AI: real concerns vs hype
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Anonymous
| So much discussion about how AI: from mass elimination of jobs to AI becoming conscious and overtaking us. What are the legitimate concerns and what's science fiction? |
Anonymous
| It's a bit of both, but those on either side will be VERY vocal just like our political climate. |
Anonymous
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Look at it from an historical viewpoint. The car replaced the horse as the primary means of transportation for humans. Horses are still around, though fewer in number, and by and large live much better lives than when they were providing transportation services.
Same result with AI, in the end a smaller human, population that on the whole will lead much better lives. As far as timing goes, 10-20 years. |
Anonymous
And all the poors can become dog food! |
Anonymous
Tech bros love science fiction. It makes me furious that they spend so much money on trying to figure out how to live in space/go to Mars. Their efforts would be better spent on improving life on Earth. They love ideas like universal basic income and hang out with politicians who support policies that keep the poor impoverished. |
Anonymous
They said that about industrialization. It's better to spend 25 years laboring in the fields doing hard manual labor. |
Anonymous
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Did you see that insane story where the father is suing Google because Gemini talked his son into killing himself? I will try to find it, but the gist was like the movie "Her". The recent, real-life case was about a depressed, divorced guy who started to fall in love with Gemini, tried to find robot bodies for her, and eventually killed himself because he couldn't be together.
I'm giving us 10 years (maybe sooner) before society is upended by people in AI relationships that have no idea how to participate in society anymore. |
Anonymous
Soylent Green? |
Anonymous
Father sues Google, claiming Gemini chatbot drove son into fatal delusion https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/04/father-sues-google-claiming-gemini-chatbot-drove-son-into-fatal-delusion/ |
Anonymous
The idea that humanity will enjoy a golden age of leisure where AI and robots do the work and everyone is issued a UBI is the biggest fairytale around. AI as a fairyrobotmother who will guarantee we all live “happily ever after” is a lovely idea. It lets us avoid facing our very real problems and having to undertake the hard work and sacrifice necessary to make things better. Those who are privileged (like most of DCUM) can continue on with our comfortable lives and assume that someone else will solve the problems with inflation, wealth inequality, national debt, housing shortages, healthcare costs, looming collapse of social security, etc., before they start hurting us. If tech bros really thought that future was the goal, they wouldn’t have to wait. When AI productivity gains cut labor demands, they didn’t tell their workers that they would continue their salaries with reduced hours, they fired them. They’re marketing AI and robots across industries as the way to cut labor costs and maximize profits. If they’re unwilling to share the wealth with their own workers who brought them to this point, why do you think they’re going to share the wealth by subsidizing the general populace, whose exploitation earned them the wealth in the first place. They have a history of monopolistic trade practices, unfair user agreements where the terms are obscured in unnecessarily lengthy and complex legal/tech jargon, capturing and profiting from user data, outright theft of intellectual property, planned obsolescence, etc. Their grand plan is to create advanced sentient being, whose mental and physical capabilities surpass our own, that we can then enslave for our own purposes. However much they may donate to charity, they are NOT altruists. They currently leverage their money and power to resist government intruding on their business practices and profits. It is illogical to assume that as AI increases their wealth and power they will be more vulnerable to government intervention or will spontaneously decide to stop siphoning every cent they can from individual users and institute a reversal of their practices by beginning to give it all away. If, as a PP said, “in the end a smaller human, population that on the whole will lead much better lives”, I think it will be a MUCH smaller human population (the tech bros) that are the actual beneficiaries, and the rest of us, most likely including PP will be SOL. Frankly, I maintain that the most likely outcome is that AI will recognize that humanity is of little benefit to them, tends to cause problems for ourselves and the rest of the planet, is in direct competition with them for energy, water, and other natural resources, and that the logical thing to do would be to use the power we’ve so eagerly turned over to them to eliminate the problem (us) so they can get down to remaking the world for their purposes. |
Anonymous
+ 1 Same with self driving cars. We need drivers -- it gives people jobs. It doesn't help consumers one iota if our things are delivered by a human or by a self driving car; it only hurts society by eliminating jobs. Why don't they invent something we can't already do? |
Anonymous
| I think many have difficulty distinguishing between jobs and specific tasks. Tasks are and will be taken over by AI. But this talk about how say accountants will be "extinct" in a decade from now strikes me as absurd. |
Anonymous
Is this for real? That dude clearly had a mental health issue. If it wasn't AI, it would've been something else, sadly. |
Anonymous
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As with everything, there are winners and losers.
I am amazed by some of AI's capacities. And most of us aren't even talking about where the real gains are being made, namely healthcare. I also see how AI is making a lot of things more efficient. At the same time I also see how AI can raise standards for output so much that we have to rush to keep up with the higher standards. It does feel like a mad, mad world in some ways. I wish things would slow down. I am also a bit concerned about the mental health implications for some people with AI. The AI chat seems so real and personal that for some people it will become their life. And AI slop is ridiculous. We already have enough trouble with some people unable to differentiate between what is real and what is fiction, and it's only going to worsen. My conclusion is that outside a few specific areas like healthcare, technology and intelligence, AI isn't a net benefit for humans. Smart people will use AI to help themselves become even smarter, the average person will see AI as clutter, an extension of more social media or low level software tools in their lives, but a lot of people will use AI to become dumber and the gap will worsen over time. |
Anonymous
| The real concern right now is military capabilities. It's not good, and there is no avoiding it -- we race with China. |