AI crap
drewdevault.com

There is a machine learning bubble, but the technology is here to stay. Once the bubble pops, the world will be changed by machine learning. But it will probably be crappier, not better.

What will happen to AI is boring old capitalism. Its staying power will come in the form of replacing competent, expensive humans with crappy, cheap robots.

AI is defined by aggressive capitalism. The hype bubble has been engineered by investors and capitalists dumping money into it, and the returns they expect on that investment are going to come out of your pocket. The singularity is not coming, but the most realistic promises of AI are going to make the world worse. The AI revolution is here, and I don’t really like it.

  •  abhibeckert   ( @abhibeckert@beehaw.org ) 
    5•10 months ago

    A strawman argument is where you ignore what was said by the other person and instead respond with something distorted. That’s not what I did - the core premise of Drew’s argument is that AI will not “make the world better” and I provided a crystal clear example of how it makes the world better.

    It was just one example, and obviously not the complete picture, but what choice do I have? It’s such a broad topic I couldn’t possibly list everything AI will impact without writing an entire book.

    I think we all understand that capitalism is mostly bad for humans, and really good for corporations and their owners.

    No I disagree. Corporations exist exclusively to benefit their human owners them. Which means anything that’s “good for corporations” is good for a select small number of humans.

    Don’t blame “capitalism” for wealth inequality. Blame the actual humans (e.g. Donald Trump, Elon Musk) who have made it their life’s work to drive the global economy even harder into a world that benefits the fiew and ignores the struggles of the many.

    Also - not all corporations are bad. Some of them do great work that truly benefits the world and I would personally put OpenAI in that category. Their mandate is not to make a profit - and in fact the amount of profit they can legally make has been limited. Their mission is literally “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”. I hope they succeed, and I think they will. Drew is wrong.