Comment by JumpCrisscross
9 days ago
> Meta and Jeff Bezos being held up in a good light
The message to a group of graduating artists should have been about the literature, art and public works that turned the Industrial Revolution's hyper-concentrated gains into broadly-felt benefits. (And then, after WWII and the Green Revolution, encouraged us to start reckoning with its environmental cost.)
AI is potentially—and with increasing confidence day to day—showing itself to be useful. That deserves neither worship nor demonization. Yet history—told by the humanities!—tell us, it probably hasn’t started in the right leaders’ hands. It is the role of the humanities to show and guide the public through that debate and reconciliation.
> literature, art and public works that turned the Industrial Revolution's hyper-concentrated gains into broadly-felt benefits
those all played a part to be sure, but it was workers organizing and striking en masse, bringing factories to a halt, battling with private armies or gov troops (and getting killed), and hard-fought progressive campaigns that achieved it
no one is willing to do that these days, until it gets much much worse; plus workers don't have the leverage that they did back at that time -- factories still relied on them -- sure you could ship in replacements for striking workers but that required considerable effort. the goal here is not to rely on labor at all, effectively eliminating any leverage that labor has over capital.