Comment by wazoox
1 month ago
I'm pretty baffled by people I hear here and there saying that AI is great because it saves them the hassle of human interaction. "I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music". Apparently people didn't get the memo : humans are social animals. Autonomous individuals simply don't exist. Nothing is entirely yours...
And AI precisely builds upon that large availability of our common data. That's a modern enclosure movement, at least it would be but fortunately, the Communist Chinese are there to enforce sharing.
This falls short because not being forced into chit-chat and music is very pleasant, but chatting with LLMs instead of collaborating with other people on a project is not. These aren't equivalents.
>humans are social animals
with varying social needs
> I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music
This is a reason I love Waymo. I don’t like talking with people and like avoiding it when possible.
There’s also may other, more important to me, reasons I like Waymo: they never cancel on me, their car doesn’t stink, no tipping (cheaper), not worrying about them rating me poorly.
Also, the passenger does not have to worry about the driver doing anything to them (and vice versa).
> humans are social animals.
True, but the driver is a stranger to me.
Herd animals like cattle/horses, are highly suspicious of, and stressed by, strangers. And imagine how uneasy two chimps could react when meeting for the first time.
A whole idea of a fleet of self driving cars for all of us to use just to further isolate ourselves and clog up our roads is just awful to me.
The same argument was made when elevator operators went away.
Some things work well with automation (taxis, washing machines, copy machines) while others work better with humans (chefs, masseuses).
50 years ago, I would have needed to dictate this note to a secretary who would distribute a memo. Does it further isolate ourselves that we can type and communicate directly? Would 1980 uses think it was awful to us?
Private autonomous vehicles are the pinnacle of entitlement. It is one of the single least efficient forms of transportation we could possibly come up with. It is such a perfect example of the public bearing the cost of private gains.
I am not against automation. I am against the idea that we are driving car culture forward in this way.
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