this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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The majority of U.S. adults don't understand the technology well enough to make an informed decision on the matter.
To be fair, even if you understand the tech it's kinda hard to see how it would benefit the average worker as opposed to CEOs and shareholders who will use it as a cost reduction method to make more money. Most of them will be laid off because of AI so obviously it's of no benefit to them.
Just spitballing here, and this may be a bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking, but ultimately I think this is what might push the US into socialized healthcare and/or UBI. Increasing automation won't reduce population- and as more workers are out of work due to automation, they'll have more time and motivation to do things like protest.
The US economy literally depends on 3-4% of the workforce being so desperate for work that they'll take any job, regardless of how awful the pay is. They said this during the recent labor shortage, citing how this is used to keep wages down and how it's a "bad thing" that almost 100% of the workforce was employed because it meant people could pick and choose rather than just take the first offer they get, thus causing wages to increase.
Poverty and homelessness are a feature, not a bug.
Yes, but for capitalism it's a delicate balance- too many job openings gives labor more power, but too few job openings gives people reason to challenge the status quo. That 3-4% may be enough for the capitalists, but what happens when 15-20% of your workforce are unemployed because of automation? That's when civil unrest happens.
Remember that the most progressive Presidential administration in US history, FDR, happened right after the gilded age and roaring 20's crashed the economy. When 25% of Americans were out of work during the Great Depression, social programs suddenly looked much more preferable than food riots. And the wealth disparity now is even greater, relatively, than it was back then.
Very true, but it's precisely that wealth disparity that concerns me. I've seen the current US wealth disparity described as being on par with the disparity in France just before the French Revolution happened, where the cost of a loaf of bread had soared to more than the average worker made in a day. I worry that the more than half a century of anti-union propaganda and "get what I need and screw everybody else" attitude has beaten down the general public enough that there simply won't be enough of a unified effort to enact meaningful change. I worry about how bad things will have to get before it's too much. How many families will never recover.
But these are also very different times compared to the 1920s in that we've been riding on the coattails of the post WW2 economic boom for almost 70 years, and as that continues to slow down we might see some actual pushback. We already have, with every generation being more progressive than the last.
But I still can't help but worry.
Yep. I stopped listening to Marketplace on NPR because the last time I listened they were echoing this exact sentiment. Somehow it's a good thing that wages aren't keeping up with inflation. Fuck NPR.
Seems more likely that they'll have more time not in the sense of having easier jobs but by being laid off and having to fight for their livelihood. In the corporate-driven society that we live today, it's unlikely that the benefits of new advancements will be spontaneously shared.
This is exactly what I meant.
People who have to fight for subsistence won't easily revolt, because they're too busy trying to survive.
People who are unemployed have nothing to lose by not revolting. And the more automation there is, the more unemployed people there will be.
So we see it the same way, but I don't feel much optimistic about it because it's going to get much worse before it might get better. All the suffering and struggle that it will take to reform society will be ugly.
Yes, I think it will get worse before it gets better. As long as there is a sociopathic desire to hoard wealth, and no fucks given to our fellow humans, this is how it will be. Capitalism causes these issues, and so capitalism can't fix them.
Efficiency and productivity aren't bad things. Nobody likes doing bullshit work.
Unemployment may become a huge issue, but IMO the solution isn't busy work. Or at least come up with more useful government jobs programs.
Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with using AI to get rid of bullshit work. The issue is who will benefit from using AI and it's unlikely to be the people who currently do the bullshit work.
But that's literally everything in a capitalist economy. Value collects to the capital. It has nothing to do with AI.
You see the problem with that is how ai in the case of animation and art is how it's not removing menial labor your removing hobbys that people get paid for taking part in
Who do tractors benefit?
If things becomes cheaper because of AI, then it benefits everyone.
You could cut the housing price to a tenth of what they currently are and it wouldn't matter to the homeless people who don't have a job. Things being cheaper don't matter to people who can't make a living.
Yup.
Cheap production of consumer goods almost always comes at the expense of working conditions and actual happiness.
Most of them? The vast majority of jobs cannot be replaced by LLMs. The CEOs who believe that are delusional.
If you look at the poll, the concerns raised are all valid. AI will most likely be used to automate cyberattacks, identity theft, and to spread misinformation. I think the benefits of the technology outweigh the risks, but these issues are very real possibilities.
Informed or not, they aren’t wrong. If there is an iota that something can be misused, it will be. Human nature. AI will be used against everyone. It’s potentially for good is equally as strong as its potential for evil.
But imagine this. You get laid off. At that moment, bots are contacting your bank, LinkedIn, and most of the financial lenders about the incident. Your credit is flagged as your income has dropped significantly. Your bank seizes the opportunity and jacks up your mortgage rates. Lenders are also making use of the opportunity to seize back their merchandise as you’ll likely not be able to make payments and they know it.
Just one likely incident when big brother knows all and can connect the dots using raw compute power.
Having every little secret parcelled over the internet because we live in the digital age is not something humanity needs.
I’m actually stunned that even here, among the tech nerds, you all still don’t realize how much digital espionage is being done on the daily. AI will only serve to help those in power grow bigger.
None of this requires "AI." At most AI is a tool to make this more efficient. But then you're arguing about a tool and not the problem behavior of people.
AI is not bots, most of that would be easier to do with traditional code rather than a deep learning model. But the reality is there is no incentive for these entities to cooperate with each other.
But our elected officials like McConnell, feinstein, Sanders, Romney, manchin, Blumenthal, Marley have us covered.
They are up to speed on the times and know exactly what our generations challenges are. I trust them to put forward meaningful legislation that captures a nuanced understanding that will protect the interests of the American people while positioning the US as a world leader on these matters.
Haha
Seeing technology consistently putting people out of work is enough for people to see it as a problem. You shouldn't need to be an expert in it to be able to have an opinion when it's being used to threaten your source of income. Teachers have to do more work and put in more time now because ChatGPT has affected education at every level. Educators already get paid dick to work insane hours of skilled labor, and students have enough on their plates without having to spend extra time in the classroom. It's especially unfair when every student has to pay for the actions of the few dishonest ones. Pretty ironic how it's set us back technologically, to the point where we can't use the tech that's been created and implemented to make our lives easier. We're back to sitting at our desks with a pencil and paper for an extra hour a week. There's already AI "books" being sold to unknowing customers on amazon. How long will it really be until researchers are competing with it? Students won't be able to recognize the difference between real and fake academic articles. They'll spread incorrect information after stealing pieces of real studies without the authors' permission, then mash them together into some bullshit that sounds legitimate. You know there will be AP articles (written by AI) with headlines like "new study says xyz!" and people will just believe that shit.
When the government can do its job and create fail safes like UBI to keep people's lives/livelihoods from being ruined by AI and other tech, then people might be more open to it. But the lemmy narrative that overtakes every single post about AI, that says the average person is too dumb to be allowed to have an opinion, is not only, well, fucking dumb, but also tone deaf and willfully ignorant.
Especially when this discussion can easily go the other way, by pointing out that tech bros are too dumb to understand the socioeconomic repercussions of AI.
The majority doesn't understand anything.
So what?
I mean, NFT's is a ridiculous comparison because those that understood that tech were exactly the ones that said it was ridiculous.
Wasn't it the ones who didn't understand NFTs who were the fan boys? Everyone who knew what they were said they were bloody stupid from the get-go.
You can make an observation that something is dangerous without intimate knowledge of its internal mechanisms.
Sure you can, but that doesn't change the fact that your ignorant whether it's dangerous or not.
And these people are making 'observations' without knowledge of even the external mechanisms.
I'm sure I can name many examples of things I observed as dangerous, and the observation being correct. But sure, claim unilateral ignorance and dismiss anyone who don't agree with your view.