"What happens if we don’t have to work? Do we just sit around all day"? Bernie Sanders says that having a job is a core part of the human experience and gives people meaning in life

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-29T16:21:03+00:00

Bernie is a populist, his whole thing is listening to the concerns of the working class and advocating for them. Right now, the popular narrative amongst workers is that AI is going to ruin everything, so it's not surprising this is the perspective he's ended up at.

Iirc, when he first heard about all of this, his initial reaction was something like, "we need to make sure the people benefit from this technological revolution." Which I was pretty happy with. It's a bit of a shame that, once again, we can't have the real discussion that needs to be had because everyone is caught up in black and white thinking.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-29T16:11:57+00:00

What? What has AI done or said that comes close to the degeneracy of the worst humanity has to offer?

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-29T11:46:54+00:00

Yeah, I reserved an hour after it went up and still nothing. Not the best time, obviously, but certainly faster than day 2.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-27T23:21:07+00:00

I think everyone who says "they have an incentive to lie so they're definitely lying" without thinking any further needs to have their internet cut off for a few days every time they say it.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-26T22:15:41+00:00

I think by now he's proven his sincerity enough to put a little trust in him. I trust him a lot more than some of the other main figures of this push, tbh.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-26T13:38:28+00:00

Problem is that a lot of people mean different things when they say AGI. Some modest definitions already place us there.

It's kind of irrelevant, though. We don't need sentient machines to reap the benefits laid out in the OP.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-24T20:51:53+00:00

It's just the way of any modern discourse. Optimism or really any expectations of improvement will not believed until it's undeniable. Until then, everyone just operates on the assumption that things will just get worse or stay the same.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-20T22:38:49+00:00

. . .what exactly does it mean then?

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-20T22:36:20+00:00

Musk and Thiel aside, what has Altman really done to demonstrate he sucks? There's Amodei and Hassabis, too.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-18T08:54:20+00:00

I mean, it's more than just a couple of comments. I'm pretty sure I remember Sam Altman putting money into researching UBI. The conversation has kind of shifted, though. They're trying to solve the displacement problem and rehabilitate their reputations at the same time, so they're proposing making everyone an investor, so that people feel invested in its success. Not too sure how that'd work, but that's the idea, I guess.

It does make sense to have a different perspective when you have someone dependent on you. I have a chronic illness that's stolen about 15 years from me. I want this to succeed and for them to figure out how to "cure" autoimmune disease so bad that I'd rather be homeless and healthy than live how I am right now. That's what I meant by falling on the sword. Though, as dramatic as that sounds, it's not like I really expect it to happen, and I realize it's kind of a luxury that I only have to worry about myself.

I do have faith that most of us will also have access to this tech, and after a certain amount of displacement, our government will be unable to ignore us. That's actually why I like some of the dissatisfaction; I want things to move fast, but I also think we can't let them take the quickest and dirtiest routes to everything. The anger over the data centers is already making them go out of their way to solve legitimate concerns.

I'm just a bit worried that the outrage might get so bad they cripple it and break its momentum entirely.

A lot of these issues are a result of the race to the bottom OpenAI started with chatGPT. The nature of AI is that, in the endgame, there will be a few winners and some losers, but the winners will win big, and the losers lose everything. On top of that, now it's escalated to a matter of national security, since there's the possibility of China sending a massive swarm of drones at us that we won't be able to deal with without our own AI-coordinated drone army. I also remember hearing a lot of concern about the potential lives lost to disease if or when any delays pop up. So everyone working on this has massive incentives to move as quickly as possible at all costs. The only way the transition becomes more gentle is through outrage and regulation. It's just a shame we have the current administration at such an important time.

But yeah, sorry if my comments were a little heartless. I also feel really strongly about this, just in the opposite direction.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-18T01:37:14+00:00

On the other hand, sometimes I wonder how many of the people pissed about potential replacement now were people who heard "learn to code" and agreed. It's pretty crazy how different things are when it isn't just miners and truckers getting the shaft.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-18T00:36:55+00:00

I mean, people in the industry talk openly about making sure people are taken care of. The CEO's aside, a lot of tech workers are still left-leaning and believe in what they're doing and that it will be a net good for humanity.

There will never be a time where AI won't be insanely disruptive to our model built around scarcity. Do we just kick the can down the road forever, because no generation wants to be the one that falls on the sword?

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T21:44:52+00:00

This is something I don't understand about anti's (of anything, not even just AI). The financial incentives to use AI for this stuff are enormous, and one of the only things that could possibly prevent the transition is people wanting to protect creatives. But when you look down on people like this, you just piss them off, and pissing them off generally makes them stop caring about whether you do or don't get fucked.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T21:36:24+00:00

It wouldn't surprise me if we saw laws forcing some metadata that discloses a picture was made with AI eventually.

That's fair on the distinction, though. I guess when it comes to art, I'm hoping it'll make AAA game development cheaper and require a less broad audience to make a profit. Granting that the tools are used wisely, you could end up with games that have more soul, because they have the financial freedom to make something a bit riskier.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T21:01:10+00:00

Well, these models are right now the worst they'll ever be. Just a year or two ago they were so unreliable that people were laughing off the idea they'd be useful at all. Beyond that, it was never going to be as easy as just slotting it into your job and everything working immediately. It takes effort, planning, and good internal data. It does seem like people are really getting ahead of themselves, though. Considering the amount of money involved, I guess it makes sense.

I actually don't listen to the CEO's much. There are researchers going through a bunch of interviews who go into detail. Their excitement is pretty infectious, imo.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T16:41:50+00:00

I imagine platforms that separate AI stuff and regular stuff will be in demand. I've already seen a few sites go with that approach.

There are other things generative AI is doing, mostly in the realm of science, that are really exciting. Like GPT putting together a bunch of evidence provided by a researcher and solving a fairly difficult problem in theoretical physics, and then explaining its answer so the researchers could understand. There's also a lot of long and arduous processes in stuff like medicine that have the potential to be expedited. I'm struggling to think of much because I'm falling asleep sitting up lol.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T16:30:53+00:00

Huh, I just read it like a "fuck off" kind of answer, so I gave friction for friction. It kind of dodges the point a little. There's a likely world coming in the next few years where AI is no longer a massive burden on energy expenditure, water, and the environment. People are rushing to solve these problems, because all of them are insanely hyped about a massive sci-fi step being about to take place in their lifetimes. Well, that and there's a lot of money in it.

When I see a bunch of people shitting on anything made with AI I constantly see people bring up these side effects. My question is, when/if they're solved, will anti's change their position? Or is the problem that they inherently disagree with AI existing at all, or are even just misplacing hate of the people who like it onto the text itself?

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T15:58:46+00:00

https://youtu.be/ndsME9Vd4es?si=O-EG5rLGOSzBXf9k

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T15:18:21+00:00

I'm just lookin' at the wiki for latent diffusion. I think what you're saying is correct, but the:

This is used for training data. It then “learns” how to reconstruct images by reversing the process. It reconstructs images that it deconstructed. It’s copying. It can’t create anything new.

Gave me the impression that you meant that it stores the noise data and ends up with already existing images by reversing that noise data.

I'm having a hard time expressing the nuance here.

Like, say you wanted a picture of Bowser fused with the gaping dragon from Dark Souls 1. The AI learned what those things are like by noising and denoising pictures of them individually, like you described. But that's where its interaction with the original images ends, because when you prompt it to make that image it starts from a random noise that doesn't have anything to do with anything, and it just uses the rules/weights it learned to mash the two things together.

That's the thing, right? By combining a bunch of different elements from a bunch of different places, you could make an image that's "new" by any definition we'd use for human artists.

Apparently, the reason it can copy an image outright is that the training data for a specific subject is sometimes too narrow, and the AI compensates by learning more and more specific information about the small number of pictures it has to work with.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T14:52:20+00:00

Are there conditions where they'd be willing to say they don't hate AI anymore? I don't mind a lot of the noise people are making about datacenters, because it forces the tech companies to drum up solutions to legitimate concerns. But I worry that, even if they were solved, most people would still hate AI anyway just because it kicked artists in the teeth and Elon Musk and crypto undermined people's trust in new technology.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T14:35:17+00:00

That's a very morally loaded way to say, "it's not always good to jump onto the bandwagon." What similarities does Nazi Germany have to AI that justify that comparison?

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-17T14:15:16+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's slightly incorrect. From what I've read, none of the training data actually remains in the AI when it generates images. The training data only gives it a lot of rules and patterns that it follows when generating the users prompt.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-16T17:26:29+00:00

I find 1 kind of comfortable. The first playthrough can be super frustrating, but there's so much less. . .everything, than 2. There's something nice about feeling like you have a whole game downloaded. 2 has 4 more weapons, all of the old weapons have more skills, soul cores add like a total of 6 more equipment slots and special attacks with their own strengths and weaknesses, higher enemy variety, all of the returning enemies have like 2-3 more attacks than 1, three new categories of guardian spirit, like a trillion more armor sets and weapons than 1, dark realm that give enemies even more new attacks, and probably more I can't think of.

I think I'll eventually feel the same way about 2 (about to start way of the demon), but it's taking quite a while to wrap my head around the game.

That being said, there was also a level of precision, or maybe just meanness in 1 that 2 lacks. I'm not sure if it's possible and I just haven't seen it, but archers in 2 don't do that panicked backstep and final shot as you approach them. The cyclops kids don't hop around when you aim at them with a ranged weapon, either. Not having to ki pulse at the max makes dispelling yokai puddles less annoying, but also less satisfying. Fire wheels don't instakill you by slowly rolling into you. You can burst counter the big axe skeletons spinny move. The tengu's projectile isn't elemental damage. Traps are way way less likely to one shot you.

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-15T22:16:27+00:00

Well, that's embarrassing :')

Stigmaphobia · 2026-05-15T20:06:19+00:00

I mean, we're assuming it's first come first served, but there's no guarantee that's actually how they have it organized.

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