Comment by academia_hack
15 hours ago
I'm not terribly optimistic. I don't think humans have really figured out what to do about historical materialism. More just remarking that this is a blog post that almost literally reads "fellow elites, let us ensure only we control the means of production. It is our duty to humanity to control the masses."
I’m trying to hear what you’re saying, but using these Marxist cliches makes your statements a little off putting to me.
Fair. My point is not that all of Marxism is correct (or even most of it) but rather that the specific pattern he and other theorists in that school of thought observed when developing the theory of historical materialism seems to strongly match a lot of what's playing out in AI.
AI, doesn't feel all that different to the mechanical loom that was the impetus behind a lot of Marx's early critiques of industrial technology.
You've got a really cool invention that replaces what was previously a skilled artisan trade. The wealthy then use this invention to excoriate the artisans and render the loom operators as replaceable commodities.
Dario is essentially writing a blog post about why only he (and a few other approved elite companies) should be trusted to own the loom and then make it available for everyone else to labor at. Like the capitalists of Marx's era, he genuinely believes it is better for everyone to have this arrangement and that it is natural people like him should sit as benevolent gods at the top of the pyramid.
It's fascinating to me to see the same underlying mechanisms that gave birth to some of the greatest failed political and social experiments of the 20th century bubbling up again so clearly with AI today.