7 ms·

As a literal leftist by any reasonable metric, the recent trend towards “I wish it was 1995” and “AI is the worst” and “tech sucks now” from people I agree with

As a literal leftist by any reasonable metric, the recent trend towards “I wish it was 1995” and “AI is the worst” and “tech sucks now” from people I agree with on many other points frustrates me to no end. “You guys know we could basically live in a Star Trek style utopia if we get this right, right?” “The DATA cenTERS are STEALING the water and breaking Taleckshual ProPerty LERRS!” Like, I thought we were for piracy, and against capital colonizing the space of creative ideas? But I guess what a lot of people were fond of was feeling important.

AngryData 4mo ago
The problem is people don't see the near future as a Star Trek utopia, they see it going more towards a dystopian landscape with handfuls of extremely wealthy elite dictating how they can live their life.
- CookieCrisp 4mo ago
  Which would make sense if they chose strategies that might stop that from happening. Instead the ones I know refuse to even learn what AI can do and refuse to see that they're not going to slow it's adoption down by sealing themselves off. The world was already heading towards a dystopian landscape without AI. So many people on this planet live in a horrific dystopia right now, and here comes along something that might help them. Might give us what we need to stop global warming. I'd rather choose something with a 1% chance of working out than what we had before, 0%.
  - AngryData 4mo ago
    But our top 2 problems are political shenanigans and energy production. And neither are going to be solved by AI, both are made worse with AI. AI is a useful tool, but tools aren't always used to improve lives.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- brandensilva 4mo ago
  It's easy to see why people fear AI when our leaders talk of a future where many are jobless and replaced with no solutions to fill in the gaps. AI adoption is a leadership failure more than a tech one right now. If you make people feel empowered with it, it can liberate work-free lives that humanity benefits from. If you use it to destroy people's livelihoods with no options it's not going to survive a revolution.
piperswe 4mo ago
If politics were trending left I’d agree with you, but as-is the bourgeoisie are the only ones that will get any upside from modern tech.
tsunagatta 4mo ago
AI is not going to give us a star trek utopia, AI is an attempt by the bourgeoise to alienate the average person from the capital that has previously always come free with their human life. AI promises a feudalist future where there is no capital that isn't owned by the ruling class. Its power is not democratized, it is concentrated in the hands of those building the data centers. That is why I'm against the data centers. I feel like all leftists should be.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Its power is not democratized, it is concentrated in the hands of those building the data centers. That is why I'm against the data centers If you really believe this (and I’m not saying I don’t, I just don’t have confidence in it), blocking domestic. datacenters doesn’t preserve that labour value. It just ensures whoever builds those datacenters controls production from afar. Like, if AI really replaces human labour, does Africa and Europe having few AI datacenters protect it from America and China? Of course not. Not outside a symbolic level that even then would have to exist with the implied consent of the powers who produce.
  - tadfisher 4mo ago
    Sorry, do Memphis residents get to control xAI's production? I think we're already in this situation.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > we're already in this situation xAI’s datacenters aren’t currently measurably replacing labour. So no, we’re not. If AI becomes economically competitive with broad sections of human labor, those who control it do have the power to replace humans. But banning domestic datacenters doesn’t stop them from existing; it just stops them from existing here. If that precondition arises, that’s just a recipe for domestic deindustrialisation. If you believe AI will replace human labor, blocking datacenters is silly. You want labor (or the public) to build and control them. I’m not convinced AI will replace labor, so I’m not yet at that step.
hack1312 4mo ago
“if we get this right” is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting here.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  But that’s the thing! We could and we can!
  - throwaway-11-1 4mo ago
    “We” can’t even effectively distribute food, healthcare and housing yet but yeah I’m sure capital will totally figure it out if we build enough machines that just accumulate more wealth to the richest people in history. I love cool new tech but I’m perfectly aware it will not do shit to solve any problem other than “eliminate or make labor cheaper”
    - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
      I mean, there are less starving people than there were in most of the world. We've made progress. In my lifetime we've made progress! I mean, there are momentary set backs and they are egregious, I agree with that for sure, but the world is wildly better than it was in the early 90s or early 00s. I was there (cue Elrond meme), I remember. And god forbid you were gay back then, or had an ailment that needed some high tech treatment, or needed to talk to someone on the other side of the planet for any reason, or wanted to have access to knoeledge. We've come so far, and the people yapping about how "everything is the worst" are reactionary. Yes there are problems, I don't want to downplay them. But largely, until very recently, things were getting better en masse and zoomed out enough in time that trend will likely continue if we don't blow it all up or do something stupid like decide that science is too scary to do. What I mostly see in these threads is "Capitalist Realism" - people can't even imagine things turning out some way other than "capital controls everything forever."
      - throwaway-11-1 4mo ago
        Your response is not addressing my claims, homelessness is increasing, life expectancy is lagging poorer countries and there are still food security issues not being addressed in the richest country in history. I’m discussing material outcomes and you want to focus on social progress….which is fine I guess? Anyway I have receipts https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/#Life%20expectancy%20at%20birth,%20in%20years,%201980-2024 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif... https://www.unc.edu/discover/u-s-life-expectancy-drop-caused-by-more-than-pandemic/ https://www.unc.edu/discover/u-s-life-expectancy-drop-caused... https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/ https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/
matthewdgreen 4mo ago
Even Star Trek admits that there are horrible events that lie between our world and the utopia.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  then perhaps we should strive not to have those horrible events, not by having nostalgia but by dreaming of a better future.
afpx 4mo ago
In 1990 I hoped my grandkids would be able to join starfleet. After watching most of the gains go to the worst, I just hope they can escape the borg.
- ben_w 4mo ago
  I was a kid in the 90s. Kinda surprised we got the (almost) universal translator before we got fusion.
  - m4rtink 4mo ago
    This does happen quite often actually - the logical progression from telegraph to digital Internet networks was interrupted by the invention and deployment of the analog telephone network. IMHO even analog television and microwave oven look kinda out of place with the technology deployed at the same time.
  - antonvs 4mo ago
    You know what else we’re going to get before fusion? Everything. Commercially viable fusion energy is still a fantasy, essentially. Anyone who claims it’s only X years away is implicitly assuming that somehow, in those X years, we’ll find solutions to several fundamental problems that may not in fact have viable solutions.
- m4rtink 4mo ago
  Imperial Guard will welcome them with an open embrace once they reach conscription age! ;-)
tadfisher 4mo ago
In Star Trek canon, humanity figured out how to live in utopia by destroying all existing power structures in a Third World War. What is happening now is we have all our existing structure, and the existing requirement to earn money to live within this structure, and the human creative output we want in our eventual utopia is used to train automata with the express goal to replace humans in those creative endeavors, removing the ability for humans to earn money by being creative themselves. It is not hard to see things from this perspective when a significant portion of writing is becoming obvious slop, and your liberal friends are having a hard time getting hired or landing writing deals or selling artwork. I would feel less important too; I'm already feeling this way when I review a PR with obvious LLM-generated descriptions and comments that reference the prompt. Ideally, feeling important wouldn't be pejorative. Ideally, we'd have a way for artists to have food and shelter and continue to produce art. The hopes that AI will cause this to happen are equivalent to hoping WWIII will come along and wipe out 2/3 of humanity so we can start over with United Earth and warp drives and replicators.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  > In Star Trek canon, humanity figured out how to live in utopia by destroying all existing power structures in a Third World War. Perhaps we could try to destroy those power structures without having a giant war lol, just saying. > What is happening now is we have all our existing structure, and the existing requirement to earn money to live within this structure, and the human creative output we want in our eventual utopia is used to train automata with the express goal to replace humans in those creative endeavors, removing the ability for humans to earn money by being creative themselves. Right, I get the frustration, but how many "creators" were doing truly creative and expressive work writing ad copy or making up logos for shoe companies or whatever. The problem people have is capitalism, not the robots and it's short sighted of people to be angry at software tools rather than the system that has forced them to trade their time and skills for the right to exist. I've literally lost my career before. The one thing that getting deathly ill has taught me is that "all things will come to an end." Someday, that will include me, but hopefully not today, and thanks to modern medicine, hopefully not any time soon. The idea that the only way an artist should be able to justify their right to survive is by shitting out jpgs on fiverr or whatever is as absurd as the idea that that was somehow meaningful work. If you're having a hard time getting hired, pivot. Adapt. Overcome. That's been my life for the last decade since I first got sick - and I'm not saying it's great, but you have to be able to adapt to new istuations. The world ain't going back. Do we become the Luddites and lose in the long run? Or do we "seize the means of computation and build something that strives for utopia?" > Ideally, feeling important wouldn't be pejorative. Ideally, we'd have a way for artists to have food and shelter and continue to produce art. I think food and shelter should be available for anyone on earth without any sort of need to justify it. But I do think that feeling really important should be a bit pejorative. > The hopes that AI will cause this to happen are equivalent to hoping WWIII will come along and wipe out 2/3 of humanity so we can start over with United Earth and warp drives and replicators. That's a false equivalency. Like, not even on the same planet.
ben_w 4mo ago
Mm. I know a (US) Green party campaigner who is a self-described communist (I forget which variety), who has yet to realise the contradiction between her love of trade unions and support of the environment when it presents itself in support of the famous UK coal miner's strikes.
- hack1312 4mo ago
  There isn’t a contradiction supporting working class coal miners when there’s no plan to transform their labor into green energy.
SidewaysView 4mo ago
[flagged]
- phikappa 4mo ago
  I think we'd be better off limiting whom to kill to one person only.
- piloto_ciego 4mo ago
  Why exactly are you here?
  - SidewaysView 4mo ago
    I would think "dealing with neckbeard nerds who don't know when to sit down" was obvious. Your arrogance is astonishing and intolerable.
    - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
      Mine is? You don't even know me lol. But you know, good for you. Neck beard, well maybe, I am taking the day off and I haven't shaved, though, I rarely shave anyway. But if you think I developed these views of the world because of a lack of experience in it, you'd be wrong. I've seen life and death and many many things in between. I've written poetry and cried at sunsets. I've seen good men die and bad men win. I've seen justice too. And injustice. I've lived and struggled and fought and made art and raised a family and written code and built things and suffered and read literature in other tongues and loved and laughed and protested and been tear gassed and done things I regret and done things I've been proud of. I've seen the northern lights from the arctic in winter. I've seen salmon streams so think it looked as if you could cross them on foot. I know words in dying languages and worked to preserve them. You know nothing of me. You think you can understand me because I yearn for a world that's not based on the transactional need to produce economically useful output. You think you can understand the totality of me because I'd like us to strive for an utopic vision of the world. You think you know me because a science fiction show gives me some hope for us building a better world? You know nothing of me. But seriously, like, what is your optimal view of the world? What would you have if you were allowed to set policy or chart the course of human events or some other such thing? Personally, I want to see everyone fed, sheltered, and comfortably able to spend their days doing what they want and not having to churn out crap to justify their right to survive. If you disagree with that, then that's your right, but I would be surprised if you disagreed with that.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
jdub 4mo ago
You reckon large language models run by this mob of billionaire boot-licking dweebs will lead to a Star Trek style utopia? Come on.

AngryData 4mo ago

The problem is people don't see the near future as a Star Trek utopia, they see it going more towards a dystopian landscape with handfuls of extremely wealthy elite dictating how they can live their life.

CookieCrisp 4mo ago
Which would make sense if they chose strategies that might stop that from happening. Instead the ones I know refuse to even learn what AI can do and refuse to see that they're not going to slow it's adoption down by sealing themselves off. The world was already heading towards a dystopian landscape without AI. So many people on this planet live in a horrific dystopia right now, and here comes along something that might help them. Might give us what we need to stop global warming. I'd rather choose something with a 1% chance of working out than what we had before, 0%.
- AngryData 4mo ago
  But our top 2 problems are political shenanigans and energy production. And neither are going to be solved by AI, both are made worse with AI. AI is a useful tool, but tools aren't always used to improve lives.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
brandensilva 4mo ago
It's easy to see why people fear AI when our leaders talk of a future where many are jobless and replaced with no solutions to fill in the gaps. AI adoption is a leadership failure more than a tech one right now. If you make people feel empowered with it, it can liberate work-free lives that humanity benefits from. If you use it to destroy people's livelihoods with no options it's not going to survive a revolution.

piperswe 4mo ago

If politics were trending left I’d agree with you, but as-is the bourgeoisie are the only ones that will get any upside from modern tech.

tsunagatta 4mo ago

AI is not going to give us a star trek utopia, AI is an attempt by the bourgeoise to alienate the average person from the capital that has previously always come free with their human life. AI promises a feudalist future where there is no capital that isn't owned by the ruling class. Its power is not democratized, it is concentrated in the hands of those building the data centers. That is why I'm against the data centers. I feel like all leftists should be.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> Its power is not democratized, it is concentrated in the hands of those building the data centers. That is why I'm against the data centers If you really believe this (and I’m not saying I don’t, I just don’t have confidence in it), blocking domestic. datacenters doesn’t preserve that labour value. It just ensures whoever builds those datacenters controls production from afar. Like, if AI really replaces human labour, does Africa and Europe having few AI datacenters protect it from America and China? Of course not. Not outside a symbolic level that even then would have to exist with the implied consent of the powers who produce.
- tadfisher 4mo ago
  Sorry, do Memphis residents get to control xAI's production? I think we're already in this situation.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > we're already in this situation xAI’s datacenters aren’t currently measurably replacing labour. So no, we’re not. If AI becomes economically competitive with broad sections of human labor, those who control it do have the power to replace humans. But banning domestic datacenters doesn’t stop them from existing; it just stops them from existing here. If that precondition arises, that’s just a recipe for domestic deindustrialisation. If you believe AI will replace human labor, blocking datacenters is silly. You want labor (or the public) to build and control them. I’m not convinced AI will replace labor, so I’m not yet at that step.

hack1312 4mo ago

“if we get this right” is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting here.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
But that’s the thing! We could and we can!
- throwaway-11-1 4mo ago
  “We” can’t even effectively distribute food, healthcare and housing yet but yeah I’m sure capital will totally figure it out if we build enough machines that just accumulate more wealth to the richest people in history. I love cool new tech but I’m perfectly aware it will not do shit to solve any problem other than “eliminate or make labor cheaper”
  - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
    I mean, there are less starving people than there were in most of the world. We've made progress. In my lifetime we've made progress! I mean, there are momentary set backs and they are egregious, I agree with that for sure, but the world is wildly better than it was in the early 90s or early 00s. I was there (cue Elrond meme), I remember. And god forbid you were gay back then, or had an ailment that needed some high tech treatment, or needed to talk to someone on the other side of the planet for any reason, or wanted to have access to knoeledge. We've come so far, and the people yapping about how "everything is the worst" are reactionary. Yes there are problems, I don't want to downplay them. But largely, until very recently, things were getting better en masse and zoomed out enough in time that trend will likely continue if we don't blow it all up or do something stupid like decide that science is too scary to do. What I mostly see in these threads is "Capitalist Realism" - people can't even imagine things turning out some way other than "capital controls everything forever."
    - throwaway-11-1 4mo ago
      Your response is not addressing my claims, homelessness is increasing, life expectancy is lagging poorer countries and there are still food security issues not being addressed in the richest country in history. I’m discussing material outcomes and you want to focus on social progress….which is fine I guess? Anyway I have receipts https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/#Life%20expectancy%20at%20birth,%20in%20years,%201980-2024 https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-lif... https://www.unc.edu/discover/u-s-life-expectancy-drop-caused-by-more-than-pandemic/ https://www.unc.edu/discover/u-s-life-expectancy-drop-caused... https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/ https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/

matthewdgreen 4mo ago

Even Star Trek admits that there are horrible events that lie between our world and the utopia.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
then perhaps we should strive not to have those horrible events, not by having nostalgia but by dreaming of a better future.

afpx 4mo ago

In 1990 I hoped my grandkids would be able to join starfleet. After watching most of the gains go to the worst, I just hope they can escape the borg.

ben_w 4mo ago
I was a kid in the 90s. Kinda surprised we got the (almost) universal translator before we got fusion.
- m4rtink 4mo ago
  This does happen quite often actually - the logical progression from telegraph to digital Internet networks was interrupted by the invention and deployment of the analog telephone network. IMHO even analog television and microwave oven look kinda out of place with the technology deployed at the same time.
- antonvs 4mo ago
  You know what else we’re going to get before fusion? Everything. Commercially viable fusion energy is still a fantasy, essentially. Anyone who claims it’s only X years away is implicitly assuming that somehow, in those X years, we’ll find solutions to several fundamental problems that may not in fact have viable solutions.
m4rtink 4mo ago
Imperial Guard will welcome them with an open embrace once they reach conscription age! ;-)

tadfisher 4mo ago

In Star Trek canon, humanity figured out how to live in utopia by destroying all existing power structures in a Third World War. What is happening now is we have all our existing structure, and the existing requirement to earn money to live within this structure, and the human creative output we want in our eventual utopia is used to train automata with the express goal to replace humans in those creative endeavors, removing the ability for humans to earn money by being creative themselves. It is not hard to see things from this perspective when a significant portion of writing is becoming obvious slop, and your liberal friends are having a hard time getting hired or landing writing deals or selling artwork. I would feel less important too; I'm already feeling this way when I review a PR with obvious LLM-generated descriptions and comments that reference the prompt. Ideally, feeling important wouldn't be pejorative. Ideally, we'd have a way for artists to have food and shelter and continue to produce art. The hopes that AI will cause this to happen are equivalent to hoping WWIII will come along and wipe out 2/3 of humanity so we can start over with United Earth and warp drives and replicators.

piloto_ciego 4mo ago
> In Star Trek canon, humanity figured out how to live in utopia by destroying all existing power structures in a Third World War. Perhaps we could try to destroy those power structures without having a giant war lol, just saying. > What is happening now is we have all our existing structure, and the existing requirement to earn money to live within this structure, and the human creative output we want in our eventual utopia is used to train automata with the express goal to replace humans in those creative endeavors, removing the ability for humans to earn money by being creative themselves. Right, I get the frustration, but how many "creators" were doing truly creative and expressive work writing ad copy or making up logos for shoe companies or whatever. The problem people have is capitalism, not the robots and it's short sighted of people to be angry at software tools rather than the system that has forced them to trade their time and skills for the right to exist. I've literally lost my career before. The one thing that getting deathly ill has taught me is that "all things will come to an end." Someday, that will include me, but hopefully not today, and thanks to modern medicine, hopefully not any time soon. The idea that the only way an artist should be able to justify their right to survive is by shitting out jpgs on fiverr or whatever is as absurd as the idea that that was somehow meaningful work. If you're having a hard time getting hired, pivot. Adapt. Overcome. That's been my life for the last decade since I first got sick - and I'm not saying it's great, but you have to be able to adapt to new istuations. The world ain't going back. Do we become the Luddites and lose in the long run? Or do we "seize the means of computation and build something that strives for utopia?" > Ideally, feeling important wouldn't be pejorative. Ideally, we'd have a way for artists to have food and shelter and continue to produce art. I think food and shelter should be available for anyone on earth without any sort of need to justify it. But I do think that feeling really important should be a bit pejorative. > The hopes that AI will cause this to happen are equivalent to hoping WWIII will come along and wipe out 2/3 of humanity so we can start over with United Earth and warp drives and replicators. That's a false equivalency. Like, not even on the same planet.

ben_w 4mo ago

Mm. I know a (US) Green party campaigner who is a self-described communist (I forget which variety), who has yet to realise the contradiction between her love of trade unions and support of the environment when it presents itself in support of the famous UK coal miner's strikes.

hack1312 4mo ago
There isn’t a contradiction supporting working class coal miners when there’s no plan to transform their labor into green energy.

SidewaysView 4mo ago

[flagged]

phikappa 4mo ago
I think we'd be better off limiting whom to kill to one person only.
piloto_ciego 4mo ago
Why exactly are you here?
- SidewaysView 4mo ago
  I would think "dealing with neckbeard nerds who don't know when to sit down" was obvious. Your arrogance is astonishing and intolerable.
  - piloto_ciego 4mo ago
    Mine is? You don't even know me lol. But you know, good for you. Neck beard, well maybe, I am taking the day off and I haven't shaved, though, I rarely shave anyway. But if you think I developed these views of the world because of a lack of experience in it, you'd be wrong. I've seen life and death and many many things in between. I've written poetry and cried at sunsets. I've seen good men die and bad men win. I've seen justice too. And injustice. I've lived and struggled and fought and made art and raised a family and written code and built things and suffered and read literature in other tongues and loved and laughed and protested and been tear gassed and done things I regret and done things I've been proud of. I've seen the northern lights from the arctic in winter. I've seen salmon streams so think it looked as if you could cross them on foot. I know words in dying languages and worked to preserve them. You know nothing of me. You think you can understand me because I yearn for a world that's not based on the transactional need to produce economically useful output. You think you can understand the totality of me because I'd like us to strive for an utopic vision of the world. You think you know me because a science fiction show gives me some hope for us building a better world? You know nothing of me. But seriously, like, what is your optimal view of the world? What would you have if you were allowed to set policy or chart the course of human events or some other such thing? Personally, I want to see everyone fed, sheltered, and comfortably able to spend their days doing what they want and not having to churn out crap to justify their right to survive. If you disagree with that, then that's your right, but I would be surprised if you disagreed with that.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

jdub 4mo ago

You reckon large language models run by this mob of billionaire boot-licking dweebs will lead to a Star Trek style utopia? Come on.