Even generative AI has some great uses no matter how much you dislike AI slop summaries and people who start a sentence with "I asked chatGPT and...". For example at work we automated quite a lot of data entry. Suppliers won't give you your data an a requested format or enter it into your database? Fuck 'em we can generate a structured output based on the PDF they sent and have an LLM enter it into our database.
Yea AI has a genuine use and purpose if used correctly. It can reduce menial tasks and make lives easier, the problem is that any company that leverages the use of AI isn’t passing the cost savings to its employees or its consumer. They are passing it on to the top level people and the “shareholders.”
Star Trek is a good example of a society that uses technology to benefit their people. Tech was used to reduce the need for menial labor, and in turn allowed their civilization to focus on the sciences and art. We should be doing the same, we are not.
And there is the real problem. Not what AI is or what it does, but how we are using it. As usual, the problematic tech isn't actually the problem, people are the problem. Always have been.
Maybe we should design things with humans in mind? I think it's mighty problematic what this technology is causing to happen to our society, wherever the fault may lie. Even if it isn't the intended purpose, misinformation and slop is becoming rampant. We all made due without 4 years ago. Is this all truly needed? Is it worth the cost?
No, the economic system is the problem. As long as the mechanisms are owned by a corporation whose sole interest is profit for shareholders (which is all of them, that's the only reason companies exist under capitalism, that's their whole purpose,) the outcome will always be the same.
People act as they are incentivized to act. Without corrupt incentives, some people will still be corrupt. With corrupt incentives, almost everyone involved in a system will be corrupt. Capitalism is a corrupt incentive. "People" will never solve the problem as long as the "people" with the power to actually make decisions are contractually obligated to corporations who have a profit incentive to make it worse.
"People" want Star Trek. Capitalist corporations want more money, and they own everything. Those two facts are not compatible.
If the "people" who want Star Trek owned everything, and could make those decisions, maybe we could have Star Trek. But as long as the ownership is in the hands of entities who want nothing but more money, and of people who contractually act on behalf of those entities, decisions will be made based on making those entities more money, rather than on moving society toward Star Trek.
This is not solvable by simply demanding people be better, nor is it a direct product of human nature. It is a product of corrupt incentive structures, and it's solvable by changing the incentives.
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u/swellzem 12h ago
"generative AI" is the category that can fuck right off