Comment by stego-tech

The advice I give younger folks is what I wished I’d been taught when I was just starting out myself, and confronting dismal prospects and futures after the 2008 Collapse:

Always consider the justification for the narrative. Dario Amodei has a vested interest in peddling his perspective, as that’s how he gets funding, media interest, publicity, and free advertising. He needs his product to be everything he claims it to be, lest the money supply suddenly dry up. Every startup does this, and while it doesn’t make them wrong, it also doesn’t mean you should take them at their word either.

I’d also say that you’re not alone in this frustration, and it’s not limited to your age demographic. My millennial peers and GenX colleagues share similar concerns about a dismal future, and many point to the same trends that have gradually stripped away our ability to survive or live authentic lives in the name of oligarchy profit motives as causes for our present malaise.

What Dario Amodei can never admit, however, is that he’s wrong; you, and many of us here, can and will acknowledge our faults, but Dario and Sam and Zuck et al have built such a massive confidence game around GenAI being the antithesis to labor that one of them admitting they’re wrong risks destroying the entire game for everyone else - and vaporize the trillions of dollars sunk into this technology “revolution” in the process.

The best cure I’ve found for that sort of depression is simply to do more learning across a wider spectra of topics. There’s a reason you don’t see widespread AI boostering in, say, neuroscience or psychology, outside of the handful of usual grifters and hustlers angling to cash in on the hype: because anyone with knowledge beyond statistical algebra and matrix multiplication can see the limitations of these tools, and knows they cannot displace labor permanently in their current forms. Outside of the “booster bubble”, the concerns we have with AI are less the apocalyptic claims of Mr. Amodei that mass unemployment from AI is just three to six months away (since 2023), and more the rampant misuse and exploitation these systems rely upon and cultivate for profit. Most of us aren’t opposed to having another tool, we’re opposed to perpetually renting this tool indefinitely from oligarchs shoving it down our throats and datacenters hoovering our limited energy and freshwater supplies, instead of being able to utilize it locally in sustainable and sensical ways.

Learning about different topics from different fields helps paint a clearer picture - one that’s admittedly even more bleak in the immediate, but at least arms you with knowledge to effect change for the better going forward.