alt Hacker NewsEvery societal shift that puts large groups of people out of jobs gets protested. Just look at how protected various groups are (like car dealerships vs online sales) because they lobbied at the right time. Same deal for the groups protesting Waymo.
The human thing to do is to protest if your livelihood is going away. That’s not evil. But it is a problem when the government just encodes one groups desires even if it’s not actually better for people.
If a community sees a building going in that they think will pollute the community (light noise, water, literally anything), they have a right to protest and push back. Does it matter what the reason is?
People are concerned about data centers because they are perceived to be disruptive and polluting, and not offering a public good to the community.
People are concerned about LLMs because there are existential questions about work, information (and misinformation), learning, and so much more. That big AI firms don’t have any answers for other than “oh yeah we’ll bulldoze that career.”
So yeah, people are concerned about this, and it’s valid. This does not make them generally anti-progress or anti-human or even anti-technology .
I completely agree with you except the environment part which seems forced. It is valid for people to be concerned with their jobs. But in writing this obvious thing we both agree about, you have forgotten the more interesting part: Waymo stands to reduce a significant number of deaths. What does it say about the ethics of labour unions? In fact, if you could leverage any control over all this, what would you do? Release waymo or protect people's jobs?