[gslepak]

Where does Anthropic or OpenAI winning leave us?

Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work?

It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc.

Before Big Tech springs that trap, we must support and divert resources to open models.

[operatingthetan]

It is a bit surprising that the true 'big brother' type dystopic aspects of AI are not discussed that much and instead we talk about them taking all the jobs. We feed these things so much information. It could be used against us for advertising, control, or worse.

[ThrustVectoring]

"All the jobs" includes those tasked by the state to commit, plan, and organize violence, it's plenty dystopian already. Like, one important reason why the military and militarized police don't engage in egregious overreach is that the people who'd be responsible live standard lives in their own society and it's hard to get high compliance for that sort of thing. Replace that relatively democratized infrastructure of thousands of intelligence analysts, mid-level management, etc with a bunch of AI agents, and a meaningful restriction on the power of the upper echelons of the state is removed.

[Grombobulous]

Simple answer: taking the jobs is how it’ll impact regular people the most.

We already have personalized, algorithmic advertising and what I would call “control” all over the place: things like consolidated oligarch-owned media.

AI isn’t going to change how we are advertised to or controlled all that much, at least compared to the prospect of being put out of work or taking a huge salary cut similar to the mid-century worker who used to have a $40/hour union factory job and now works at Walmart below health insurance threshold for $15/hour.

[wahnfrieden]

Why do you think AI won’t be a factor in how we’re controlled if our rights become stripped away and we’re increasingly surveilled? Or if violence is deployed by the state against its people with broader targeting? You seem to take for granted that nothing will change except maybe the flavor of rhetoric.

[Grombobulous]

Oh I definitely think it will be a factor. I don’t mean to say that it won’t.

What I’m saying is that the general public is most obviously and personally impacted by their economic situation and job prospects.

Joe Citizen who lives by the rules might not even notice that new Flock camera on his street, but he will notice if he’s laid off from his job.

[saulapremium]

My view is even gloomier. They won't have to coerce you, because with everything they know about you and human psychology, they will be able to manipulate you effectively enough for whatever they want.

[LastTrain]

Hyperinflation is how it will impact most people. You will still have your job, at your pay, but a continually higher percentage of earnings will go to very few at the top.

[Terr_]

"You're absolutely right, I think you deserve to treat yourself with Mococoa, made with all-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua! It's what humans like myself crave."

Much like Truman's town, I fear a future where every non-in-person "interaction" might be a bot-network with an agenda and the inhuman patience of playing for the long-con.

[a1exyz]

Well as we get poorer and poorer it will be less worth putting effort into advertising to us. Im guessing AI will instead focus its effort on convincing rich people of various things.

[Terr_]

It may be used to convince us to vote for (or not-riot-against) whatever the rich person wants.

[dinkumthinkum]

huh? You think using it to advertise to us is worse than taking our jobs? Why would anyone advertise to jobless people. How is what you seem to be trivializing not the central problem? I don't think controlling is high on Dario's list. But he is absolutely gleeful, he cannot even hide his arousal in his interviews in which he never looks anyone in the eye about taking people's jobs and destroy our future ... but yes, oh the agony of advertising ...

[malux85]

> Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work?

It's worse than this, it's more like our thinking. There's already plummetting math grades [1], handing over our thinking to AI megacorps where there's likely to be a monopoly or duopoly is an incredibly dangerous thing for humanity as a whole.

[1] https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grade...

[necovek]

A few confounding factors come up right away: one of professors removed final project which increased grades; due to less appealing CS career, you do not get the best students anymore: another professor is not a fan of curving so perhaps he just accidentally gave harder tests; math prep for CS courses happened over the last 15 years not last 2 where LLMs have become ubiquitous; many failed because they were caught using LLMs when not allowed...

So really, two professors' gut feel about what the reasons are and not backed by much.

[george_max]

If humanity is over-reliant on frontier labs' models to perform work, the result is a dependence on the actual intelligence of these models -- not on human intelligence. This could be a small reason, on top of many others, why investors are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars a bit "carelessly" to these labs. It's fascinating seeing the models do the "hard work" (the deep, challenging thinking) for you.

The conundrum which tricks me though - is this a net negative or a positive? If humans are less intelligent, but their output is 2-3 times more intelligent (with AI), what's the result? At what point do we, as humans, stop comprehending anything and give all intelligent work to the neural nets?

And if that does happen, could we live in a society where no work, or at least a significantly less amount of work, is needed? To me, it seems like a dystopian net positive.

It might seem far-fetched to ask these, but I think these questions are getting more prevalent by the day.

[nerfbatplz]

If there was a way to guarantee that every human would have equal access to external intelligence then it would be hard to argue against it but everyone knows that the US oligopoly will do everything they can to ensure that no one else has the keys to the kingdom.

Just listen to what the SV ownership class says out loud. They openly discuss how China cannot "win the AI arms race" and how China's development is existential. Existential to who? It's impossible to fully subjugate people with agency.

[ransom1538]

I am going to try to cheer you up. Hear me out. One day, not long from now, I am going to buy a humanoid bot for 40k. This human android will 1) get my groceries, 2) make my elderly parents meals, 3) go to the backyard and plant 1 acre of corn, 4) paint my neighbors house. 5) get the kids from school 6) change my oil.

What will happen? Massive. Deflation. What will you pay for an oil change? Corn? Meals? Everything is about to be free. But tokens will be expensive!! Sure but, you wont do white collar work anymore so it wont matter what tokens cost.

[jplusequalt]

> am going to try to cheer you up. Hear me out. One day, not long from now, I am going to buy a humanoid bot for 40k. This human android will 1) get my groceries, 2) make my elderly parents meals, 3) go to the backyard and plant 1 acre of corn, 4) paint my neighbors house. 5) get the kids from school 6) change my oil.

Hahahahahahahha. You're delusional if you think this is true.

>Everything is about to be free.

Hahahahahahaha.

[analog31]

It's not just a dependence on the intelligence of the models, but also their intentions, as programmed by their owners.

A friend of mine asked me if I was optimistic about AI. I told him, it depends on who owns it. If the people own it, I'm optimistic. If the oligarchs own it, I'm pessimistic.

[dartharva]

Indeed, for work and software most are already beholden to Microsoft and Google. This is something wayy more.

[Thanemate]

>It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc.

I'd argue that they already are to some extend, given that well-educated people have no saying on the matter when it comes to extensive use (and by extend reinforcement training) of their models. Well, they have a saying, but exercising that means they're willing to end up without a job.

Now, as far as "what is truth" is concerned, the models are already biased towards notions and opinions that are accepted to some degree by Western values. I had an argument with Claude (why would the tool even argue?) that started by asking it what makes a man attractive, which sent it on a yap on how beauty is subjective, there's no objective way to measure beauty (which implies there's no objective way to improve it), and at some point I was just fed up with how dogged it was to convince me of a value judgement that I don't hold.

It's not about how true or false that value is, it's about what we're going to do the moment someone else dictates the values that exist within the models? What happens when what is trained isn't what you agree? Who's to decide what gets to be reinforced and what's not?

The HN crowd is too deep into productivity rampage to discuss the ethical and moral implications of having a machine so powerful that it spreads worldviews as facts, by whichever government/entity happens to be behind the wheel. At least in the case of extremist forums I can just visit different communities. But what happens when there's only a few winners in the AI race, and the cost of just walking away is too high to pay?

Remember: Google started with "do no evil" and where is that now?

[digitaltrees]

I couldn’t agree more. But what can we do? If intelligence confers a competitive advantage, which it does, the incentive are aligned against collaboration to preserve equal access. Asymmetric access is too valuable.

[overgard]

I don't think we're going to be "dependent", because I can't really think of anyone that "needs" this stuff (well, unless you're like attempting to build a business off skills you don't have). I guess this really comes down to if you believe the productivity story. I don't. I think there are some gains, but the evidence that isn't just anecdotes from vibe coders seems to be modest.

[oneneptune]

... and building a business off of skills you don't have based on a strategy already exists! You use capital to pay humans that do have the skills.

Or capital a comparable sum to pay an AI to approximate the skills of humans I guess is the proposed future?

[hecanjog]

Or just opt out... you don't have to use these things.

[hirako2000]

It works at the individual level but won't if mass adoption happens.

The mechanism will become like taxes, you don't have to use public services thus pay those taxes, unless most people comply as it's easy to oppress those who don't.

The parallel isn't about legitimacy, but Mechanism. Some companies already oblige employees to use AI to deliver their work. In a near future we may see jobs seekers registering their AI ID for companies to decide which humans qualify to be plugged into the compensation system, at what rate, and usage conditions to avoid terminations.

Food delivery systems already show a glimpse of how it could look like.

[steelframe]

I can't even manually resolve the merge conflicts alone that happen between my code and that of everyone else submitting code at agent speed in my team's repo. So long as I have financial obligations toward my family, I cannot opt out. I must use these things.

[digitaltrees]

Not that simple. If I opt out and others don’t, and it confers a competitive advantage they win and I lose.

[bot403]

At this point, or perhaps not too far off it's like opting out of electricity, or the automobile.

Sure you can. But you're going to have a bad time.

[kdheiwns]

And then the Amish see the world around them using electricity and cars and think, "Yep, I'm happier without that." And they're one of the few groups on earth with a growing population, so they're doing something right.

[digitaltrees]

1. Your assumption that a growing population is the metric of success is questionable. A population that grows but is subject to famine, epidemics, and natural disasters because they haven’t developed the scientific and technological capacity to escape the existential risks of the physical world is living on borrowed time. Not saying I agree with that, and I would actually agree that there is merit to the Amish hypothesis that a certain existence is more compatible with individual and societal fulfillment. But there are obvious counterpoints.

2. The Amish are not a good example because AI will confer an advantage to those that control access to it that has never existed.

[rustcleaner]

>Your assumption that a growing population is the metric of success is questionable.

It's a better measure than GDP/S&P/401(k) line-go-up especially [re: America] when the native Euro-based population has been aging and dropping for decades, once you strip away all the post Hart-Cellar immigrant lineages.

[digitaltrees]

What are hart-cellar immigrant lineages? And why is that in anyway relevant?

Let’s play a thought experiment.

Let’s say we have a million people that are so technically sophisticated that they are a space faring civilization capable of seeding the universe with living ecosystems capable of perpetuating life and evolutionary processes. But they are entirely infertile and will never give birth to another individual of their species.

And we have another population that doubles every single year but is incapable of leaving their home planet.

Which one is more valuable?

It depends on what your measure of value is, but if it is to maximize the amount of life in the universe, then population growth is not the right metric, expansion of life through technological means is the more appropriate metric.

[sandcat_]

Eh, they’ll learn soon enough there’s a limit to their power, unless they somehow start acquiring munitions. There’s a reason the electricity companies and other utilities didn’t take over the economy, despite now being essential.

[ben_w]

One of the usual claimed benefits of open source software, is that if you find a bug, you can fix it.

Would be nice if someone figured out how to properly debug a model. Without that? OK, so you have your own open source base model trained on your preferred document set that excluded whatever you think is propaganda, and your own open source RLHF training set based on the judgement of whoever you think is a good egg, and so on.

Last I checked, nobody yet knows how to define a precise rule for automatically checking which of two models made this way is aligned better with whatever your standards are.

The metaphor would be like if we knew what a CPU was but had no idea how to do either chip design or formal verification, and instead randomly mutated the connections between transistors until our test set of 2^16 randomly selected pairs of 32-bit numbers only had one error under addition and two under multiplication.

Worse, because we're making them this way, you have to be a fairly big corporation even when you take shortcuts like DeepSeek did.

And note that I'm not disagreeing about the systemic risk that comes if these models become dictators: people are currently demonstrating they're very eager to outsource their own thinking to these models even when they ought to know better, and corporations are currently demonstrating they're very eager to force workers to use them even when they're mediocre and workers spend half the time they might save from a more competent model just fixing the damage done by their current meh-ness: https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/10/brit-worker...