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by robby_w_g 132 days ago
Reminds me of when I was younger and thought of companies like Google and Tesla as a force for good that will create and use technology to make people's lives better. Surely OpenAI and these LLM companies will change the world for the better, right? They wouldn't burn down our planet for short-term monetary gain, right?

I've learned over the years that I was naive and it's a coincidence if the tech giants make people's lives better. That's not their goal.

2 comments

Could US tech companies stop making the world a better place? Like how Airbnb made housing markets "better" and and Facebook made politics "better"? We barely have anything left as regular people as our new feudal lords capture everything they can.
airBnB made a very constrained market more efficient, the downsides are classic NIMBY factors. (which are important, but also nothing has been solved in cities that outlawed AirBnB.)

on the other hand Facebook made the internet hate machine more efficient :(

Why are NIMBY's to blame for hidden cleaning costs and hidden cameras in/near bathrooms?
because constrained supply leads to shitty solutions, and people spend their money on land rent instead of spending it on actual service (like making sure there are no hidden fees and cameras)

that said those are not new problems, and are not caused (nor exacerbated) by airBnB (likely the only tangentially significant factor is the decentralization of the hospitality industry thanks to online market places, and barriers to building more hotels, and of course people's preferences for renting something more unique, or simply something remote or secluded)

I saw this video where this gen z girl was saying she preferred working for boomers who just wanted her to show up on time, get her work done, and maybe stay a little late from time to time. She said it was exhausting working for millenials who wanted her to think her job was "saving the world."