this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Still. I think putting the brakes on “AI” is the right move right now. With its energy usage, intellectual property theft, nonconsensual (and underage) porn generating…not to mention its use by the ownership class to take and commodify human expression away from humans and the capitalist motive to profit over any consideration for the ramifications for the working class…I think halting this until we can get some protections in place for those this tech seems determined to exploit is a good thing.
Not that any of those problems will be solved even if we did hit the brakes. But, theoretically, yeah. I’m about it. Because, true to capitalist form, we are worsening the problems we haven’t even started trying to solve.
It's exactly like banks or huge companies: steal one movie, and you go to jail and pay a big fine. Steal all the movies, and suddenly it's not a problem anymore.
Strong disagree. I won't accept any solution that step 1 is willful ignorance. You might be willing to stick your head in the sand because the world keeps moving, I am not.
I always know when someone doesn't have a good argument when they give me a dozen bad ones. 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 .... Still equals 0. No matter how many times you do it.
This comment is decrying it's parent, but it doesn't say anything to refute the points made. Energy use, intellectual property theft, and non-consensual porn seem like pretty decent things to be worried about.
Yeah, because it's good stuff to point out and think on... But ultimately inconsequential as the previous comment points out. The world is getting AI eventually, the question is do we want to be the first ones with the keys?
All the same arguments could have been made about the internet. Inb4 someone makes the incredibly likewarm take that the internet was a mistake. It was inevitable, if we had "pumped-the-brakes" on it we wouldn't have found some clean way to implement the internet where no one gets hurt. Someone who wasn't concerned about ethics would have got there first to set the standard.
Actually a better analogy for AI might be the nuclear bomb. If we slow down someone else will get their first. Silicone Valley doesn't have the best track record with ethics. But call me crazy, I'd rather them figure it out before China or Russia. Because they sure as shit ain't using their brakes.
So, my argument was “capitalism makes this tech dangerous” and your reasoning for disagreeing is basically, “but what if we don’t win capitalism because we try to protect people and the environment?”
I think it's important to consider these elements and try to mitigate them as we move forward. But they'll never be completely fixed.
If anything has the power to collapse capitalism, it's AI automation. Capitalism is all about keeping people working for the benefit of those above with the threat of not getting what you need to survive. That threat is predicated by there not being enough to go around.
Once we're able to make an enormous surplus without the labor of the common man; the basis of capitalism begins to crumble. I fear that if we give corporations time, they'll try and make the world run on AI WITHOUT anyone losing jobs. That terrifies me more, because people will accept the status quo but lose the only power they ever had in capitalism: The combined value of their labor. A strike doesn't work so well if your whole job is pushing a button to make AI do it.
I think the beginning of AI will be painful for the reasons we both have outlined. But I believe that's growing pains towards a better future. Giving corps time to boil the frog won't be good. Keeping the corps fighting each other to be the first by pushing this tech forward is the quickest way for them to create their own obsolescence.
I just don’t see any scenario in which companies eliminate the need for employees, but keep paying them. And I don’t see any scenario in which these capitalist enterprises, clearly that give zero fucks about the impact of the tech as long as they hold the keys, don’t take that money and power to fight tax increases to fund UBI.
I see exactly what is happening now, and that has happened with all technological advances: careers getting eliminated for the bottom line, only for more meaningless jobs to be necessitated in their absence—jobs that offer less buying power for the paycheck they’re signing.
I obviously don’t know what will happen in the future. But trends don’t lie. Richer, more powerful companies, using that power and money to get richer and amass more power. Our government is already broken at current levels of corporate capitalism. More powerful corporations will not make things better for us. They will undoubtedly make the worse. Because the worse things are for us, the better they are for the ownership class.
We are all working class. And the class war is raging. We have just been losing.
And this is all before we even discuss the environmental impact of this stupid ass tech. Which is devastating. When we don’t have time for more environmental devastation.
Totally get where you're coming from. Corporate greed seems like the boogie man behind capitalism. It's easy to understand: make line go up. But I'm afraid the dark parts of capitalism are spookier than that. They don't just want money. If that were the case they'd sell all those expensive corporate offices and let people be more productive at home.
They want people to lord over, they want the power to surveil them. To make them do team building exercises. They call themselves a family. They take team pictures with the CEO smiling in front. People think of them as heartless machines. But machines would try and make people happy, that's when they work the best. No, they're happy to have offices full of people twiddling their thumbs, they're narcissists. Their whole incentive to climb the ladder is to be standing on someone else's head.
Who are you king of, if there's only robots around you?
Fine whatever deal with these "points"
Energy: renewables, nuclear, carbon tax, incentives for companies to generate their own power
Intellectual property theft: abolish copyright law. Whatever value it might (I said might) have served is gone now. It should sicken us all to the core that we are the one people in human history that cut ourselves off from our own culture. But yeah if you want to be like some angry dragon living on your horde of data go ahead and don't put it on the internet. It's a messed up way of going through life but if you really really don't want your furry porn copied this is how you can go about it.
Non-consenual porn: I agree its at best in very poor taste and at worst harassment. Go ahead and throw the book at people who do it.
What’s the ignorance? I think worrying about how we are going to curb these pretty consequential problems this technology in the hands of these particular companies brings is….pretty valid.
Also, did you say burning up the planet even faster, stealing and profiting off of people’s livelihood, and…fucking making nonconsensual porn of underage girls are “zero” problems? The fuck?
Not to mention…the worsening of class inequality? Do you just no see these as problems? Or…what exactly is the argument here.
The person was calling for a ban on advancing this technology
Let's conduct an intelligence test, one I am sure a LLM could pass. What did I actually say? Let me know if you need help.
This. This is what you actually said. Directly after quoting exactly what I said. There’s…no other way to read that. You’re calling them non-problems that pale in comparison to the unabated advancement of capitalist expansion.
These tools, in the right hands, could be very useful. They could free us from work in the future.
But they’re not in the right hands. They’re in the hands of capitalists.
Whether those are Russian capitalists, US-based capitalists, Chinese capitalists, the aim is the same. Having these people own this tech isn’t good for humanity. As evidenced by the problems I listed; not only is it underage, nonconsensual porn made of real-ass people that you wrote off by saying some shit like, “it’s at best in poor taste and at worst harassment”…these are people’s fucking lives you’re talking about. So, you’re clearly a man, probably a white man. Because no one else would be so flippant about something that can so fucking devastate the lives of those affected.
But not only is that a problem we aren’t even trying to solve in the name of being “pro-business,” the biggest problem that somehow even manages to rank above kids killing themselves after their still-forming brains are fucking shattered by devastation, is what this does to the ongoing class war. Someone else ITT likened it to the invention of the nuke. And that’s true. But they said, in the geopolitical race it’s akin to the invention of the nuke, whereas I see it as nuke in the class war. And the ownership class is getting closer to holding it in their hands. But since it’s good for the economy and the politicians are on the side of the ownership class anyway, this problem isn’t even broached in this discussion. But it badly needs to be.
In a time of near unprecedented inequality, we are watching them hit the accelerator. Which is an apt comparison, because this tech is also hastening our head-on collision with climate apocalypse. While developing nations are being told to curb emissions, we in the superpower states are increasing our co2 output with this stupid tech. And you said some shit about nuclear and renewables and fuckin carbon taxes? Well, sure, those are hypothetical bandaids on this festering wound, but they’re just that. The acceleration of LLM/“AI” energy consumption while we break heat and natural disaster record after heat and natural disaster record—as that fucking climate apocalypse cliff edge approaches faster and faster is just…utter lunacy. And this alone should give us reason enough to change course. But that’s not the only reason.
So, yeah, I vehemently disagree with your characterization of these problems as “0+0+0” when it comes to the argument against AI.
Tl:dr
“You’re gonna make an argument against my stupid position?! But I don’t wanna read four paragraphs!”
The mark of a truly confident, well-intentioned debater. Won’t take three minutes. To read…four paragraphs. mwah love it
Yeah yeah I suck go ask Lemmy for your money back. Maybe you can via fax or whatever boomer shit you insist on using.
lol wut
Ask your grandkids to help you parse it. We are done.
lol yeah because that “what” was because I didn’t understand your super deep shit. You always get so worked up over someone suggesting capitalism isn’t the best? Some real bootlicker shit, that