[dannersy]

It is honestly offensive to me that this isn't plainly obvious to everyone. AI has never, ever, and never will be, about making life better for the average human. It has always been, and always will be, about wealth consolidation and control. Does anyone think it is coincidence that now local models are more useful the market has suddenly made it massively more expensive to buy your own hardware? Companies are just giving up making consumer hardware because they can can just focus on hyper-scalers. They want to control compute as well, there is no liberating aspect to any of this.

Businesses, especially tech ones, are not altruistic. The idea that tech companies are out to make anyone's life better is a joke and a sentiment that should have died decades ago. The evidence is of predatory business practices and leveraging the worst aspects of our brain chemistry to keep us hooked on apps that make us less happy, keep us stupid and less informed, and buying more.

Even more confusing are the people who are welcoming AI with open arms as just another skill to learn, _surely_ they'll be the ones who come out on top, right? It has all the stink of the countless Americans believing they too will become billionaires and everyone else are just suckers as they are all one healthcare problem away from bankruptcy.

We don't learn.

[danaris]

> AI has never, ever, and never will be, about making life better for the average human. It has always been, and always will be, about wealth consolidation and control.

I think here it's useful to separate "AI" as sold and marketed today from "AI" as a CS discipline, a field of study, and a category of tools and techniques.

The field of Artificial Intelligence has always been, at least for the majority of people in it, about improving things for real people.

The LLMs that have garnered huge valuations and an outsized share of everyone's attention in recent years started as part of that field, and grew out of its research and technological advances.

But once companies started seeing how they could monetise it, that's when it started being about wealth consolidation and control.

[dannersy]

I understand and agree with your point, but sadly we must concede that when you say the letters "AI", people now think of the chatbot interfaced, generative technology. It seems rather intentional to me that the definition has been muddied and is a part of the marketing of something that is clearly not artificial intelligence. I apologize for maybe contributing to that reality, but our words have to mean something to the majority of people, and when I say AI now, the general populous relates that to the new definition of snake oil salesmen.

[munksbeer]

>AI has never, ever, and never will be, about making life better for the average human.

You don't know that. And this same line could be said about any technology that results in accruing of capital, but actually does end up making life better for the average human.

What if AI at AlphaFold finds a cure for Alzheimer's disease? What if it finds a way to actually perfect fusion?

You can't tell me we don't live better lives than people 100 years ago right now, and that is because of technology.

[dannersy]

I am okay with Alzheimer's not being cured if it means we are not bending over backwards to welcome a billionaire overlord class. I don't think Altman or Amodei give a fuck about Alzheimer's unless a cure gives them a reason to obtain more investments. You could say that is the system working, but as a member of said system, it feels pretty shit.

[thunky]

> I am okay with Alzheimer's not being cured if it means we are not bending over backwards to welcome a billionaire overlord class

What a cold perspective. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[dannersy]

It is cold for me to not want to concede everything to billionaires to cure a disease? You are short sighted, as I would argue the reverse is cold.

[thunky]

> It is cold for me to not want to concede everything to billionaires to cure a disease?

"Concede everything" is way too vague to argue against, but I'd be more than happy if whoever is behind the tech to cure a horrible disease like Alzheimer's is made filthy rich for it.

[munksbeer]

> It is cold for me to not want to concede everything to billionaires to cure a disease?

That's a fallacy. You're assuming we all agree that this is going to happen. I don't agree. And I think AI will drive a huge amount of innovation that is going to make almost everyones lives better.

[childintime]

Billionaires? We're basically talking about the first 10 trillionaire, Elon Musk, and the inauguration of the supervillain category. He'll hold a majority stake in his soon to be Skynet empire SpaceXAI+Tesla. Which means he'll put lasers in space to control access, as he needs to prevent the Kessler syndrom, as that's the only way to take him down. So he'll want repressive governments. He'll give them the mark of the beast to solve their problem, those pesky humans need to behave better, and it'll be dandy like an iPhone was, progress! The other billionaires? He can darth vader them at will. We're seeing the coup first hand and we're blind to it. No government can wipe him out, as his empire stretches into the universe.

[dannersy]

True. The techno optimists seem to think it is justified for a chance to cure a disease.

[munksbeer]

These threads are so tiresome. Reddit doomerism has infested hn.