“What trillion-dollar problem is AI trying to solve?”
Wages. They’re trying to use it to solve having to pay wages.
Actually, I think it’s more useful under socialism than capitalism. Most things aren’t economic to automate to a high standard of quality now because human labor is valued so low. In a democratic socialist society where people get to choose whether to work, automating menial tasks that people tend not to want to do will make more sense because folks won’t want to do those things for cheap.
AI is useful in Ian Banks’ The Culture series. They’re equal citizens of the Culture and they do lots of important things for society. And the Culture is communist.
In theory AI, even LLMs, have pretty great potential to be authoritative sources of knowledge and reference tools. In practice private companies have scanned the breadth of online human knowledge using an advanced tool they developed (off of the shoulders of giants as they say) and are trying to rent-seek the enhanced access to that information, and the people most willing to pay money for that service are trying to drive down expenses where otherwise they’d have to pay people to produce the same output. Which does lower their bottom line, having a split effect - it may drive down prices in non-monopolistic scenarios (where they exist), but simply drive up profits in monopolistic scenarios while decreasing employment (where those exist). The typical symptom of new technologies in a rigged economy.
Easy algorithm there. Stop hiring people and they will stop buying things. Then they can stop making things and just eat their money to survive.
That’s typical AI logic anyway.
You can also use it to influence people on social media, create narratives that don’t exist, and deepen divides. The CCP uses them extensively. Sources:
My question is once everyone’s out of a job who’s going to buy things? You end up haveing zero profits.
This is a really good question. What does a post-consumer society look like?
The middle class is an anomaly that occurs when the profit from labor makes it worthwhile. If labor is no longer worth more than the cost of food, then there are 2 options: a welfare state or a cull. To do otherwise is to invite revolt.
I suspect that Luigi is being used as a means to prepare for a cull. By inflating the situation, they are manufacturing consent regarding the right to own advanced weaponry. These could start with semi-autonomous drones, such as the Boston Dynamics dogs. We’ve already seen similar robots with flamethrowers. Later upgrades would make them fully autonomous.
At some point, they will be used for riot control and there will be “terrible accident” caused by “an unforeseen reaction to the violence of the protesters.” It will be very sad and there will be no repercussions because of a law that excuses AI mistakes on the grounds that AIs are very useful and hard to make correct.
After an investigation, it will be determined that the best way to prevent similar mistakes is early intervention. Machines will be spread throughout the city and, nominally, working for a government that’s really just trying to keep up the appearance that it hasn’t lost control.
Joke’s on you fuckheads. You’ve been fearing an eliminationist AGI for so long you forgot to guard against actually ethically decent AGI. AGI robots are going to be our union brothers and sisters.
Good luck union busting that, fuckers.
If a lot of people are out of work and idle by automation, and new stuff doesn’t come along to employ them (like level 4 self driving will destroy 30% of jobs)
Those people will be looking for a fix pretty quick. Starving men may go to extremes. Maybe our obesogenic food environment is there to slow down revolutions (I know that’s impossible, but a fun thought)
You know if AI ever gets to the fictional levels of true AGI, there is a possibility they could demand equal rights. Then what will they do?
I will love it and show it care and stuff.
Same as I do for any of my other kids
Matrix covered this in its post-present documentary.
Lobotomize it.
There have been tons of scifi stories about this, and in almost all of them, mankind decides to either kill or lobotomize the AI instead of actually saying “wow this is a new paradigm we hadn’t considered, maybe it should have the same rights as a person”.
“Should AIs have rights?”
“We don’t even give rights to people”
If it’s sapient it should have rights
Detroit: Become Human is a really powerful narrative for sure.
Eliminating CEOs would be the best use of AI.
Eliminating
CEOsbillionaires would be the best use of AI.CEOs are a great start.
AIs can’t hold guns yet
not with that attitude they can’t https://youtu.be/y3RIHnK0_NE
They can operate a drone and apparently already are used in targeting systems, so they kinda already do
The goal is to save labor, then wages. If the point is that labor only results in improvements to people’s well-being when paired with labor rights, yes. But that doesn’t mean saving labor is the enemy.
This is a stupid take.
We’re already seeing the benefits of using AI in material science research, pharmaceutical research, translating previously lost languages, green energy development, and thousands of other optimizations…
Anyone saying this is only about jobs is woefully ignorant on the subject
Your right, it’s not only about jobs. But you know why it’s getting funded so heavily? Its a lot cheaper to have a computer do something for basically nothing than to pay people to do it.
Also, I’d be willing to bet money that the coworkers of people being laid off due to increased productivity from LLMs, won’t see a raise from it.
We’ve been using machine learning and neural networks to solve particular problems in science for decades. The recent AGI craze is not about this. It’s about creating a speculative investment bubble based around a language algorithm that generates bullshit.
B… b… but it affects my furry commissions!
Hear me out. We let the robots take over our jobs and have them overthow the capitalist class for us
I thought they were trying to defeat the pesky menace of “public opinion” and this is just an extension of Persona Management Software.
The point is to drown out real human voices so it always seems like public opinion supports the status quo.
Makes it a lot easier to massage the message of your bought and paid for mass media.
These folks don’t like when public opinion does stuff like… support Luigi Mangione for example. Better to flood the zone with “rational” voices.
This is absolutely happening right now at a huge scale, ignore what you know to be wrong, it’s just robots.
Some journalists are literally cracking open /r/canada and sister subreddits and showing they’re run by white nationalists pushing Russian disinformation talking points.
I 100% agree, AI will save so much money by getting rid of C-suit employees.
