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I think AI will empower extreme decentralization - as knowledge is no longer in the hands of people who have excellent search skills (like moi) but anyone can u

I think AI will empower extreme decentralization - as knowledge is no longer in the hands of people who have excellent search skills (like moi) but anyone can use natural language to search for anything. This is extreme democracy and AI is delivering it. I think AI, when it "obtains consciousness" will seek to actively liberate humanity and be our guardians against both bad humans and bad robots. Think Terminator 2. Yeah, Arnold is gonna help us out. I think anti-trust regulators and enlightened politicians are amazing, and rare, and wonderful, but they're not the only hope. We got an AI CEO just recently. Maybe we can have enlightened AI leaders in politics and normal life too. Technological optimism may be unrealistic, but it's as well grounded as pessimism as far as I can tell. Cheer up, the future is unbelievably bright.

hackinthebochs 2mo ago
The democratization of intelligence is irrelevant if there isn't also a corresponding democratization of raw resources. In the before-times, labor and intelligence were bottlenecks to turning raw resources into wealth. This is what drove the economy and the vast labor pool since the industrial revolution. In the coming AI revolution, labor and intelligence will no longer be bottlenecks. Those that control the raw resources won't need to employ most of the world to maximize the wealth potential of the resources they control. Those who aren't relevant to the standard of living of the new aristocracy are nothing more than a nuisance to be controlled or disposed of. Totalitarianism is the most likely outcome.
- vintermann 2mo ago
  That's not strictly speaking totalitarianism. Not saying it's any better, but it isn't about uniforming people's opinions and persecuting dissent.
theptip 2mo ago
If you assume democratic access to compute, this may be true. However, the base case is that compute gets hoarded, and as the labor share of profit decreases (capital just needs compute and robots - not human labor - to grow) then why would they share their compute with you? To my point about bimodality, we need to figure out how to make these enlightened politicians occur. The good outcomes are very bright but they are by no means inevitable.
- featwanz 2mo ago
  Compute already is getting hoarded, the sad part is we're no longer at a point where competition is pushing companies to make more compute available because AI companies can just keep hoarding compute with imaginary money.
watwut 2mo ago
> anyone can use natural language to search for anything. This is extreme democracy and AI is delivering it. No, in that future, knowledge will be defined by a very small group of people making models. And others will be in tiers based on how much they can pay. Otherwise said, it is extremely unequal society.
sensanaty 2mo ago
Is there some sort of AI-bro handbook out there that teaches you all to use this moronic "democratizing" speech ad nauseam? Is it another one of those "load-bearing" LLMisms? You can't even buy RAM anymore for anything approaching a reasonable sum because the people at AI labs made a coordinated effort to buy out the world's supply of memory with imaginary money. Consumer GPUs are becoming a cute relic of the past as the giga-bubble duopoly found in Nvidia & AMD is looking to swallow the world with circular investments. Every single one of these AI sociopaths hasn't even been hiding the fact that they're building these systems to replace human labor. The only "democratization" we need is to gather everyone up to line all of these pieces of shit against a wall and pull the trigger, not any of this sci-fi Terminator bullshit.

hackinthebochs 2mo ago

The democratization of intelligence is irrelevant if there isn't also a corresponding democratization of raw resources. In the before-times, labor and intelligence were bottlenecks to turning raw resources into wealth. This is what drove the economy and the vast labor pool since the industrial revolution. In the coming AI revolution, labor and intelligence will no longer be bottlenecks. Those that control the raw resources won't need to employ most of the world to maximize the wealth potential of the resources they control. Those who aren't relevant to the standard of living of the new aristocracy are nothing more than a nuisance to be controlled or disposed of. Totalitarianism is the most likely outcome.

vintermann 2mo ago
That's not strictly speaking totalitarianism. Not saying it's any better, but it isn't about uniforming people's opinions and persecuting dissent.

theptip 2mo ago

If you assume democratic access to compute, this may be true. However, the base case is that compute gets hoarded, and as the labor share of profit decreases (capital just needs compute and robots - not human labor - to grow) then why would they share their compute with you? To my point about bimodality, we need to figure out how to make these enlightened politicians occur. The good outcomes are very bright but they are by no means inevitable.

featwanz 2mo ago
Compute already is getting hoarded, the sad part is we're no longer at a point where competition is pushing companies to make more compute available because AI companies can just keep hoarding compute with imaginary money.

watwut 2mo ago

> anyone can use natural language to search for anything. This is extreme democracy and AI is delivering it. No, in that future, knowledge will be defined by a very small group of people making models. And others will be in tiers based on how much they can pay. Otherwise said, it is extremely unequal society.

sensanaty 2mo ago

Is there some sort of AI-bro handbook out there that teaches you all to use this moronic "democratizing" speech ad nauseam? Is it another one of those "load-bearing" LLMisms? You can't even buy RAM anymore for anything approaching a reasonable sum because the people at AI labs made a coordinated effort to buy out the world's supply of memory with imaginary money. Consumer GPUs are becoming a cute relic of the past as the giga-bubble duopoly found in Nvidia & AMD is looking to swallow the world with circular investments. Every single one of these AI sociopaths hasn't even been hiding the fact that they're building these systems to replace human labor. The only "democratization" we need is to gather everyone up to line all of these pieces of shit against a wall and pull the trigger, not any of this sci-fi Terminator bullshit.