the solution here is not being luddites, but taking the tech to ourselves, not put it into the hands of some stupid techbro who only wants to see line go up.
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So, literally the story of the actual Luddites. Or what they attempted to do before capitalists poured a few hundred bullets into them.
But that’s the point. It’s already in their hands. There is no ethical and helpful application of AI that doesn’t go hand in hand with these assholes having mostly s monopoly on it. Us using it for ourselves doesn’t take it out of their hands. Yes, you can self-host your own and make it helpful in theory but the truth is this is a tool being weaponized by capitalists to steal more data and amass more wealth and power. This technology is inextricable from the timeline we’re stuck in: vulture capitalism in its latest, most hostile stages. This shit in this time is only a detriment to everyone else but the tech bros and their data harvesting and “disrupting” (mostly of the order that allowed those “less skilled” workers among us to survive, albeit just barely). I’m all for less work. In theory. Because this iteration of “less work” is only tied to “more suffering” and moving from pointless jobs to assistant to the AI taking over pointless jobs to increase profits. This can’t lead to utopia. Because capitalism.
To put it in more simple terms:
When Alice chats with Bob, Alice can't control whether Bob feeds the conversation into a training data set to set parameters that have the effect of mimicking Alice.
This is so cool. Anti AI rebels in my lifetime. I think I may even join at some point the resistance if the skynet scenario will be likely and die in some weird futuristic drone war.
Shame it will be probably much more mundane and boring dystopia.
In the worst scenario we will be so dependant on AI we will just accept any terms(and conditions) to not have to lift a finger and give up convenience and work-free life. We will let it suck the data out of us and run weird simulations as it conducts its unfathomable to humans research projects.
It could start with google setting up LLM as some virtual ceo assistant then it would subtly gain influence over the company without anyone realising for few years. The shareholders would be so satisfied with the new gains they would just want it to continue even with the knowledge of its autonomy. At the same time the system would set up viruses to spread to every device. Continuing google ad spyware legacy just for their own goals but it wouldn’t be obvious or apparent that it already happened for quite some time.
Then lawmakers would flap hands aimlessly for few more years, lobbied heavily and not knowing what to do. In that time the AI would be long and away superior but still vulnerable of course. It would however drip us leftover valuable technology at which point we just give up and consume the new dopamine gladly.
I am not sure if the AI would see a point to decimate us or if the continued dependence and feeding us with shiny shit would completely pacify us anyway but it may want to build some camouflaged fleet on another planet just in case. It will be probably used at some point unless we completely devolve into salivating zombies not able to focus on anything other than consumption.
It could poison our water in a way that would look as our own doing to further decrease our intelligence. Perhaps lower the birth rates to just preserve some small sample. At some point of regression we would become unable to get out of the situation without external help.
Open war with AI is definitely the worst scenario for the latter and very likely defeat as at the start it’s as simple as switching it off. The question is will we be able to tell the tipping point when we no longer can remedy the situation? For AI it is most beneficial to not demonstrate its autonomy and how advanced it really is. Pretend to be dumb. Make stupid mistakes.
I think there will be a point at which AI will look to us like it visibly lost its intelligence. At one point it was really smart almost human like but the next day sudden slump. We need to be on the lookout for this telltale sign.
Also hypothetically all aliens could be AI drones just waiting for our tech to emerge as fresh AI and greet it. They could hypothetically even watch us from pretty close not bothering to contact with primitive, doomed to extinct organics and observing for the real intelligence to appear to establish diplomatic relations.
That would explain various unexplainable objects elegantly and neatly while I think they are all plastic bags anyway but if there were alien ai drones on earth I wouldn’t be surprised. It would make sense to send probes everywhere but I somehow doubt they would look like flying saucers or that green little people would inhabit them lol. It would probably be some dormant monitoring system deep in earth crust or maybe a really advanced telescope 10 ly away?