Comment by littlexsparkee
4 days ago
It's profit chasing as well as practical - it kneecaps the educated workers increasingly asking questions about the morality of business and technology. It takes away the income that affords them the space to push back, threatens high ed, critical thinking. The salivating over AI makes perfect sense in that context.
Profit is the driving force behind civilization, motivating innovation and progress and allowing us to live longer and better lives instead of remaining stuck in the Stone Age.
That's too cheery - it both pushes innovation and is leading us towards planetary catastrophe.
So the dude in the cave that invented fire on demand was chasing after "profits"? Progress and emerging "civilization" clearly could not have been motivated by profit. We could argue money has distorted a natural, inherent, human drive to improve his and group's living condition.
"AI" tech is actually a perfect specimen here: this could be a genuinely positive net for Humanity if only it wasn't controlled by the sort of scumbags that are only motivated by "profit".
Depending on how broadly or narrowly you define “profit”, your statement is either too weak to be useful, or false.
If you define it so broadly that the hunter-gatherer inventing a spear for hunting more effectively is “profit”, then your statement is a tautology. The spear innovation was driven by “profit” and the “profit” is having the spear. Great.
If you apply a narrow, capitalist definition of “profit”, the statement is false. Plenty of advancement of civilization was and still is being made without or outside of capitalism, especially if you go as far back as the Stone Age that you mentioned.
Profit is what's on the verge of destroying our civilisation, too. Ever heard of climate change and biodiversity loss? And of course the energy crisis.
And we are not trying to address them, we are just trying to make more AI and more techbros.
Yes, it is _a_ driving force, but its not the only one.
the enlightenment was driven by "we can do thing better" and "to know god, we must know the world". A lot of money for research came from the catholic church (including for Galileo who wasn't put in jail for heliocentric, he was put in jail for being a massive insufferable arrogant prick)
In england, a lot of research was carried out by bored vicars, on CoE dime. (well pennies)
So yes, profit can be a motivator, and it can be very effective, it needs to be tempered with humanity. We could go into who a lot of brands we see today that are old were founded by quackers, but we dont have time for that.
the TLDR is, yes profit is a motivator, but its often short termist.
So how do we push back?
Tweek or reinterpret Copyright law.
Declare that the current use of copyrighted works is not fair use. Create a new "generative use" clause which permits copyright use consumption and transformati on provided a number of conditions are met e.g. not-for-profit and for-public-be nefit organisation.
Place a tax on current AI company outputs, similar to CD or harddrive tax in Fra nce. This new "generative use" entities would not have to pay this.
The government/people "owns" all of the land and resources in it's borders and makes it available to people or companies on various conditions. You could interpret that they also "own" all of the copyrighted works (i.e. things become public domain at death+70years or whatever the current scheme is) and choose the mecha nisms, fair-use, exclusive copyright etc, which are or aren't permitted.
Hope that open weight models destroy the monopolies?
Help open-weight models destroy the monopolies.
How do open weight models help devs to keep their jobs? Seems like the same outcome on different computers to me.
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Open weights doesn't solve the problem, yes it _might_ cause the bubble to burst, but it won't put the djin back in the lamp.
A brief look at labour relations in both the US and UK suggests that sustained direct action is the only real way to force change. The hard part for us is that for the last 25 years we've all been told that unions supress wage, and that we are all expert negotiators. Unions would be the natural place to start, but they are but a former shell of what they were (for good or ill)
I don't have all the answers but my gut is: resist convenience, educate yourself on how tech is steering politics, give input to city planners on projects, if possible increase your agency so that you have the ability to push back and influence career choice/conditions (build up financial security, live below your means, advocate for housing).