alt Hacker NewsI do understand people's dislike / hatred for AI but I am equally baffled.
I feel like the same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
The "cyber psychosis" thing is overblown just like the "Tesla ignites its passengers" is. The only reason it gets in the news is because it is trendy to do so. The people getting 'infected' would've infected themselves regardless.
Genuinely I think the hatred is overblown by people who have no clue what the actual truth of AI is, something they seem obsessed with.
The only genuine complaint about AI is the data sourcing which is a problem being resolved by CloudFlare along with other platforms that require high payment for the privilege. With that said though, those platforms are still selling user data with users producing the content gaining nothing, that part needs to be fixed.
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>The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
I don't think it's all that complex tbh. The freeing from labor, both in the past and now, has been achieved largely by firing people, abandoning them to starve while power concentrates in the already-powerful.
This is the exact same thing the Luddites were taking issue with. Because they partly succeeded, we have better labor laws today.
In most cases, "free us from our labor" does not imply that they want machines to take their jobs so that they will have no means to subsist.
> that will free you from your labor
I don't believe that, though. The output will be owned by an elite. The rest of us will be useless and fighting for scraps. No utopia with UBI or similar.
Edit: wow, many made the same comment while I was reading the article. I should remember to refresh before starting to write.
>The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
No, AI will only free us from our jobs, while still keeping the need to find money to feed ourselves.
"When harnessed correctly" is exactly what wont happen, and exactly what all the structural and economic forces around AI ensure it wont happen.
> The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
I think this is easily explained: Sequencing matters. It I lose my job due to AI and it takes just 1-2 years for AI benefits to arrive at my door, that is plenty of time to be very anxious about my life. If I was guaranteed the AI benefits before I potentially lose my job, very different story.
That seems hard to set up, but alas.
All I’ve been hearing is how AI will replace human workers with no mention of what those humans are supposed to do when they get replaced. I think people are rightfully concerned about that.
We’re automating the interesting work with AI and leaving the drudge work for humans.
> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
What they're really saying with "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" is "free us from wealth inequality." It remains to be seen whether AI can actually help with wealth inequality (I don't think it can, personally), but right now most people associate AI with job loss which is not helpful vis-a-vis inequality at all.
Disclaimer: I'm long-term bearish on the impacts of AI, but I'm also bearish on "Capitalism sucks" and don't make a habit of hanging around groups dedicated to shitting on either topic.
> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
What is your source on them being "the exact same types"?
> The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
Who said it has to be AI?
> Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor
"Capitalism sucks" has become a pretty universal slogan, but traditionally, leftists didn't want less labor (that's what the capital owners want), but more control about their labour.
> "Cyber psychosis" thing is overblown
It might be, but I saw it happen to two people in my immediate social circle. And I'm pretty anti-social.
Ironically, when your identity is tightly coupled to opposing a thing you hate (Capitalism in your example), you feel personally threatened by a potential solution to it.
But real talk, doesn't Tesla have kind of an awful safety record?
> The only reason it gets in the news is because it is trendy to do so.
Hating on Waymo is trendy.
Hating on Tesla is the logical result of vehicles with door handles that won't open from the inside when the power is cut.
> when harnessed correctly
The people who think capitalism sucks are not the ones "harnessing" AI. The capitalists are. There is zero precedent that capital will do anything but exploit and oppress with this fancy new tool they've got (that everyone hates).
> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
No way. The people that run these companies all watched Star Trek and learned the exact wrong lessons from it. If you meant by "free you from your labor" that you will get laid off from your job and have to take up residence under an overpass, I would agree, that is what the want to do.
There is no path from the current set of cloud-focused AI hyperscalers to the kind of fully automated luxury gay space communism you seem to be gesturing at. The economics don't work out. OpenAI, Google, and/or Anthropic are supposed to invent magic superintelligence that makes all human labor obsolete or uncompetitive and... just host it for free? Like, that's not how the game is played. Them producing and hosting all the models makes them an economic chokepoint, and the only way you get the capital to train and host models at this scale is if you have a story to sell to investors that ends with "and then we become an economic chokepoint and extract rents from everyone else".
This is all embedded in their future growth prospects. Nobody is interested in subsidizing AI as a public service forever. They're interested in "AI is going to make this company go 100x".
“Capitalism sucks, Free us from our labor” is not “capitalism harder and implement automation so we dont have to work”.
>The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand leftists/Maxists here. They don't want to be "freed from labor". They want to own the value they produce instead of bartering their labor. In fact, Marxists tend to view Yang style UBI as a disaster because their analysis of history is one of class struggle, and removing the masses from the thing that gives them an active role in that struggle (their labor) effectively deproletariatizes them. Can't exactly do a general strike to oppose a business or state's actions when things are already set up to be fine when you're not working. You instead just become a glorified peasant, reliant on the magnanimity of your patron but ultimately powerless to do anything if they make your life worse except hope they don't continue to worsen it.
I'm not arguing the Marxist view of history and class struggle here, just making it clear that outside of some reddit teenagers going through an anarchist phase, actual anti-capitalists don't think work will disappear when their worldview materializes.
You are extremely incorrect. These people have no issue with labour. Their issue is with other people hoarding wealth or control.
If they could choose complete emancipation from poverty OR completely getting rid of the concept of billionaires - they would choose the second one. Their intention is not the absolute status of a human but how they are relative to others.
>The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.
This is a machine that has been trained on vast amounts of stolen data.
This is a machine that is being actively sold by the companies that build it as something that will destroy jobs.
This is a machine that has a lot of cheerleaders who are actively hostile to people who say "I do not like that this plagarism machine was trained on my work and is being sold as a way to destroy a craft that I have spent my entire life passionately devoted to getting good at".
This is a machine whose cheerleaders are quick to say that UBI is the solution to the massive unemployment that this machine is promising to create, and prone to never replying when asked what they are doing to help make UBI happen.
Sure, you can say that most of the problems people have with AI are problems with capitalism. This isn't wrong. But unless you can show me an example of how these giant plagarism machines and/or the companies diverting ever-larger amounts of time and money into them are actively working to destroy capitalism and replace it with something much more equitable and kind, then your "this machine will free you from your labor" line is a bunch of total bullshit.
I firmly believe AI is a surefire path to UBI. It's made me radically anti-AI.
The world already produces enough of everything that we could feed and clothe everyone, and yet it is not the case.
Care to explain why?
They hate it because no one is providing them with a credible thesis for how we get from working jobs we hate to the sort of “free from labor” utopia you envision.
Like, my aunt just lost the job she had for 33 years working at an insurance company. The company claims it is because of AI (whether companies lie about this sometimes is immaterial, it is sometimes true and becoming more true every month). She’s smart, but at age 60 I do think she’ll have a hard time shifting to a totally different knowledge work paradigm to keep up with 20-something AI natives.
What do we tell people in this position? That they should be happy? That UBI is coming? My aunt has bills to pay now, UBI is currently not in the Overton Window of US politics, and is totally off the table for Republicans (who have the white house through at least 2028).
I’m personally very excited about AI, but the lack of seriousness with which I see tech people talk about these issues is frustrating. If we can’t tell people a believable story where they don’t get screwed, they will decide (totally rationally from their perspective) that this needs to stop.