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> AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way What are some examples of technology that did make

> AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity? I think of AI as like the invention of the loom. It made textiles a lot faster but idk about making lives better by itself. It made more clothes but you still had to buy them. I can't really think of a technology that made lives better only because of its existence.

palmotea 5d ago
What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. It's not like a building that's being built become some person needs shelter. It's more like some guy building a howitzer and just firing it randomly (hitting homes and people), just because he can and thinks it's cool and maybe can make some money selling tickets. After all, it was inevitable someone was going to built a howitzer and start firing it, so it might as well be him doing it. AI is more like social media, something no one actually needs and no one was really clamoring for, which was made without with any care about how it would affect people. It got built, caused all kinds of malign consequences disproportionate to whatever meager benefits it provided, and Mark Zuckerberg got rich from all that. Ultimately, many of problems of AI stem from the kind of capitalism we have now, AI just magnifies them to extreme and potentially accelerating degree.
- simonw 5d ago
  > What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. How confident are you in that? ChatGPT has over a billion monthly active users now (https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billion-monthly-active-users-record-time-data-shows-2026-06-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio...), I expect at least some of those users are using it to help solve problems they have.
  - palmotea 5d ago
    > How confident are you in that? ChatGPT has over a billion monthly active users now (https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio...), I expect at least some of those users are using it to help solve problems they have. Very, because you missed my point entirely. I said built not used. Analogies could be made to social media and tobacco, which have also been very popular.
    - simonw 5d ago
      You think those billion people are all addicted to having a made-up friend? I think it's being built to solve problems they have. OpenAI shut down GPT-4o because it leaned too hard into getting people addicted to it.
      - palmotea 5d ago
        > You think those billion people are all addicted to having a made-up friend? No, and I don't think you're really trying to understand what I think. I mean, do you actually think anyone could think ChatGPT user only use it in one way? But to briefly answer your off-base question: some fraction are certainly "addicted to having a made-up friend," others use it to cheat or slack, others use it trivially in easily replaceable ways (which my intuition says are the numerical bulk of users), many people use it because they're required to, and a relatively small fraction use it to build things or replace human labor in their employ, etc. But to restate my point: AI systems like ChatGPT weren't built to solve any kind of problem most people actually have. Few people, if anyone, had a ChatGPT-shaped hole in their life in 2021. It was built because it could be built, and it continue to be built because some other people have a "problem" that they have to pay a lot of money to workers and they hope to do less of that in the future. And causing societal harm or damage doesn't seem to any kind of deterrent to many of them, if they think about it at all.
        simonw 5d ago
        Thanks for clarifying, I genuinely didn't understand your point and I do now. I agree that ChatGPT was launched without having an idea as to what it was for. OpenAI themselves debated internally as to whether it was worth releasing and were shocked at how popular it turned out to be. Given what I know about what ChatGPT and similar tools can do, I firmly disagree that they don't solve problems for humans. Computers are hard to use. People need to be able to solve problems using computers. I think LLMs are the biggest leap we have ever had in making the power or computers - previously reserved for programmers - available to everyone else.
ungovernableCat 5d ago
>What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity? Washing machine, fridge, indoor plumbing, penicillin
- chasd00 5d ago
  If you didn’t have the money to buy any of those then they may as well didn’t exist. Those inventions helped no one who couldn’t spend the money to attain them. Edit: partial credit on indoor plumbing because it helped prevent disease spread to even those who didn’t have indoor plumbing.
senordevnyc 5d ago
This is so wild to me. Would you really have rather been born in 1790 than 1990?

palmotea 5d ago

What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. It's not like a building that's being built become some person needs shelter. It's more like some guy building a howitzer and just firing it randomly (hitting homes and people), just because he can and thinks it's cool and maybe can make some money selling tickets. After all, it was inevitable someone was going to built a howitzer and start firing it, so it might as well be him doing it. AI is more like social media, something no one actually needs and no one was really clamoring for, which was made without with any care about how it would affect people. It got built, caused all kinds of malign consequences disproportionate to whatever meager benefits it provided, and Mark Zuckerberg got rich from all that. Ultimately, many of problems of AI stem from the kind of capitalism we have now, AI just magnifies them to extreme and potentially accelerating degree.

simonw 5d ago
> What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. How confident are you in that? ChatGPT has over a billion monthly active users now (https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billion-monthly-active-users-record-time-data-shows-2026-06-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio...), I expect at least some of those users are using it to help solve problems they have.
- palmotea 5d ago
  > How confident are you in that? ChatGPT has over a billion monthly active users now (https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-app-hits-1-billio...), I expect at least some of those users are using it to help solve problems they have. Very, because you missed my point entirely. I said built not used. Analogies could be made to social media and tobacco, which have also been very popular.
  - simonw 5d ago
    You think those billion people are all addicted to having a made-up friend? I think it's being built to solve problems they have. OpenAI shut down GPT-4o because it leaned too hard into getting people addicted to it.
    - palmotea 5d ago
      > You think those billion people are all addicted to having a made-up friend? No, and I don't think you're really trying to understand what I think. I mean, do you actually think anyone could think ChatGPT user only use it in one way? But to briefly answer your off-base question: some fraction are certainly "addicted to having a made-up friend," others use it to cheat or slack, others use it trivially in easily replaceable ways (which my intuition says are the numerical bulk of users), many people use it because they're required to, and a relatively small fraction use it to build things or replace human labor in their employ, etc. But to restate my point: AI systems like ChatGPT weren't built to solve any kind of problem most people actually have. Few people, if anyone, had a ChatGPT-shaped hole in their life in 2021. It was built because it could be built, and it continue to be built because some other people have a "problem" that they have to pay a lot of money to workers and they hope to do less of that in the future. And causing societal harm or damage doesn't seem to any kind of deterrent to many of them, if they think about it at all.
      - simonw 5d ago
        Thanks for clarifying, I genuinely didn't understand your point and I do now. I agree that ChatGPT was launched without having an idea as to what it was for. OpenAI themselves debated internally as to whether it was worth releasing and were shocked at how popular it turned out to be. Given what I know about what ChatGPT and similar tools can do, I firmly disagree that they don't solve problems for humans. Computers are hard to use. People need to be able to solve problems using computers. I think LLMs are the biggest leap we have ever had in making the power or computers - previously reserved for programmers - available to everyone else.

ungovernableCat 5d ago

>What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity? Washing machine, fridge, indoor plumbing, penicillin

chasd00 5d ago
If you didn’t have the money to buy any of those then they may as well didn’t exist. Those inventions helped no one who couldn’t spend the money to attain them. Edit: partial credit on indoor plumbing because it helped prevent disease spread to even those who didn’t have indoor plumbing.

senordevnyc 5d ago

This is so wild to me. Would you really have rather been born in 1790 than 1990?