
      As in cum-"captain of industry"
      • froh 4mo ago
        non native speaker here - I don't get it.
        • HappMacDonald 4mo ago
          It's an old English word (predating the sexual connotation): cum - Used in indicating a thing or person which has two or more roles, functions, or natures, or which has changed from one to another. Basically nobody uses that language construct anymore until you run headlong into it in a Hackernews comment or something
• Borg3 4mo ago
  Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too. Dark times ahead...
  • amelius 4mo ago
    The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.
    • Chinjut 4mo ago
      What's stupid about the disclaimer?
      • amelius 4mo ago
        It basically says "we have no control over it", and "we don't know how it works".
        • miyoji 4mo ago
          Both of those things happen to be entirely true, though.
          • amelius 4mo ago
            Yes, that doesn't make it less embarrassing. My point remains: they can control it if they can control it. Because right now they can't even take responsibility for it.
          • steveBK123 4mo ago
            Sure but theres a level of uncertainty being expressed for a paid service that you don't see elsewhere. Imagine if every time you booked an uber it was like "your drive may crash the car". Or whenever you ate at a restaurant, the waiter said "there is a chance the chef will poison you". Or your bank statement said something like "these numbers may be wrong".
• matusp 4mo ago
  This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.
  • wizzwizz4 4mo ago
    And the Luddite movement, also in the 19th century.
    • Joker_vD 4mo ago
      And the peasants' revolt of 1381, with John Ball's memorable "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" But it's a perennial question, really, and it won't go away any time soon.
  • marcosdumay 4mo ago
    And "the means of production belong to everyone" was the wrong answer. The problem was only solved by a different form of democratization.
• fidotron 4mo ago
  It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.
  • yonaguska 4mo ago
    be the change you wish to see- share your thoughts.
    • fidotron 4mo ago
      That's not really the point: the key question is why HN is so out to lunch on this and closely related areas. It's clearly somewhat structural. Look at the state of discussion just in this thread. I minimized my contribution for this reason.
  • booleandilemma 4mo ago
    Please tell us what we should be thinking.
  • sanderjd 4mo ago
    Where will you?
• nicechianti 4mo ago
  [dead]
• steveBK123 4mo ago
  > The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments.
  • knollimar 4mo ago
    Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now. We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs
    • dgellow 4mo ago
      > If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs They knew that was the case. They don't care. The maga crowd isn't acting in good faith. Nobody other than the cult members and people who aren't paying attention thought that would actually bring manufacturing back to the US. The point of the tariffs is to devalue USD (something Trump wants to do since circa the 80s) and to strengthen Trump power/influence. He wants everybody in the world to be forced to come and negotiate directly with him so he can see them bend their knees. The whole thing is a power play
      • jfengel 4mo ago
        I do think they believed and believe it, though the reasoning is less economic than that. Manufacturing "belongs" in the US due to our inherent superiority, and has gone elsewhere only because of ill-conceived notions of niceness. By increasing tariffs they will have to pay their proper obeisance for their inferiority, and be inspired to actually work hard like us Americans.
        • idiotsecant 4mo ago
          You need to be specific with 'they' in this case. Who are the 'they' that you think believed that steel tarrifs would improve domestic manufacturing?
• mentalgear 4mo ago
  'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation. It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few. I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level).
  • merelydev 4mo ago
    Would you agree that to some extend, the ability to control technology is an incentive for companies to develop/innovate, and the more control they have the more profitable it is?
    • HappMacDonald 4mo ago
      I would not. Especially not in the current climate when virtually every company is dropping all pretense of development and innovation (or creation of any kind) in favor of value extraction and rent-seeking. We are in this constant cycle of bubbles — the last ones I can recall bursting in 2000 and 2008 — where someone invents some new financial shell game that allows them to trade on some form of non-existent capital and then half the stock market follows along like rats after the piper until it all collapses as soon as enough people realize that everyone else also realizes the Emperor is wearing no clothes. And incidentally no, I have no idea how this particular trainwreck of fairy tail lessons all became pertinent simultaneously, but here we are. Control over things makes a lousy incentive anyway, since having said control always better empowers the appointed to just cheat the incentive instead. If the big bad wolf is at your door, "letting him in" isn't a bargaining chip you can trust to incentivize any sort of behavior other than "eating you".
  • xp84 4mo ago
    I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N. But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one.
• NickNaraghi 4mo ago
  Worth checking out the heart of what people were doing with DAOs
• anjel 4mo ago
  In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused. Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem. Now AI (set loose in the wild at the AI industry's strategic choice so as to be irreversible) seems poised to disrupt and render a very significant part of the labor force disrupted on an unprecedented societal scale and it appears to be a foregone conclusion that collateral damages won't be the causal industry's expense. Nevermind that its also poised to easily afford those social costs, and don't even consider that maybe society should be considering this obvious cause and effect. For me at least the feudal suppression of this otherwise obvious and necessary discussion is perhaps more spectacular than the causal technological breakthrough itself. Now *that's* control.
  • solenoid0937 4mo ago
    > 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem. Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness. They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough. If you required every technological venture to cover the cost for every person it "disrupts," you would halt progress entirely.
    • andrepd 4mo ago
      > They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough. They burned half a billion dollars a month of VC money at their peak to undercut taxis across the world; in quainter times this used to be called "dumping", now it's just the standard way of doing business. All the while basically flaunting the law with their whole "we're just a platform connecting people who happen to drive a car with people who happen to want to go some place, it's totally not a taxi guys". No regulations, no expensive licenses or professional certifications, no need even for a minimum wage or basic social security or insurance or any kind of protection. Amazing! Essentially the same in spirit as Airbnb, only this latter had far more destructive consequences than screwing over taxi drivers.
• bparsons 4mo ago
  So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology? Political power has always about who controls economic production, and the tools of economic production.
• andrepd 4mo ago
  Yes, politics was always about controlling power, be it military, economic, or other.
• cornholio 4mo ago
  > the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history. Extend the definition of technology to the broadest sense, from the material that allow us control over the physical reality: steam, computing; to the organizational, that enable collective human action: states, factories and assembly lines; and the ideological, that legitimize certain power arrangements: religion, nationalism, democracy, human rights etc. A feudal lord's power rested on land (material), the manorial system (organizational), and the divine right of kings or religious sanction (ideological). Even if peasant revolts happen from time to time, the arrangement is stable because the peasantry accept it as legitimate and have no economic alternative; so even when revolting they cannot imagine a different political order. Technological (broad) leaps like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution change the political possibility space so arrangements like feudalism are no longer stable, but others like capitalism, liberal democracy etc. become possible. Political actors observe these technological shifts and struggle for control, relevance and power. The old elites are contested by the new kids on the block, wielding the new technologies: the aristocrat by the bourgeois, pastoralist tribes by agricultural states, autocrats stuck with traditional propaganda by the kids with smartphones and social media. The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power? Because if it's the latter, the entire idea that democracy will somehow manage to survive and influence who gets what becomes problematic. In the new technological-historical space, democracy becomes structurally unfavorable and thus, unlikely to persist long term.
  • merelydev 4mo ago
    > Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history. Yes. But modern technology, especially software doesn't have the high barrier to entry like being a feudal lord, but successful software can be just as impactful, tie in economies of scale and network effects and it can be even more powerful, which has allowed the producers of such software to wield significant power and as a result bypass democracy. And this ties in with your point: > The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power? It remains to be seen if this era of LLMs and datacenters raises or reduces the barrier to entry for software production and in general technological innovation. The marketplace is always hungry for innovation and those that can deliver and control it will be in a position of power.
• skybrian 4mo ago
  The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over. This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while to buy some time, but the competition isn’t going to stop. It’s also not always true that technologists think they should control AI. Some companies support legislation. But there’s not a lot of progress, so they end up making their own decisions in the meantime.
  • HappMacDonald 4mo ago
    They could still form trade organizations to invent ground rules that members of the organization agree to follow, and then lobby for government to formalize those policies into broader laws that others also have to follow. This strategy would also have the advantage that experts with skin in the game of their field and cutting edge experience get to choose, hone, and debate the policies before testing them so that out-of-touch elected officials don't have to do that step which would be parsecs out of their competence. Unfortunately that would be a strategy that a real member of the real world might come up with to improve their product, their industry, their ability to create, and their relationship with the consumer. Instead we have nothing but parasites optimizing for gaming the quarterly numbers to pump and dump national institutions and building blackmail profiles against other powerful players to out-extort them while everyone involved tries to maximize how much blood they can suck.
• wartywhoa23 4mo ago
  In reality it's only one entity, which would rather remain obscured, that owns all of the above while also directing the muppet show where seemingly separate parties try to gain control over technology while squeaking funny voices of dissent. In Russian, there's a saying: He who feeds a girl is the one to dance her. In this case, the food is the money printed out of thin air.
• navane 4mo ago
  Hasn't big capital always owned technology? I don't understand what is the question here. Is this rethorical? Silicon valley owns the internet. The robber barons owned the railways. Big oil. Big pharma. The investment company owned the (slave) trading fleets. The lords owned the agriculture. The clergy owned the books. The Kings owned the armies. Technology accumulates capital, capital accumulates technology.
• analog31 4mo ago
  >>> So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology? I hope so. Recent turns of events notwithstanding, I remain optimistic about democracy in the long run. I think it's going to get harder to say with a straight face that the private sector can really manage vital institutions better than government. Recent reports about commencement speeches at college graduations suggest that within the span of a just a few years, computer programmers no believe that they are riding on the coattails of the technology oligarchs. Besides, nobody wears coats with tails any more. We we go there in one easy step? I'm not that optimistic.
• idle_zealot 4mo ago
  There's nothing really special about technology here. It's just allocation of power, the same problem as ever.
• sleight42 4mo ago
  Imagine that. People who are responsible for guiding the morals of much of the world's population see moral implications in AI. How dare these mere "religious leaders" guide their flock. FFS. Morals come from somewhere. For many, that's religion. Deal with it.
• pluralmonad 4mo ago
  There is only one moral answer. And it is not any of the ones that boil down to strangers at a distance controlling the tech in your life.
• themafia 4mo ago
  The people should. There cannot be any other correct answer. If the ownership class or the political class _can_ possibly compete for control of it, then they're both too large and too corrupt, and need to be revolted against. The purpose of our society is for people. It's not a lever for the powerful to centralize control. Those who attempt to do so always have evil as their motive.
  • cindyllm 4mo ago
    [dead]
• lebuffon 4mo ago
  My observation after numerous decades is that people who invent technology don't control it because they seldom imagine how the rest of humanity will ultimately use it. I am thinking of printing press versus newspapers with advertising business model. Same for Radio and TV. The techs made it work. The business weenies made the profit. The original "www" followed a similar path. How that plays out with AI is in motion I think.