Distribution isn’t controlled by elites; half of their meetings are seething about the “problem” people trust podcasts and community information dissemination rather than elite broadcast networks.
We no longer live in the age of broadcast media, but of social networked media.
- elites already engage in mass persuasion, from media consensus to astroturfed thinktanks to controlling grants in academia
- total information capacity is capped, ie, people only have so much time and interest
- AI massively lowers the cost of content, allowing more people to produce it
Therefore, AI is likely to displace mass persuasion from current elites — particularly given public antipathy and the ability of AI to, eg, rapidly respond across the full spectrum to existing influence networks.
In much the same way podcasters displaced traditional mass media pundits.
We know what the rate of deaths are: 1 in 8000; roughly 40,000 over 320,000,000.
Slightly less than the rate of suicide; and slightly more than half the number of fentanyl deaths. And a smaller fraction of medical mistake deaths. (Of course, none of the risk is evenly distributed.)
As a systemic problem, I’m not convinced that cars are the worst. Or outside what we accept in several areas.
The non-even distribution is a key part of it. Fentanyl deaths don’t affect me if I don’t drug, and if 80% (made up number as example) of car fatalities involve drunk driving, it also factors out for most people.
If cars had a random chance to simply explode equivalent to the mortality rate in crashes, people
would treat them Very Differently.
I would argue that yes, there’s no meaningful distinction between Biden and Trump. (And perhaps that Trump is more moral than Biden.)
I’d find your argument would be more persuasive if you outlined what you believe Trump had done worse than the others — rather than argument-by-name-calling.
There’s no point in discussing anything with someone that holds your position, against the enormous amount of evidence to the contrary. The best we can do is take action to prevent you from exerting any influence over society.
Someone needs to maintain and setup those efficient brand new looms. All I hear from AI is the promise that managers and owners will no longer need creative and managerial workers.
As many people as were employed as artisans? — are the new jobs on average as good as artisanship?
Or so we displace 9/10 workers to worse or no jobs while 1/10 gets a valuable one?
My understanding of AI is that it’s likely to represent the same 90:10 split — where some people operate those new AI systems, but most people are displaced to intellectual assembly lines. (Or unneeded, entirely.)
Counterintuitively, yes! Automation unlocked the birth of a worker class that could now afford the products made by automation, producing a virtuous spiral of growth. AI is breaking everybody's social compact. The workers' labour is used as training with nothing given back and the owners' consumers are unemployed giving you no market for your goods.
I’ve started using ChatGPT for their take home projects, with only minor edits or refactors myself. If they’re upset I saved a couple hours of tedium, they’re the wrong employer for me.
And I’m being an accelerationist hoping the whole thing collapses under its own ridiculousness.
In my experience, sometimes the job is just to talk and socialize — eg, with sister teams or stakeholders.
For my own sanity, I at least try to accurately label those… which is how my calendar usually fills with “1:1”, “coffee”, “sync”, etc. Maybe it’s pedantic, but the accurate labels help my sanity by letting me know which meetings I can show up without prep, a coffee and cookie, and push if things get busy.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/48-crash-us-hid-behind-natio...
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