Technological progress is multifaceted. Some of it is more value-neutral and tends to be a general accelerant.

In terms of social effect, there's two axes that jump out at me for things that are _not_ value-neutral:

  - technology of violence, where the axis is whether it makes it easier or harder for some people to have direct power over others, and
  - centralization/decentralization technologies.

In a _very_ hand-wavey, un-nuanced take, decentralized systems shift power and profit away from the establishment and are inconvenient to use, and centralized systems tend to be easier to use -- and they support and create establishments, and give them power and profit. Unsurprisingly, a fair number of establishments exist and grow precisely because they found a way to centralize a decentralized technology.

The choices that we make in our lived systems mean these axes are mere tendencies, not predictions. The "old" Internet was largely a decentralization technology. The shift towards platforms (Facebook, Xitter...) made many of the old-internet functionality easier to use by centralizing it. Blockchain is superficially and deliberately a decentralizing technology, but with the choices we've made, it's mostly empowered people positioned to centralize it (initially in the form of fiat currency exchange points).

LLM progress is currently in a centralizing phase, but overall its direction remains unclear; will open-weight models running on cheap commodity hardware (once OpenAI won't or can't clear the aisles of available VRAM) turn the tide, or will the frontier labs retain a permanent structural advantage -- and what market and regulatory choices will we make to nudge that direction?

No. You've seen no benefit from computers, domestic appliances, modern medicine?

You could argue that companies reap outsized benefits, and that the benefits are not shared fairly with workers.

If you take antibiotics so you don't die are you part of the ruling class?

This is great news to me, as this implies I'm part of the ruling class!