[velcrovan]

I like the example of the actors' unions in the 1960s, where instead of "fighting" television in the sense of demanding people stop using it, they fought by organizing to get ongoing residual payments whenever their work was repurposed for the new medium. You don't have to stop fighting, you just need to recognize what the real problem is.

https://opcraft.co/writing/2026/04/getting-the-good-ai-futur...

[7tflutter7]

The only entities that would make meaningful money from an ai version of this would be IP giants like Disney. Your average guy is not going to get rich off his microscopic amount of data used. Basically Spotify.

[velcrovan]

I think you read the analogy too narrowly. I too doubt whether micropayments are worth fighting for, but there are other outcomes for which we could and should work together. For example, data center effects on water and power usage are well-known negative externalities of AI industry that could be eliminated by requiring data centers to invest in mitigations. The government could buy large holdings of stock in AI companies and distribute dividends, just like the Alaska Permanent Fund. etc. etc. You can quibble with individual examples here, but the larger point is that there are productive ways of tackling this transition, old man yells at cloud is not one of them

[7tflutter7]

Ok i actually agree with that. Imo the gov is going to have to print a lot of money to deal with the impacts of ai (covid was $5T), if we do it now that same dollar would go 10x further and the people would effectively be the largest owner of AI labs like Anthropic. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure idea.