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The most optimistic outcome of generative AI leaves us with a technology that warps our perception of reality and crushes labor. The most pessimistic destroys a

The most optimistic outcome of generative AI leaves us with a technology that warps our perception of reality and crushes labor. The most pessimistic destroys all of humanity. Our CEOs not only insist we genuflect before these machines but measure our sacrifice and shame our reluctance.

andai 8d ago
The children yearn for the mines.
tmvphil 8d ago
The optimistic outcome is the machines do the work and people can be freed from drudgery.
- rozap 8d ago
  How does that coexist with Capitalism? I just don't see a path. Regardless of where you fall on the alignment chart, if you are looking backwards from now to the industrial revolution, it's pretty easy to make the claim that from a standpoint of pure technological progress (discounting all other things, like quality of life, environmental impact, etc) that capitalism "won". But going forward, if the need for labor is completely crushed, and capital continues to get concentrated into the hands of the elites, I just don't see how that is viable long term. It seems like for things to shift to the world Keynes (wrongly) predicted, where we all have abundance of leisure time, then there's a massive distribution of the fruits of automation into the hands of the masses, which needs to be controlled by an entity who does not purely exist to acquire more capital, which is sort of the end of capitalism as we know it. Or maybe AI kills us all before we get there, who knows.
- Schlagbohrer 8d ago
  That requires abolishing capitalism, and since these AIs are going to hyper-empower the already powerful capitalist ruling class, that utopian outcome seems unfortunately extremely unlikely. Feeding ever more amazing technology and science into a broken social/political/economic system does not result in a better world unfortunately.
- ShinyLeftPad 8d ago
  Life is drudgery.

andai 8d ago

The children yearn for the mines.

tmvphil 8d ago

The optimistic outcome is the machines do the work and people can be freed from drudgery.

rozap 8d ago
How does that coexist with Capitalism? I just don't see a path. Regardless of where you fall on the alignment chart, if you are looking backwards from now to the industrial revolution, it's pretty easy to make the claim that from a standpoint of pure technological progress (discounting all other things, like quality of life, environmental impact, etc) that capitalism "won". But going forward, if the need for labor is completely crushed, and capital continues to get concentrated into the hands of the elites, I just don't see how that is viable long term. It seems like for things to shift to the world Keynes (wrongly) predicted, where we all have abundance of leisure time, then there's a massive distribution of the fruits of automation into the hands of the masses, which needs to be controlled by an entity who does not purely exist to acquire more capital, which is sort of the end of capitalism as we know it. Or maybe AI kills us all before we get there, who knows.
Schlagbohrer 8d ago
That requires abolishing capitalism, and since these AIs are going to hyper-empower the already powerful capitalist ruling class, that utopian outcome seems unfortunately extremely unlikely. Feeding ever more amazing technology and science into a broken social/political/economic system does not result in a better world unfortunately.
ShinyLeftPad 8d ago
Life is drudgery.