How to smash the looms today - I've always loved tech. Now, I'm a Luddite. You should be one, too.
How to smash the looms today - I've always loved tech. Now, I'm a Luddite. You should be one, too.
I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book
I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book about the iPhone.
Also, I'm a Luddite. That's not the contradiction that it might sound like. The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them.
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I work in ML and AI and I strongly believe that reduced hours, wfh and universal basic income are needed. All new technologies can help us living a better life, it doesn't make sense using them to build a worst society
All new technologies can help us living a better life, it doesn’t make sense using them to build a worst society
It does if all you care about is short-term profit. Gotta make them stockholders happy before they bail.
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It's like saying that someone who built the steam engine and the engineers building trains actively killed native Americans is US, because trains helped colonization of north America. The steam engine and trains were a great thing. Politics must deal with social changes. Because we know that any technological advance can result in social instability if left in the hand of wrong people.
This is exactly the topic of the linked article. Nothing wrong with ML, AI and technology as is. Wrong applications are the problem
Edit. For context https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/TRR
I…are you well?
I’m not even being hostile, your argument makes no sense on its face.
Logically it doesn’t even correlate to your conclusion, what???
My point wasn’t that “tech is bad” nor did I make that point anywhere in my comment. My critique was that this “tech” you seem to be a huge fan of is not going to deliver some worker’s paradise - it’s going to make the average labourer (yes that includes office workers) unemployed or severely underemployed. If employment wasn’t the determinate of our livelihoods, then sure! Great!
But, we don’t live in that world. Why is this so hard for STEM lords and tech bros to get? It’s like this delusional techno-socialist utopia that’s being envisioned without any scrap of reality lmao.
I think you need a little more help with logic and reading comprehension before you respond so condescendingly.
OP's point is that the technology will not create a paradise or hell. It is the political environment that does that. The technology is simply a tool that will be used.
But if the political environment is oppressive, do we want to give it another tool and just be like “now be sure to use it for good”.
I agree that no technology is inherently evil, not even something like the atomic bomb. But you have to consider the actual and likely future environment that the technology will be in. And this state of regulatory capture, let the largest pocket book have the most speech, ever consolidating wealth and power situation is not one in which I believe we should be contributing new potentially oppressive technologies. We should be hindering them as we simultaneously work to reform our government and economic structure.
I am well, thanks for asking.
Currently the tech I am a huge fan of is helping me a lot handling the daily business. It has been a godsend for my mental health. It is helping me in a lot of areas I struggle with (paper work and meaningless corporate processes), it helps me better organizing my work, and it support me in areas where I used to heavily rely on Google and forums. It helps me to learn and improve. Overall I am a happy chatgpt customer.
Other than that, we don't have AI yet, still layoffs are at record number. Layoffs and suffering are not caused by AI, or whatever fancy tech. They are caused by current economic system that cannot redistribute wealth and business practices built to concentrate wealth. They've been there before AI, they'll be there after AI.
If you believe that blocking AI will change anything... No it won't. It won't change anything.
This is uniquely naïve to a frankly disturbing degree. Your work is actively going to kill people across the developed world when they fall out of the workforce with zero replacement jobs nor opportunities.
Huh. Sounds like a good argument for a UBI.
Yes? It is? But are you so naïve to think that will ever happen in the near future? Does anyone see the reality of politics in the west and think this will happen in even a decades time? I’m not pessimistic as you implied in a previous comment, I’m a realist and I would love to see the supposed magic bullets referenced here work out. But, in our systems, they likely won’t? Am I taking crazy pills?
I don't pretend to know the future. Things can change radically or things can stay the same for decades. I see no reason to assume anything. I am not optimistic, but I am not going to stop fighting just because of that.
I wasn't optimistic about stopping the war in Iraq. I still marched against it. I wasn't optimistic in SCOTUS not ending Roe v. Wade. I still marched against it.
Maybe you don't see the point of fighting even when change isn't likely, but making a mark on history is worth something.
Remember this man? He knew he was not going to win. He did it anyway.
But are you so naïve to think that will ever happen in the near future?
No one is committing to a firm prediction.
The objectives for workers to pursue are, on the broadest level, quite apparent.
If workers fail to recognize the objectives, and of the necessity for direct and coordinated action toward achieving them, then they will fail to stop elites from consuming and eventually depleting the resources and populations of the planet, for their own hubris and greed.
In such a case, there is no doubt elites will not stop themselves.
If your first reaction to criticism is to discount it as artificial I would suggest taking stock of yourself and how you engage in discussions.
AI/ML is an extremely broad field, while some assholes do have terrible motives most of the work is tool building. We build tools to help do things that are monotonous or difficult for humans to do so people can focus on more creative work... while acknowledging that the field carries some extreme dangers if misused. AI alone isn't the problem, the concentration of wealth is devastating to society and we need to fix that before AI makes it worse - but AI itself is a tool that can be used for good.
Wut. You really have to be reading my comments in bad faith to get that take from what I’m saying. I didn’t say “AI/ML bad smash all tech.” I said it’s current deployment and iteration in our systems of economics in most of the west is not a positive thing as it stands. Make huge societal changes and economic model shifts, and I’m all for it? But at the moment, it’s likely to do far more harm than good?
I think you're taking a far too narrow view if you can state that it's not positive. At my company we've managed to drastically reduce the amount of dumb menial stuff that people have to do and we haven't fired people when we've improved productivity. In some cases AI is going to be terribly misused but it's a tool and we should use it to make people's lives better.
Maybe your view is too narrow if it's fueled by personal anecdotes. Technology not hurting you is just a data point, not a conclusion. Typically when we say positive, we really mean "net positive" and that's unknown. And the argument is not that we shouldn't use tools to make our lives better. It's OK to recognize that tools can be harmful and seek to reduce that harm.
I agree that this tool could be used to cause great harm, similar to most of our other tools. The problem isn't with the tool though, this tool could be a great gift to all of us, the problem is with the people who choose how the tool is used. Those people are causing massive social issues whether we have the tool or not.
But, I reject the previous statement that the tool will be a net negative. We have the power to fix our social issues and that will allow the tool to be a force for good.
It’s not even surprising, is it? Good ol Marx couldn’t foresee AI but could see the thorough proletarianization of us all. This is just the latest development.
I mean it’s not surprising, it’s just hilarious that this same cycle repeats with these hyper optimists that have zero comprehension of history nor any liberal arts training and act like gods in their playgrounds. Oh well, Icarus and all that.
I'm not optimistic. I'm pessimistic. But that doesn't mean I give up.
This whole discussion seems to not be about any underlying disagreement about tech and how it can have negative impacts on society (while giving the impression that it is about that), but rather the tone of the words used to expressed the idea. You keep having to respond to people who misunderstood your intentions because you did a pretty poor job of making it clear what your disagreements with Zeth0s were, so people assumed it was disagreeing with what he said (for good reason given how you start your comment).
True. I guess it’s these types that are the real accelerationists for rapidly sowing discontent via creating super efficient means of disenfranchising us all lol.
Liberal arts training?
Did you drop this /s?
You’re surprised keep the status quo is a controversial opinion in a work reform subreddit?
Where in a non-AI world do you imagine workers as gaining the things you say they can’t post?
I…am questioning the sanity of this community.
If we lived in a socialist worker’s paradise, then yes relieving menial work would be fantastic.
But we don’t. None of us do. Why in the hell is advocating for a reduction of labour needs a “positive” in a work reform community when all that really means is that jobs will be lost and not replaced with little to support those that are now displaced. What the fuck lmfao
What part of work reform do you think entails keeping things the same?
You're being dishonest if you say work reform is uncritically excited for AI with no other social changes