Comment by tsimionescu
6 months ago
> It's not fair, and it's not anyone's fault, but it's important for us all to be honest and clear-eyed about what's really happening here.
Or we can just refuse this future and act as a society to prevent it from happening. We absolutely have that power, if we choose to organize and use it.
Sure, but how so? If I'm understanding your argument correctly, it sounds like you may be implying that we should escalate the war on general-purpose computing and outlaw generative AI.
If we were to consider that, then to what end? If you accept my framing of the long-term implications of LLMs on the industry, then what you're suggesting is effectively that we should deprive society of greater prosperity for the benefit of a small minority. Personally, I'd rather improve democratization of entrepreneurship (among other things) than artificially prop up software engineering salaries.
And let's say the US did all that. What then? We neuter our economy and expect our adversaries to just follow suit? More likely it hobbles our ability to compete and ultimately ushers in an era of global hegemony under the CCP.
> deprive society of greater prosperity for the benefit of a small minority.
This already exactly the case. AI won't bring jackshit to anyone except those who're already sitting on too much wealth than any human should deserve.
At best, AI will slightly increase average global misery by virtue of producing too much garbage that pollutes the digital landscape.
The industrial revolution didn't bring prosperity to anyone except the capital owners, who forced their employees (physical force) to work many long hours, in gruesome environment, for pathetic wages.
When the Society's Elites promise something, the common man must be wary, those elites didn't reach their spots by being kind.
>The industrial revolution didn't bring prosperity to anyone except the capital owners
This is simply not true. Compare life of common man of today, to one from 3 centuries before. Quality of life increased tenfold, medicine, knowledge access, world travelability, life expentancy, political representation etc. Of course capital owners get richer even still, but suggesting we were better of without inudstrail revolution is just disingenous.
Do you hate AI enough to nuke China when they refuse to stop building their own AI?
Once it exists, anywhere, the job market is toast - banning it in the US just means outsourcing all the economic benefits to China. We have a long history of technological revolutions to demonstrate this: the un-industrialized nations fared a lot worse than the ones at the frontier of technology.
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Okay. Well I'm not an "elite" or misrepresenting my experience with AI in any way. My perspective as a founder is that AI empowers entrepreneurs to launch and scale cheaply, thereby providing greater value to the public while disempowering venture capitalists as gatekeepers of the startup ecosystem. The fact that some rich people may become richer at the same time is incidental, and not a bad thing in and of itself.
As far as the industrial revolution, your take is ahistorical. We're clearly more prosperous now than we were before industrialization. Let's not forget that the pre-industrial American economy relied on literal enslavement of 15 - 20% of the population.
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