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Comment by irdc

7 hours ago

AI is busy destroying my art and my livelihood. Fighting back is about as psychotic as drapetomania[0] was.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

Has any group of workers ever "won" a long-term victory against a new technology? There are plenty of short-term concessions made in the face of powerful trade union opposition, but I can't think of any technology that was just stopped dead to appease workers with obsolete skills.

  • That assumes we're talking about technologies that are legal and in some way beneficial. AI is basically large-scale copyright infringement. If allowed to continue, human authors (I'm including programmers here) will eventually just stop publishing, because why feed the machine that's busy replacing you? You're not even getting paid for it, because the magic box can do the same thing you can for cheaper.

    Thing is, everything AI produces is derivative; it cannot make anything truly original. Therefore widespread AI adoption will inevitably lead to scientific and cultural stagnation.

    So we'll have our magic box that can perform our every wish. And we'll all be worse off for it.