[js8]

In many countries, people have already won a similar fight with printing press, press censorship and encryption. I think there is a reason for optimism (of the will).

If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity.

I don't think the powers will be able to gatekeep it. There might be some grief but overall human freedom will prevail.

[mindslight]

> If AI can code, and empower individuals to do it on a local device, it is already smart enough to educate masses on the matters of their self-interest, such as freedom and solidarity.

oof. I do not see that this follows, at all. For starters, describing "AI" as "smart" is falling into the trap of anthropomorphization. But the core dynamic of LLMs I see is a reflection of context - both training and the data sources that are presented, but also the questions you ask. On its own it's not going to lead someone to ask about self-empowering approaches to problems or freedom in general.

So sure, genAI seems to be greatly helping my own locally-hosted infrastructure approaches (it changes projects from needing a clear head over the course of a day or two, to something I casually push forward on for an hour or two at night). But I don't see that there is a huge pent up demand of people determined to do homeprod/homeautomation/etc projects but unable to find the time.

Also keep in mind we're not even near the enshittification stage of "AI" yet. Existing businesses are enshittifying using genAI, yes. But that's much different from when the genAI providers themselves start trying to extract wealth.

[sucrosesucrose]

You are severy underestimating the stupidity of the masses.

[prinny_]

I doubt AI can educate the masses simply because the masses would have to prompt it to educate them. Almost no one in my social circle knows, let alone understands Google’s recent work on pushing web attestation, or any other tech company’s power plays enforced on us. They are people blindly hitting accept all in every banner that pops up in their online journeys or use chat apps that blatantly spy on them.

They don’t know what they could have or why the new captcha is funny, thus they can never come up with a prompt that leads to them being educated on the matter. They would have to know that they don’t know and since there is no public discourse for such matters in their Facebook timelines, their thinly right wing digital news outlets and their Viber and what’s app chats they will never know that they don’t know.