Ask Lemmy

My biggest issue with AI is that I think it's going to allow a massive wealth transfer from laborers to capital owners.

I think AI will allow many jobs to become easier and more productive, and even eliminate some jobs. I don't think this is a bad thing - that's what technology is. It should be a good thing, in fact, because it will increase the overall productivity of society. The problem is generally when you have a situation where new technology increases worker productivity, most of the benefits of that go to capital owners rather than said workers, even when their work contributed to the technological improvements either directly or indirectly.

What's worse, in the case of AI specifically it's functionality relies on it being trained on enormous amounts of content that was not produced by the owners of the AI. AI companies are in a sense harvesting society's collective knowledge for free to sell it back to us.

IMO AI development should continue, but be owned collectively and developed in a way that genuinely benefits society. Not sure exactly what that would look like. Maybe a sort of light universal basic income where all citizens own stock in publicly run companies that provide AI and receive dividends. Or profits are used for social services. Or maybe it provides AI services for free but is publicly run and fulfills prosocial goals. But I definitely don't think it's something that should be primarily driven by private, for-profit companies.