Comment by GreenWatermelon
6 months ago
> 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.
I'm looking less at Nations and more at the people in those nations. The richest country on earth, the one with the highest number of billionaires, is unable to put roofs over its citizens' heads, unable to provide them with food stability, and its health care is the laughing stock of the entire developed world. Hell I live in a shit 3rd world country and our healthcare is still miles better than the US. THIS to me is undeniable proof that technological advancement != Prosperity for people.
Unindustrialized nations fared worse due to the industrialized ones coming for their resources. I doubt farmer John on Yorkshire gave a shit about what the UK was doing in south Africa or india. Similarly for Farmer Louis in Leon, or Hans in Stutgart. It's all elite dick-measuring contests with the common man as the only loser.
> outsourcing all the economic benefits to China
Hell the US already outsourced all vital indiatries to China without banning shit. My main point is that the common man will not see any benefit from such technological advancement, since the major problem is who's holding the stocks. AI is just another measure of wealth concentration.
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.
Pre-industrial English and German economies did not rely on enslavement of the population, so the fact US economy was built on enslavement just means its elites were rotten to the core since the very beginning,
The fact that rich people get richer is exactly the goal of the US' economic system, not an accident. Despite the abolition of slavery, the US remains extremely hostile to the poor. its lower-than-livable wages forcing its people to be more miserable than medieval surfs.
So, no, the industrial revolution did not bring prosperity, what brought prosperity was the blood shed by common men daring to keep a portion of the fruits of their labour. The history of unionization on the US and the plight of miners clearly shows how much prosperity was brought by technological innovation.
You're appealing to an implicit counterfactual in which America was built in a more egalitarian way. I'd love to live in that timeline, but unfortunately we can only evaluate history as it actually exists, and in this timeline American industrialization and abolition are inseparable because the latter doesn't happen without the former. For all its faults, industrialization provided both the economic luxury of pursuing abolition and the practical means to fight and win.
For Europe's part, the continent was physically developed over millennia on the backs of imperial slaves and feudal serfs, while its wealth was the product of atrocities comparable to those of the US. They certainly don't get a pass here.
If we're looking to the past for guidance, the historical precedent is clear: greater efficiency increases prosperity, and greater prosperity increases liberty. The first industrial revolution heralded the end of actual slavery; the AI industrial revolution could herald the end of "wage slavery". If some rich people happen to get richer at the same time, I say good for them. Rather than cutting off our nose to spite our face, we should look at concepts like UBI or universal educational stipends as an ultimate offramp from mandatory employment.