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Comment by palmotea

1 month ago

> I'm not sure how useful it is to say this, but I think a lot of people (myself included, a few years ago now) have been through this moment of existential crisis and come out the other side.

Two important things you didn't address:

1. Quality-of-life

2. Economic security

I'm not unhappy that vibe-coding is possible. I'm unhappy that it's likely to change the equation so I will lose a good chunk of my economic security (in a way that increases inequality) and make my work simultaneously more intense and less satisfying. I may be in a better position than a new-grad comp sci major, but the effects are a net negative. That doesn't make me happy or excited. And I'm not a psychopath, so I'm also unhappy for the new-grad comp sci majors, too.

I think one thing you can say for sure, is AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way, despite any propaganda to the contrary. It's deeply anti-human, and serves other inhuman mechanisms first and foremost. A relatively small number of people are building it to just see what happens and maybe win the lottery in the process, and everyone else has to deal with the consequences of that (which, by the way, is why data centers are so hated: it's not the first we've been through something like this and almost everyone is sick of it).

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palmotea

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chasd00  1 month ago

> AI technology has not been developed to make any regular person's life better or help humanity in any way

What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity? I think of AI as like the invention of the loom. It made textiles a lot faster but idk about making lives better by itself. It made more clothes but you still had to buy them. I can't really think of a technology that made lives better only because of its existence.

  • ungovernableCat  1 month ago

    >What are some examples of technology that did make regular people's life better or help humanity?

    Washing machine, fridge, indoor plumbing, penicillin

    • chasd00  1 month ago

      If you didn’t have the money to buy any of those then they may as well didn’t exist. Those inventions helped no one who couldn’t spend the money to attain them.

      Edit: partial credit on indoor plumbing because it helped prevent disease spread to even those who didn’t have indoor plumbing.

  • palmotea  1 month ago

    What I meant is that it's not being built to solve any problem most people actually have. It's not like a building that's being built become some person needs shelter. It's more like some guy building a howitzer and just firing it randomly (hitting homes and people), just because he can and thinks it's cool and maybe can make some money selling tickets. After all, it was inevitable someone was going to built a howitzer and start firing it, so it might as well be him doing it.

    AI is more like social media, something no one actually needs and no one was really clamoring for, which was made without with any care about how it would affect people. It got built, caused all kinds of malign consequences disproportionate to whatever meager benefits it provided, and Mark Zuckerberg got rich from all that.

    Ultimately, many of problems of AI stem from the kind of capitalism we have now, AI just magnifies them to extreme and potentially accelerating degree.