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Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same co

by crmd 1mo ago

Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?

bronson 1mo ago
Electric motors didn't fill the world with slop.
- incr_me 1mo ago
  Yes, they did.
vkou 1mo ago
Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. Trillion-dollar AI firms sitting like a dragon's hoard of state-of-the art models and hardware disempower you. That's the difference. --- People who were disempowered by motors weren't exactly thrilled about them, either, but they were a minority underclass.
- akoboldfrying 1mo ago
  > Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind. Long-press your Android phone's power button: There's Gemini.
  - vkou 1mo ago
    > AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, automobiles of all shapes and sizes (private and shared), power tools are all examples of electric motors that you own and can do useful things with. What electric motors do is give you power over your environment. --- You don't own Gemini. You are allowed to use Gemini as long as your economic value to Google exceeds the cost of the electricity to run it. With Gemini, Google has power over you.
    - akoboldfrying 1mo ago
      The home appliances you list all cost money; Gemini (or ChatGPT, etc.) are all available for free, even on devices you already owned before they were even invented. They could not be any cheaper. > You don't own Gemini. That distinction is academic here -- just as a car that I rent instead of owning offers me no difference in "power". I don't care at all who owns the thing that answers my "What is autorotation?" question about a clip I just saw on Reddit.
      - crote 1mo ago
        What a clever question! You are absolutely right to be curious about that. Autorotation is a critical part of daily life, after all. If you would like me to expand on this, please drink another Google Gemini - Powered By Red Bull: It Gives You Wings! verification can.
        akoboldfrying 1mo ago
        That "argument" will have a lot more weight when the thing that you imply is frequently happening happens at a rate higher than zero.
    - nylonstrung 1mo ago
      Gemini was a bad choice of example but how would open-weights model one can self-host on their local device be different than the electric motor in your line of thinking
paxys 1mo ago
The electric motor was accepted only because horses and mules couldn’t protest. Every technological advancement throughout history that displaces humans has had massive pushback. AI is no different.
- card_zero 1mo ago
  Imagine them trotting along on a protest march, banners gripped in their teeth, wearing donkey jackets. Jobs for horses. There are two categories of responses here, yours is all progress is terrible actually, mine is I like advances but slop just offends me.
Legend2440 1mo ago
I don't think your premise is true. Remember John Henry, worried that the steam engine would put him out of a job drilling holes in rocks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore) Ludditism has a long history, and they made the exact same arguments about job loss in the 1800s as today.
- crote 1mo ago
  You should look up the history of what actually happened with the Luddites. They weren't opposed to the machines (many were even machine operators!), they were opposed to the manufacturers circumventing labour rights. Turns out people don't like routinely seeing 12-year-old children getting scalped by a weaving machine! They targeted the machines because it was the most convenient way to sabotage a factory, not because they hated the machine itself.
  - OroPla 1mo ago
    Luddites are generally made fun of because they somehow believed that destroying property was an effective way of protest, instead of providing others with an excuse to arrest them. Labor rights did not exist at the time (1768-1817), so nobody would need to circumvent them, either. This was when efforts were made to create them. And the Luddites made a negative contribution.
  - HDThoreaun 1mo ago
    What actaully happened to the luddites is they completely failed in their goal to slow down the industrial revolution and force business owners to pay their cartel.
Barrin92 1mo ago
>What changed? Motors, electric or otherwise, made it so you can jump in a car, or a bus and drive you and your friends to the movies or on a holiday and go out and see the world. LLMs make it so people end up like delusional zombies talking to a screen. Nothing has changed about people, they had common sense then and they have common sense now and they recognize when you try to sell them something useful that makes the physical world and their social situation better and when you want to sell them something out of dystopian sci-fi novels.
rsynnott 1mo ago
Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.
- ruthvik947 1mo ago
  sure the electric motor didn't generate text, but it's ridiculous to think it was anywhere near reliable in its early days
garethsprice 1mo ago
I disagree that ordinary people marveled at electric motors and saw their potential. Electric motors were seen as a toy for decades following their invention in 1834, and required industry to completely re-design its approach before they were used in more than 5% of factories. Even then the big shift to electric from steam in industry - almost a century later - was more due to economic necessity than better technology: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694 I think the same cycle is playing out with LLMs - the general public is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to them, as they have been with every new technology. Reconfiguring businesses and society to use them to their full potential - and benefits to society - will take years, if not decades.
bodge5000 1mo ago
Not all new technology is made equal and can't be compared as such. The electric motor was a new technology we now know did indeed pan out, but there are a string of others which never did and are forgotten about when talking about this. More recently, you could point to NFT's and crypto, both of which people also compared to things like the electric motor. Whether or not LLM's become an electric motor or an NFT, or something in between, only time will tell

by crmd 1mo ago

bronson 1mo ago

Electric motors didn't fill the world with slop.

incr_me 1mo ago
Yes, they did.

vkou 1mo ago

Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. Trillion-dollar AI firms sitting like a dragon's hoard of state-of-the art models and hardware disempower you. That's the difference. --- People who were disempowered by motors weren't exactly thrilled about them, either, but they were a minority underclass.

akoboldfrying 1mo ago
> Electric motors empower you, and are available to almost anyone. AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind. Long-press your Android phone's power button: There's Gemini.
- vkou 1mo ago
  > AI is much more available to people than motors of any kind Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners, automobiles of all shapes and sizes (private and shared), power tools are all examples of electric motors that you own and can do useful things with. What electric motors do is give you power over your environment. --- You don't own Gemini. You are allowed to use Gemini as long as your economic value to Google exceeds the cost of the electricity to run it. With Gemini, Google has power over you.
  - akoboldfrying 1mo ago
    The home appliances you list all cost money; Gemini (or ChatGPT, etc.) are all available for free, even on devices you already owned before they were even invented. They could not be any cheaper. > You don't own Gemini. That distinction is academic here -- just as a car that I rent instead of owning offers me no difference in "power". I don't care at all who owns the thing that answers my "What is autorotation?" question about a clip I just saw on Reddit.
    - crote 1mo ago
      What a clever question! You are absolutely right to be curious about that. Autorotation is a critical part of daily life, after all. If you would like me to expand on this, please drink another Google Gemini - Powered By Red Bull: It Gives You Wings! verification can.
      - akoboldfrying 1mo ago
        That "argument" will have a lot more weight when the thing that you imply is frequently happening happens at a rate higher than zero.
  - nylonstrung 1mo ago
    Gemini was a bad choice of example but how would open-weights model one can self-host on their local device be different than the electric motor in your line of thinking

paxys 1mo ago

The electric motor was accepted only because horses and mules couldn’t protest. Every technological advancement throughout history that displaces humans has had massive pushback. AI is no different.

card_zero 1mo ago
Imagine them trotting along on a protest march, banners gripped in their teeth, wearing donkey jackets. Jobs for horses. There are two categories of responses here, yours is all progress is terrible actually, mine is I like advances but slop just offends me.

Legend2440 1mo ago

I don't think your premise is true. Remember John Henry, worried that the steam engine would put him out of a job drilling holes in rocks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore) Ludditism has a long history, and they made the exact same arguments about job loss in the 1800s as today.

crote 1mo ago
You should look up the history of what actually happened with the Luddites. They weren't opposed to the machines (many were even machine operators!), they were opposed to the manufacturers circumventing labour rights. Turns out people don't like routinely seeing 12-year-old children getting scalped by a weaving machine! They targeted the machines because it was the most convenient way to sabotage a factory, not because they hated the machine itself.
- OroPla 1mo ago
  Luddites are generally made fun of because they somehow believed that destroying property was an effective way of protest, instead of providing others with an excuse to arrest them. Labor rights did not exist at the time (1768-1817), so nobody would need to circumvent them, either. This was when efforts were made to create them. And the Luddites made a negative contribution.
- HDThoreaun 1mo ago
  What actaully happened to the luddites is they completely failed in their goal to slow down the industrial revolution and force business owners to pay their cartel.

Barrin92 1mo ago

>What changed? Motors, electric or otherwise, made it so you can jump in a car, or a bus and drive you and your friends to the movies or on a holiday and go out and see the world. LLMs make it so people end up like delusional zombies talking to a screen. Nothing has changed about people, they had common sense then and they have common sense now and they recognize when you try to sell them something useful that makes the physical world and their social situation better and when you want to sell them something out of dystopian sci-fi novels.

rsynnott 1mo ago

Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.

ruthvik947 1mo ago
sure the electric motor didn't generate text, but it's ridiculous to think it was anywhere near reliable in its early days

garethsprice 1mo ago

I disagree that ordinary people marveled at electric motors and saw their potential. Electric motors were seen as a toy for decades following their invention in 1834, and required industry to completely re-design its approach before they were used in more than 5% of factories. Even then the big shift to electric from steam in industry - almost a century later - was more due to economic necessity than better technology: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40673694 I think the same cycle is playing out with LLMs - the general public is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to them, as they have been with every new technology. Reconfiguring businesses and society to use them to their full potential - and benefits to society - will take years, if not decades.

bodge5000 1mo ago

Not all new technology is made equal and can't be compared as such. The electric motor was a new technology we now know did indeed pan out, but there are a string of others which never did and are forgotten about when talking about this. More recently, you could point to NFT's and crypto, both of which people also compared to things like the electric motor. Whether or not LLM's become an electric motor or an NFT, or something in between, only time will tell