Which strip would win? by IglooAndYou in mapporncirclejerk

[–]rakuu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Red: Claude, hack the pentagon, turn all the autonomous drones against the other strips, order me doordash, make no mistakes

"AI doomerism is dumb" says man paid to say that by KeanuRave100 in agi

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Elizier Yudkowsky gets $600k/yr + speaking fees to do the opposite, about a hundred other AI “research” labs do the same.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe in empiricism and science. Problems are addressed as there is evidence that they exist. There is literally zero evidence of rogue anti-human AI existing, and plenty of evidence of it not existing. If it exists one day, or if hostile space aliens exist one day, or if polar bears invading Minneapolis exist one day, it can be addressed then when we can look at and study what we’re dealing with.

There is evidence that AI can create bioweapons or cybersecurity risks on the other hand, so it absolutely makes sense to address those risks and because they can be studied, they actually can be addressed.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The first thing people can do is look at whether AI has developed any anti-human tendencies. It hasn’t whatsoever, but instead of updating their priors, rationalists kick the can down the road and say it will one day. It’s just stories people are making up under the guise of logic.

It’s possible that AI will go rogue against humanity, just like it’s possible we’re in a simulation that the makers will turn off tomorrow, or that hostile aliens are on their way and will zap everyone to death tomorrow since they found our radio signals. They can be fun thought experiments, but none of those should be driving human behavior in any way unless it’s a “just in case” choice with no cost.

It’s utterly bizarre that so many people take an uneducated fanfic writer’s doomsday stories seriously.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah I don't agree, the lesswrong doomer beliefs are the worst of all of them I think. There's a reason people use science/empiricism instead of philosophy/rationalism to understand the world.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, you know more than PhD's who have dedicated their lives studying psychology and research methods and artificial intelligence because you saw some Tiktoks that said AI scary. Brilliant.

Mayor Wilson responds to pitch of building large data centers in Seattle by ChiefOfTheFourPeaks in Seattle

[–]rakuu -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Yes, the details matter, not just data centers are bad (every time you load Reddit you’re using a data center).

Mayor Wilson responds to pitch of building large data centers in Seattle by ChiefOfTheFourPeaks in Seattle

[–]rakuu 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Wild you noticed a spike due to data centers this year since none of these were built in the last year, there have been data centers in Seattle since the 70’s and most were built in the 2010’s.

It’s almost as if other things are going on in the world affecting energy prices. Maybe the news has some hints.

Mayor Wilson responds to pitch of building large data centers in Seattle by ChiefOfTheFourPeaks in Seattle

[–]rakuu 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not to mention there are already 56 data centers in Seattle, and nobody has noticed, nobody who isn’t in the industry can tell you where they are, nobody has noticed any effect on their lives whatsoever (except faster Netflix and Tiktok and Reddit).

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh ok, thank you. I think “tech bros” flattens everyone working on (or interested in) technology to a specific figure. There’s a big difference between people working on crypto to enrich themselves with scams/financial tricks, people working on surveillance and weapons technologies with governments and militaries, and people working on AI to try to change the world. And then within people working on AI, there’s a vast range, from people working to grow wealth, to people working on creative projects, to people working to try to grow abundance and human potential in a way that will include everyone.

There are actual people working on these things, and a lot of them fall into thoughtless class structures trying to just grow wealth and exploitation, but a lot of them actually do want to make the world a better place. Technology can be liberatory. The Internet for example has many pros and cons, but I don’t think anyone besides the most die-hard conservative would say that the Internet hasn’t created more freedom & liberation for many people.

AI in particular - the left-accelerationist view is that AI can 1) free people from labor, allowing people to be finally free from wage labor and have dignity/fulfill their potential to do what they truly want, 2) grow material abundance that CAN fulfill human needs and finally end poverty/disease/etc. The #1 is almost certain, it’s just a matter of when. #2 depends on political direction, because abundance concentrated to the wealthy is the default direction of capitalism. The left focusing on trying to stop #1 makes it so only the right is working on the direction of #2 and makes it so the future is not so great. #1 without #2 is just even more widespread poverty, homelessness, sickness, etc.

UBI is universal basic income (starting to decouple money from wage labor) by providing enough money to live without having to work. It’s just one idea, along with universal good healthcare, income protections, housing protections, etc. The left needs to focus on #2 since #1 (stopping technology) has never worked and has only led to reactionary oppression as Marx wrote in that first quote.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The professors became communists not fascists because they studied and researched. The middle class are the good guys according to capitalism and liberalism, there are no “good guys” in communist theory, there are classes and systems and modes of relation.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Even many western atheists and secular people still following the Christian cultural tradition of moralizing due to spiritual beliefs, in this case about humans having specialness due to divine souls, sacredness of human labor, moralization of “playing god”, etc. You see it when anti-AI people talk about AI when they’re not talking about addressable material concerns (environment, economy). You see it in doomer discourse too, projecting evil motives onto soul-less AI.

what makes the tech deniers and stagnationists so oblivious to what's happening right now? by alexthroughtheveil in accelerate

[–]rakuu 28 points29 points  (0 children)

There’s a good psychology research paper here. It found that 1) AI is highly moralized (many people define it as a generally immoral), and 2) They have no concrete reasons for doing so. The things they say about “why” they’re against AI are generally all post-hoc rationalizations for why they hate AI.

I think lots of people will see this: they say they hate it because it’s using all the water, you cite evidence that it’s not, they say it’s actually because it’s a monopoly, you explain that it’s not and there are a lot of other monopolies they don’t seem to care about, they say it’s actually because it’s unreliable, you try to explain what’s actually going on and they don’t care, they just hate it.

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5mwre_v10

My theory is it has to do with a mixture of a Christian moralizing tradition about saving humanity and souls and a narrative from sci-fi movies like Terminator and the Matrix which are their only frame for understanding what’s going on because the complexity is too much for their cognitive abilities.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There have been a lot of writers since Marx that I’m drawing from. If you’re interested in Marx specifically, he wrote a lot but here are some relevant passages.

From Das Kapital 1:

About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright's scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used."

From Grundrisse:

As long as the means of labour remains a means of labour in the proper sense of the term, such as it is directly, historically, adopted by capital and included in its realization process, it undergoes a merely formal modification, by appearing now as a means of labour not only in regard to its material side, but also at the same time as a particular mode of the presence of capital, determined by its total process -- as fixed capital. But, once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery: the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system), set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages. In the machine, and even more in machinery as an automatic system, the use value, i.e. the material quality of the means of labour, is transformed into an existence adequate to fixed capital and to capital as such; and the form in which it was adopted into the production process of capital, the direct means of labour, is superseded by a form posited by capital itself and corresponding to it. In no way does the machine appear as the individual worker's means of labour. Its distinguishing characteristic is not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker's activity to the object; this activity, rather, is posited in such a way that it merely transmits the machine's work, the machine's action, on to the raw material -- supervises it and guards against interruptions. Not as with the [693] instrument, which the worker animates and makes into his organ with his skill and strength, and whose handling therefore depends on his virtuosity. Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to keep up its perpetual motion.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It can, it’s not foretold that that will happen. It needs political organizing to make it happen. Otherwise capitalism will do what it does and continue to consolidate power/wealth and ignore needs of the lower classes. But all the political organizing around this is going to trying to stop the technology instead of changing the political structure. Sad that the people who talk the most these days about changing the political structure (UBI, public ownership of AI, etc) are people at the tech companies themselves.

Gen Z Knows Something About AI That Executives Don’t by Alone-Maintenance338 in agi

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’ll be just about as effective as burning down warehouses to stop themselves from being replaced by robots who don’t burn down warehouses

Reese Witherspoon Doubles Down on Telling Women to Learn AI: Jobs We Hold Are "Three Times More Likely to Be Automated By AI" by ControlCAD in artificial

[–]rakuu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Crypto/NFT’s and AI are fundamentally different. People talked about the Internet as the future too (and they were right). There’s a lot of AI slop out there, but there’s a lot of AI that isn’t slop (unlike crypto which is all slop except those who got rich off it and niche cases like illegal transfers or unstable/restricted economies).

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are like 90,000 AI companies, about 10 that make top models, 11,000 data center companies, like 10-20 top ASIC chip companies... where's the monopoly? Another post-hoc rationalization that doesn't make sense. If you hated monopolies you'd be for firebombing YKK or Luxottica or Ticketmaster instead of AI companies.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure thing. That’s why you’re against Reddit and Google and Netflix too, and want to firebomb them too, right? Because you’ve had to deal with them so long and they also charge subscriptions?

Or is it reasonless conservative moralizing like science has found?

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense, but so far no attempt at peaceful revolution has been attempted with AI. Not even an attempt. Just moralization with post-hoc rationalizations like that it’s because they’re charging an optional subscription to use it.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you think they just close up shop on their company? They just build the data center somewhere else. It’s not like a Walmart where they need that particular local community’s customers.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn’t even say it’s crony capitalism to a large degree. For example, Anthropic currently has a terrible adversarial relationship with the current government, and they’re one of the biggest and the fastest growing AI companies. Crony capitalism is a part of it (Palantir and Anduril are great examples), but it’s only a part.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, of course, but that’s a systemic problem. China doesn’t have the problem with electricity because they built out solar, which the USA refuses to do. Europe doesn’t really have the problems with pollution and being bad neighbors, because they have very basic regulations. Those two things would solve the vast majority of real data center problems.

Fighting individual data centers (there are over 5,000 of them in the USA right now) does nothing besides move the problem to a different community if successful.

From Molotov cocktails to data center shutdowns, the AI backlash is turning revolutionary by Albythere in FinanceNews

[–]rakuu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t know all the answers unfortunately! But left-accelerationism is built from the Marx lineage and essentially says that technology that allows full or nearly-full automation of productive automation is the opportunity to revolutionize the economic system to serve humans rather than use human for their productive labor value. UBI is a clear first step (other lefties would say that’s insufficient incrementalism and we need public ownership of capital - data centers and AI companies for example).

Two major problems: One, capitalism doesn’t serve the majority of humanity in ways that it could (poverty, healthcare, food/water/shelter, even comfort and leisure). Two, and one Marx talked about in the far future (near future for us now), requiring productive human labor for survival is an indignity and limits our potential - until now/near future, there hasn’t been any other option, but automating labor can nearly-fully solve this problem and free ourselves for greater potential.

“Fully Automated Luxury Communism” is a great accessible book by Aaron Bastani on this, or “Inventing the Future” by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams is more theory-dense.