[madamelic]

I do understand people's dislike / hatred for AI but I am equally baffled.

I feel like the same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

The "cyber psychosis" thing is overblown just like the "Tesla ignites its passengers" is. The only reason it gets in the news is because it is trendy to do so. The people getting 'infected' would've infected themselves regardless.

Genuinely I think the hatred is overblown by people who have no clue what the actual truth of AI is, something they seem obsessed with.

The only genuine complaint about AI is the data sourcing which is a problem being resolved by CloudFlare along with other platforms that require high payment for the privilege. With that said though, those platforms are still selling user data with users producing the content gaining nothing, that part needs to be fixed.

[Uehreka]

They hate it because no one is providing them with a credible thesis for how we get from working jobs we hate to the sort of “free from labor” utopia you envision.

Like, my aunt just lost the job she had for 33 years working at an insurance company. The company claims it is because of AI (whether companies lie about this sometimes is immaterial, it is sometimes true and becoming more true every month). She’s smart, but at age 60 I do think she’ll have a hard time shifting to a totally different knowledge work paradigm to keep up with 20-something AI natives.

What do we tell people in this position? That they should be happy? That UBI is coming? My aunt has bills to pay now, UBI is currently not in the Overton Window of US politics, and is totally off the table for Republicans (who have the white house through at least 2028).

I’m personally very excited about AI, but the lack of seriousness with which I see tech people talk about these issues is frustrating. If we can’t tell people a believable story where they don’t get screwed, they will decide (totally rationally from their perspective) that this needs to stop.

[Groxx]

>The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

I don't think it's all that complex tbh. The freeing from labor, both in the past and now, has been achieved largely by firing people, abandoning them to starve while power concentrates in the already-powerful.

This is the exact same thing the Luddites were taking issue with. Because they partly succeeded, we have better labor laws today.

[pocksuppet]

We have labor laws today because people kept killing their bosses until the bosses agreed to some sort of compromise. Sadly, such a thing is happening again today, like with the toilet paper warehouse fire.

[Groxx]

When there's enough of a power imbalance, said bosses sometimes choose to make that the only option, yes

[vrganj]

Why "sadly"? It worked last time?

[mjtk]

In most cases, "free us from our labor" does not imply that they want machines to take their jobs so that they will have no means to subsist.

[matsemann]

> that will free you from your labor

I don't believe that, though. The output will be owned by an elite. The rest of us will be useless and fighting for scraps. No utopia with UBI or similar.

Edit: wow, many made the same comment while I was reading the article. I should remember to refresh before starting to write.

[coldtea]

>The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

No, AI will only free us from our jobs, while still keeping the need to find money to feed ourselves.

"When harnessed correctly" is exactly what wont happen, and exactly what all the structural and economic forces around AI ensure it wont happen.

[slibhb]

AI is a tool to increase productivity. Productivity has increased greatly over the past century, yet it's easier to feed ourselves than ever, and we have far more leisure time.

[coldtea]

Somebody hasen't been paying attention in the past 40 years, and especially the last 20.

[slibhb]

Yeah, it's you. Real purchasing power is up over the past 20 years.

[pocksuppet]

How did you calculate that?

[slibhb]

I looked it up on FRED: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/MEHOINUSA672N

[coldtea]

Yeah, just not in anything that matters, like rent/housing, education, and healthcare.

And increasingly not even for basics like food, with inflation eating away that PP.

But hey, you can buy tech gadgets cheaper than in the 1990s.

[goosejuice]

I have a hard time with this perspective. It's hard to measure. The quality difference of housing and healthcare in particular has increased dramatically in the US over the years and our minimum expectations have risen quite a bit as technology has progressed.

It's easier than ever to access quality education but that doesn't mean people will do it on their own accord. The cost of licensure or a diploma has certainly increased. Education for the disabled has improved dramatically.

Historical diseases of affluence now affect the poor more than the rich due to increased availability and affordability but costly procedures disproportionately favour the wealthy flipping the mortality picture. Despite that all cause mortality from cancer is down and survival rates are better. The disparity is real but it's not easy to attribute the cause in a neat package.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28408935/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

[xantronix]

idk how impactful that is, you can't really live in a house made of shit bought from Temu

[cynicalsecurity]

Don't bother. They won't understand.

[coldtea]

So much for "cynical"

[jstummbillig]

> The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

I think this is easily explained: Sequencing matters. It I lose my job due to AI and it takes just 1-2 years for AI benefits to arrive at my door, that is plenty of time to be very anxious about my life. If I was guaranteed the AI benefits before I potentially lose my job, very different story.

That seems hard to set up, but alas.

[lamasery]

What people mean when they cry to be freed from their labor, is the requirement to labor.

They want to be liberated from bills. If the angle were "AI is going to make your bills go away" everyone would be ecstatic about it. Instead it's "AI is going to make your job go away... so you can't pay your bills".

[jstummbillig]

Yeah. That is the current angle. We have not setup another one and I don't know that any one institution can.

I think it's laudable (and unprecedented) that AI companies themselves are fairly gloom about some potential prospects, and give people opportunity to rally against them. Still needs work towards a solution, though.

[cyberax]

> "Cyber psychosis" thing is overblown

It might be, but I saw it happen to two people in my immediate social circle. And I'm pretty anti-social.

[Mordisquitos]

> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

What is your source on them being "the exact same types"?

[madamelic]

You are right. I overstepped.

I changed it to "I feel". I have Claude working on a script to validate or disprove my hypothesis.

Thanks for the call-out!

[altruios]

Not exactly the same types.

It is a large subsection, but a subsection, that both rally against capitalism and AI. I haven't found people of the '1$$$% capitalism great' people to hate AI... which I do find ironic: but most things tend to fall into irony on that side of the spectrum, so I don't find it surprising.

[nkrisc]

All I’ve been hearing is how AI will replace human workers with no mention of what those humans are supposed to do when they get replaced. I think people are rightfully concerned about that.

We’re automating the interesting work with AI and leaving the drudge work for humans.

[nemo44x]

> We’re automating the interesting work with AI and leaving the drudge work for humans.

I think you have that backwards.

[nkrisc]

Ask artists and designers what they think about that.

[crooked-v]

> The only reason it gets in the news is because it is trendy to do so.

Hating on Waymo is trendy.

Hating on Tesla is the logical result of vehicles with door handles that won't open from the inside when the power is cut.

[altruios]

> Hating on Tesla is the logical result of vehicles with door handles that won't open from the inside when the power is cut.

Hating on tesla is easy because they are STILL lead by a man-child who has chosen to sig-heil behind the presidential podium. And he's still in charge of tesla. At some point: it's on tesla too for continuing to have that person as CEO.

[MisterTea]

> The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

Who said it has to be AI?

[CamperBob2]

It has to be either AI, or a gun. Which do you prefer?

[platevoltage]

> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

No way. The people that run these companies all watched Star Trek and learned the exact wrong lessons from it. If you meant by "free you from your labor" that you will get laid off from your job and have to take up residence under an overpass, I would agree, that is what the want to do.

[alex1138]

But real talk, doesn't Tesla have kind of an awful safety record?

[kmeisthax]

There is no path from the current set of cloud-focused AI hyperscalers to the kind of fully automated luxury gay space communism you seem to be gesturing at. The economics don't work out. OpenAI, Google, and/or Anthropic are supposed to invent magic superintelligence that makes all human labor obsolete or uncompetitive and... just host it for free? Like, that's not how the game is played. Them producing and hosting all the models makes them an economic chokepoint, and the only way you get the capital to train and host models at this scale is if you have a story to sell to investors that ends with "and then we become an economic chokepoint and extract rents from everyone else".

This is all embedded in their future growth prospects. Nobody is interested in subsidizing AI as a public service forever. They're interested in "AI is going to make this company go 100x".

[philipkglass]

The only way you get the capital to train and host models at this scale is if you have a story to sell to investors that ends with "and then we become an economic chokepoint and extract rents from everyone else".

I agree that this dream of huge returns is luring investors.

I don't think that it will actually work that way. The barriers to making a useful model appear to be modest and keep getting lower. There are a lot of tasks where some AI is useful, but you don't need the very best model if there's a "good enough" solution available at lower prices.

I believe that the irrational exuberance of AI investors is effectively subsidizing technological R&D in this area before AI company valuations drop to realistic levels. Even if OpenAI ends up being analogous to Yahoo! (a currently non-sexy company that was once a darling of investors), their former researchers and engineers can circulate whatever they learned on the job to the organizations that they join later.

[xg15]

> Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor

"Capitalism sucks" has become a pretty universal slogan, but traditionally, leftists didn't want less labor (that's what the capital owners want), but more control about their labour.

[elzbardico]

It is hard to explain that for people who are still invested in the calvinist view of work and success in 2026

[xg15]

I agree that work as a moral goal in itself is pretty absurd, but as long as people's livelihood and participation in society is bound by it, it's still pretty hard to argue against.

[nozzlegear]

> The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

What they're really saying with "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" is "free us from wealth inequality." It remains to be seen whether AI can actually help with wealth inequality (I don't think it can, personally), but right now most people associate AI with job loss which is not helpful vis-a-vis inequality at all.

Disclaimer: I'm long-term bearish on the impacts of AI, but I'm also bearish on "Capitalism sucks" and don't make a habit of hanging around groups dedicated to shitting on either topic.

[bsuvc]

Ironically, when your identity is tightly coupled to opposing a thing you hate (Capitalism in your example), you feel personally threatened by a potential solution to it.

[egypturnash]

>The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

This is a machine that has been trained on vast amounts of stolen data.

This is a machine that is being actively sold by the companies that build it as something that will destroy jobs.

This is a machine that has a lot of cheerleaders who are actively hostile to people who say "I do not like that this plagarism machine was trained on my work and is being sold as a way to destroy a craft that I have spent my entire life passionately devoted to getting good at".

This is a machine whose cheerleaders are quick to say that UBI is the solution to the massive unemployment that this machine is promising to create, and prone to never replying when asked what they are doing to help make UBI happen.

Sure, you can say that most of the problems people have with AI are problems with capitalism. This isn't wrong. But unless you can show me an example of how these giant plagarism machines and/or the companies diverting ever-larger amounts of time and money into them are actively working to destroy capitalism and replace it with something much more equitable and kind, then your "this machine will free you from your labor" line is a bunch of total bullshit.

[elzbardico]

And what kind of UBI? With what kinds of strings attached?

[egypturnash]

I don't know, I'm not the one cheering for the machine that steals people's creative work and eats their job.

[elzbardico]

Neither me, friend, neither me!

[summermusic]

> when harnessed correctly

The people who think capitalism sucks are not the ones "harnessing" AI. The capitalists are. There is zero precedent that capital will do anything but exploit and oppress with this fancy new tool they've got (that everyone hates).

[viccis]

>The same people that shout "Capitalism sucks, free us from our labor" are the exact same types that hate AI. The exact machine that will free you from your labor, when harnessed correctly, is the exact thing you hate.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand leftists/Maxists here. They don't want to be "freed from labor". They want to own the value they produce instead of bartering their labor. In fact, Marxists tend to view Yang style UBI as a disaster because their analysis of history is one of class struggle, and removing the masses from the thing that gives them an active role in that struggle (their labor) effectively deproletariatizes them. Can't exactly do a general strike to oppose a business or state's actions when things are already set up to be fine when you're not working. You instead just become a glorified peasant, reliant on the magnanimity of your patron but ultimately powerless to do anything if they make your life worse except hope they don't continue to worsen it.

I'm not arguing the Marxist view of history and class struggle here, just making it clear that outside of some reddit teenagers going through an anarchist phase, actual anti-capitalists don't think work will disappear when their worldview materializes.

[simianwords]

You yourself have no idea what Marxism is because one of the basic tenets of Marxism is that productive forces shape the society. The people opposing AI want to stop the very thing that can help change society.

You can't just will a society to gain consciousness - it has to come from the productive forces. That is materialism.

[viccis]

>one of the basic tenets of Marxism is that productive forces shape the society

Correct. So a future where AI does the majority of work means that the proletariat is no longer the historical subject; AI and its ownership class are. In this situation, AI will shape the society, not the workers. Not really a desirable outcome for anyone engaged in mass class politics.

[slibhb]

Marx pretty clearly envisions a future society where necessary labor is reduced to a minimum due to technology.

The fact that modern leftists are (often) anti-technology is puzzling.

[simianwords]

Modern leftists are the modern conservatives. You can watch it happening - 40 years later you have people with grey hair and beards reminiscing their times when they coded by hand. They will absolutely be the most conservative voting block to exist -- they will continue opposing technology.

[viccis]

This works well if you equivocate the word "conservative" as "opposing technology". Otherwise, it's just a specious and bad faith attempt at an own.

[viccis]

Key there is future. I don't think he ever claimed such an automated communist utopia was the immediate progression after capitalism.

>The fact that modern leftists are (often) anti-technology is puzzling.

Not puzzling at all when the world has experience earth shattering advances in technology in the past 30-40 years, and the economic gains it has brought have not been reflected in similar reductions in labor for the workers. Why on earth would AI be any different than the cotton gin or the self checkout?

[xg15]

Yeah, I'm baffled how hard this seems to be to understand for many tech people: Everyone raves on about the massive increases in productivity we archieved in the last decades thanks to technological progress - meanwhile wages and living conditions of many have become worse in the same period, while some techbros have amassed otherworldly levels of wealth and see themselves as the new masters of the universe. So that's the glorious future that technology is bringing us towards?

[xg15]

Maybe read the rest of Marx too, and not just that sentence.

The point is not whether or not we have technology but who controls it.

[simianwords]

As someone who has not read Marx you can clarify - how does it matter who controls the technology? The industrial revolution was not controlled by labour, it still mattered.

Marxism fundamentally is: productive forces change the society, meaning the technology that exists at that point in time shapes the way people think.

[xg15]

From what I read (which is also not much), wikipedia has a good summary, I think:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_of_production#Marxism_an...

Yes, technological improvements are an important factor, but not a purely positive one:

> In Marx's work and subsequent developments in Marxist theory, the process of socioeconomic evolution is based on the premise of technological improvements in the means of production. As the level of technology improves with respect to productive capabilities, existing forms of social relations become superfluous and unnecessary as the advancement of technology integrated within the means of production contradicts the established organization of society and its economy.

In particular:

> According to Marx, escalating tension between the upper and lower class is a major consequence of technology decreasing the value of labor force and the contradictory effect an evolving means of production has on established social and economic systems. Marx believed increasing inequality between the upper and lower classes acts as a major catalyst of class conflicts[...]

> Ownership of the means of production and control over the surplus product generated by their operation is the fundamental factor in delineating different modes of production. [capitalism, communism, etc]

[slibhb]

In Marx, escalating tensions between the classes is good.

[slibhb]

Marx pretty clearly sees capitalist control of technology as a necessary stage in societal development. The capitalists are the ones who are incentivized to invent the technology, in order to bring down the cost of labor and outcompete each other.

[righthand]

“Capitalism sucks, Free us from our labor” is not “capitalism harder and implement automation so we dont have to work”.

[slibhb]

It was according to Marx.

[righthand]

I think you better read again.

[simianwords]

You are extremely incorrect. These people have no issue with labour. Their issue is with other people hoarding wealth or control.

If they could choose complete emancipation from poverty OR completely getting rid of the concept of billionaires - they would choose the second one. Their intention is not the absolute status of a human but how they are relative to others.

[throwawa14223]

I firmly believe AI is a surefire path to UBI. It's made me radically anti-AI.

[DoughHook]

I haven't seen anyone be against UBI given it's feasible. Why do you have this opinion?

[throwawa14223]

This is probably going to sound alien. Socialism is ontologically evil. Regardless of outcome or positive it produces there is a moral obligation to stop the state from doing something like UBI.

[cyclopeanutopia]

The world already produces enough of everything that we could feed and clothe everyone, and yet it is not the case.

Care to explain why?

[pocksuppet]

Because the people with the rights to control the food and clothing have no incentive to give it to the people who don't have food, clothing, or money.