“I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that’s where the big money is going to be.”
This race to displace human labor with AI is a typical late-stage capitalism race to the bottom because it ignores something fundamental: workers are also consumers. No job, no money, no purchases.
In other words, all companies embracing AI are collectively working their ass off to destroy their own and everybody else’s markets. It’s global economic suicide.
But… capitalism being what it is and doing what it does, it only looks at what the competition does, expenses and no further than the next quarter. So individual corporations see AI as a way to reduce expenses and get ahead of the competition that does the same thing.
They all know AI will destroy everything eventually, including themselves, if they all do the same thing. But they can’t help it: corporations look no further than their own selfish interests with the narrowest possible set of criteria, and the bigger picture be damned. Always.
Assuming they actually believe their technology is capable of replacing the majority of human labor in the not so distant future, they ought to be pushing for UBI. Having everyone get a guaranteed income would help ensure that there is still consumer demand capable of supporting their businesses. And it would help fend off the backlash that would come from taking jobs from a massive portion of the population.
Welcome to my thought process circa 2015.
They’re planning on most of us being dead one way or the other. The Planetary Solvency report predicts about half of humanity dead at +3C warming, which is basically guaranteed now before the end of the century, and likely way sooner than that. So the billionaire tech bros and fascists, instead of trying to mitigate the now unavoidable climate hell, are trying to extract all the talent and wealth they can from the rest of us before we all starve to death.
They’re trying to replace the labor of the half of humanity that’s gonna die.
They want us all in the service industry.
They want to replace service jobs with AI too.
They already have. I went to McDonalds 2 years ago. They had a giant kiosk where you ring up your own order. I also saw an automated machine drop fries into the oil. I also saw an automated drink machine that did everything besides put lids on top.
Basically what I remember from the early 2000s as a job at mcdonalds no longer exists. I would be on register, and I had one guy doing nothing but fries, and another guy doing nothing but drinks. With this system, 1 human did all 3 roles. Because the register was eliminated. The fries was just a matter of scooping the already prepared fries into the sleeve, the drinks was just a matter of putting the lid on top. So now 3 empoyees became 1. And I had no idea what was going on in the grill. In my day you had 2 guys on grill and 1 guy doing utility work. Wouldn’t surprise me if 3 became 1 again.
Capitalism ain’t the problem. Capitalism for the economy and democracy for the government is the best we humans have figured out. Problem being, money, as in any system, has been funneled to the top. The top took our vote via lack of education and media control, and their power has been snowballing for the last 20-30 years. Now we’re too ignorant and misled to vote in our own best interests. We’re seeing the end game, the end game of any unregulated system.
Said many times, almost every evil of capitalism gets nullified when the government disallows and breaks monopolies and megacorps. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, argued vehemently against monopolies.
Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, I am stunned by what is allowed. A handful of corporations own and control our health, food, entertainment, news, banking, everything. Education is the one thing that’s not wholly corporate, and the oligarchs have had that sector in their sights for decades.
And they’re not after education merely to skim more money. Education in history, math, critical thinking, is how they can be beaten. FFS, we’re repeating the mistakes of exactly a century ago, people can’t figure when back-of-the-napkin math doesn’t make sense and can’t tell when they’re being conned. I see the latter two on lemmy, daily.
Blaming capitalism is as naive as saying, “Trump did this!”. We can acheive nothing but backlash. Instead say, “The GOP did this!” (politically) and “The billionaires did this!” (economically). Words matter if you want to win hearts and minds.
Capitalism ain’t the problem. Capitalism for the economy and democracy for the government is the best we humans have figured out. Problem being, money, as in any system, has been funneled to the top. The top took our vote via lack of education and media control, and their power has been snowballing for the last 20-30 years. Now we’re too ignorant and misled to vote in our own best interests. We’re seeing the end game, the end game of any unregulated system.
Capitalism was the system the rich wanted to ensure they still had a foothold. In the past, it was fiefdoms and land ownership. Then a bunch of rich Americans got together (the founding fathers) and democracy wasn’t going see the light of day unless there was some level of compromise, and they got to keep their power in some way. Democracy was supposed to be a counterbalance, yes, but capitalism isn’t actually necessary for a functional society.
Ever since humanity evolved into a barter system, the enemy has always been the rich and powerful (who also happen to be rich), and the tools they use to keep themselves in power. Never ever forget that.
Instead say, “The GOP did this!” (politically) and “The billionaires did this!” (economically). Words matter if you want to win hearts and minds.
The GOP is a tool for the rich, and billionaires are just another identity of the rich. It all funnels to a single root cause.
The problem is, though, that money allows politicians in a democracy to run a better, more effective campaign. So whoever gets the support of rich people is more likely to win. In that sense, modern democracies aren’t equitable systems anymore. One person does not mean one vote anymore because one person with a billion dollars has an outsized influence. You correctly identified the problem that a handful of corporations control own and control the essential services we need to live our lives but that’s because capitalism allows that. Capitalism is the problem.
And what economic system fails to allow the money to flow to the top? The Soviets tried socialism as a ladder to communism, were about instantly corrupted. Any system we wish to discuss has to take human behavior into account, and not idealized human behavior.
The government has to be the brake, and the people have to have the education in history, math, politics, current affairs and critical thinking to power that engine.
Now the trick becomes keeping the wealthy from taking that education. I have no answer.
Socialism works in small groups, no better system. But we didn’t evolve to work in groups of more than 150-200 individuals, let alone 8 billion.
Anyway, I posted more on c/unpopularopinion. I’m sure I’m taking a beating over there. :)
The Soviets tried socialism as a ladder to communism, were about instantly corrupted.
No, they tried communism as a ladder to socialism, entered the dictatorship of the proletariat phase, and were instantly corrupted. Because, you know… dictatorship.
Lenin’s idea of socialism will never work, because it is far too optimistic, and does not factor the corruptibility of humans. Every single example of communism that has ever plagued a country is a prime illustration of that failure.
A system where you take money out of the equation. You’re right that we have to take human behaviour into account. That’s one of the more prominent critiques for Marx by neo-marxists. I’m not saying that we replace capitalism overnight. The technological progress brought about by capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty (albeit at the cost of irreparable damage to the biosphere) but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for a better system. In the meantime, being aware of the pitfalls of capitalism and trying to build class consciousness and a more equitable society is still a worthwhile goal to have. It took hundreds of years for capitalism to evolve and entrench, going from feudalism to Industrialization and now Technological Oligarchy. It pervades so much of our thought, culture and way of life that any proposed alternative is seen as wildly radical. We have to learn to gradually disengage from it if we hope to bring lasting change.
For what it’s worth Lenin himself said that the USSR was state capitalist and not socialist. Lenin wanted to create socialism from the top down, establishing a dictatorship that takes control of the means of production (state capitalism) and then gives it to the workers later. This never happened because when Stalin came to power he just decided state capitalism = socialism. There are however different ways to try to achieve socialism eg the democratic socialist way or the original Marxist way
Lenin wanted to create socialism from the top down, establishing a dictatorship
When somebody casually says the word “dictatorship” as a serious solution to a problem, they have already failed.
This wasn’t a literal dictatorship but a “dictatorship of the proletariat” which, for Lenin, meant a democratic centralist government run by the communist party. Their is some deviation between Lenin’s and Marx definitions of “dictatorship of the proletariat”, however the main idea is a proletariat government that oppresses the bourgeois, mainly by seizing their means of production.
democratic centralist government run by the communist party
Sounds like a dictatorship ran by one party.
Well said. Capitalism is just the means by which most of the world allocates scarce resources, and it’s by far the best way of doing so we’ve ever tried. The problem is massive systemic corruption, not the economic system itself.
AI is a massive bubble, and it will be popping in the next year or so. It will still be the case that no companies are making money from it. Why? Because it makes the technology more accessible, and allows individuals to do things that otherwise would have taken a team without AI. The level of competition is extremely high, and no one will be willing to pay for AI services. Profitable companies with multiple revenue sources like Google and Meta will continue to offer AI services for free, while companies like Anthropic and OpenAI will run out of money.
Not a bubble popping, but a balloon deflating. We have enough hardware to simulate the 10 billion neurons in a human brain, right now they are focusing on the software. I don’t think it will “pop and crash”.
That’s hopeful, but that’s never how it’s worked before. When I talk about “pop” I’m talking about the financial. I think the debt will pop and a lot of these oddly named AI companies will dissolve with no money. The applications of AI will continue. The dotcom bubble saw a huge financial crash, and a lot of weird internet companies died, but the internet remained and we eventually got Netflix and Amazon, etc.
The internet was a bubble. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful. It just means that companies are overselling its value. There are too many companies jumping on the bandwagon, and not all of them with survive when the bubble pops.
It’s still bad and destructive, but I think far too many people are interpreting this bubble as “if I wait a few more years, this technology will disappear and I won’t have to worry about it any more”. No, it’s more like the internet where if people wait a few more years and don’t use it, they will lag behind and be replaced by people who understand the tech. Companies that don’t use it will die out.
I like Hank Green’s recent takes on AI.
The level of competition is extremely high, and no one will be willing to pay for AI services.
Companies are already paying for AI services. You think everybody has a free account? Please!
I use LLMs every day in my job. It’s a useful tool for programming, and it’s saved me a lot of time searching for information.
You pay for them now, but once they become cheaper and more efficient no one will pay for them, and people will be able to run the models locally. I agree AI is useful, it’s not going away, and will become more accessible and cheaper rapidly as time progresses.
But, like, who’s gonna give them money for a product?
They’ll create their own economy, with blackjack and hookers. Forget the proletariat.
Reminder that the Luddites were not against mechanization, and not just made at the loom and nothing else.
They were a pro-worker movement who want to see the increase in efficiency translate to less hours for more overall pay, instead of just a drastic reduction in the amount of jobs with weekly earnings remaining unchanged.
They got made a joke, because they did gain some ground.
The looks were expensive and located in a central location, so that’s where Luddite activity was focused. A modern equivalent would be something like all the AI data centers being built nationwide against locals wishes.
Especially before construction is finished. Delays in construction are very expensive and not exactly covered by insurance to my knowledge.
At this point the tech industry will try to sell us a cybernetic cheese grater dildo, and call us luddites when we refuse to put it in our asses.
Wait…am I the only one who bought the cheese grater dildo?
Then you don’t profit, fucker. 🤷♂️
Figure something else out, asshole.
Narrator: They didn’t.
The remarks echo what he said in September, when he told the Financial Times that AI will “create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits,” attributing it to the capitalist system.
So if the middle and lower classes don’t have jobs, the Wealthy are going to circulate money back and forth? So trickle-down becomes trickle-around? Trickle down doesn’t work as intended. So trickle around is likely to fail, too.
They want feudalism back. Ngl, the technology available today might make it work for them.
Isn’t this venture capitalism?
So if the middle and lower classes don’t have jobs, the Wealthy are going to circulate money back and forth? So trickle-down becomes trickle-around? Trickle down doesn’t work as intended. So trickle around is likely to fail, too.
pop goes the bubble
AI as it currently is an excuse to lay people, off without saying they are laid off or fired.
Lol. If humans can’t make money then they can’t spend money on using your AI.
It’s kinda funny how AI is completely useless for the bourgeois (no profits, doesn’t replace humans), and only benefits the proletariat (free AI download), yet the bourgies continue to invest.
What does (free AI download) mean? I don’t think LLMs and the sort of “worker-replacing” AI tools being pushed everywhere are beneficial to anybody
i think the ceos, csuites, middle managments is just using it as a way to lay people off
