Proof_Deer8426 t1_j8pbo9h wrote on February 15, 2023 at 11:52 PM

Reply to comment by TFenrir in What will the singularity mean? Why are we persuing it? by wastedtime32

I don’t mean to be rude but I think it’s naieve to imagine that ai will not be used to reinforce the current power structures, or that those structures have benefited humanity. Jeremy Corbyn said that if he were elected, homelessness within the UK would be ended within weeks, and it is not an exaggeration to say that would be entirely possible. There are far more homes than homeless people, and we have the resources to build many more. We don’t, because it would disrupt the ideology of capitalism, which requires the threat of homelessness and unemployment in order to force people to work for low wages. Wages and productivity have been detached for decades now - ie wages have remained stagnant while productivity has increased exponentially. Ai will increase productivity, but without changing the economic system the benefit will not be to ordinary people but to the profits of the rich.

The upward momentum of the world you refer to is misleading. People like Bill Gates like to point out that enormous amounts of people have been lifted out of poverty in recent decades, trying to attribute this to the implementation of neoliberal economics. They always neglect the fact that these stats are skewed by the work of the Chinese Communist Party, which has lifted 700 million people out of absolute poverty - more than any government in history. That has nothing to do with the political trajectory that the West has been on, or it’s domestic economic paradigm - by which for the first time in centuries, the younger generations are significantly poorer and downwardly mobile compared to their parents.

I don’t know much about the ideology of the people working towards agi, I would be interested to know more about it though if you want to tell me. I do know that a lot of people interested in ai follow ideas like effective altruism, which is a philosophy that serves rather than challenges the status quo.

TFenrir t1_j8pe4w6 wrote on February 16, 2023 at 12:10 AM

>I don’t mean to be rude but I think it’s naieve to imagine that ai will not be used to reinforce the current power structures, or that those structures are have benefited humanity.

How does it play out in your brain? Let's say Google is the first to AGI - this AI can do lots of really impressive things that can help humanity; solve medical questions, mathematics questions, can be embodied and do all menial work, and can automate the process of building and farming, finding efficiencies and reducing costs constantly until the cost is a fraction of today's cost.

How does Google use this to prevent people from from benefiting? Do they also prevent all other non Google AGI attempts? Give me an idea is what you are envisioning.

> Jeremy Corbyn said that if he were elected, homelessness within the UK would be ended within weeks, and it is not an exaggeration to say that would be entirely possible. There are far more homes than homeless people, and we have the resources to build many more.

So in this very UK specific example, you imagine that the roughly 250k homeless could be homed in the roughly 250k empty homes. Would you want the government to just take those houses from whomever owned them, and give them to the homeless? I'm not in any way against providing homes for the homeless, but could see how that could not cause many negative side effects?

> We don’t, because it would disrupt the ideology of capitalism, which requires the threat of homelessness and unemployment in order to force people to work for low wages.

Or we don't because no one wants to spend that kind of money for no return. What happens when doing so becomes effectively free, do you think the government and people would like... Ban efforts to build homes for homeless?

> Wages and productivity have been detached for decades now - ie wages have remained stagnant while productivity has increased exponentially. Ai will increase productivity, but without changing the economic system the benefit will not be to ordinary people but to the profits of the rich.

A truly post AGI world would not have any human labour. It likely couldn't in any real way. How do you imagine a post AGI world still having labour?

> The upward momentum of the world you refer to is misleading. People like Bill Gates like to point to the fact that enormous amounts of people have been lifted out of poverty in recent decades, trying to attribute this to the implementation of neoliberal economics. They always neglect to point out that these stats are skewed by the work of the Chinese Communist Party, which has lifted 700 million people out of absolute poverty - more than any government in history. That has nothing to do with the political trajectory that the West has been on.

I'm African, how do you think Africa has fared in the last few decades when it comes to starvation, and economic prosperity? We don't even need to include China, I think basically every developing country in the world is significantly better off today than they ever have been, minus a few outliers.

You think China lifted it's people out of poverty without capitalism? Do you think China is not a capitalist country? I'm not a fan of capitalism, but I'm not going to let that blind me from the reality - that the world is better off and continues to improve with almost every measurement of human success. It's not perfect, but so many people have an almost entirely detached view of the world, compared to what it was even 30 years ago.

Edit: for some additional data

https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts

Proof_Deer8426 t1_j8pkc2x wrote on February 16, 2023 at 12:56 AM

“How does it play out in your brain?”

One of the problems with the command economies that socialist states like the USSR tried to implement was that the maths was simply too complex to make it work efficiently. This is an example of something ai could be enormously useful for. Obviously no western country is going to use ai for this, because it’s contrary to their ideological and economic systems. The use that technology is put too will follow ideology. When the Industrial Revolution happened many people imagined a utopian future where the increase in productivity would lead to humans having to work far less. But today, we still spend the majority of our lives at work, and if it wasn’t for the historical efforts of socialists and trade unionists then even the restrictions on working hours, and on children working, would not exist (there are states in the US even today that are trying to repeal child labour laws). Of course ai will have benefits in regard to medicine, farming and so on. Does that mean everyone will have access to medicine, or that the workers on farms will see any benefit? Technically that would be possible, but within the ideology of capitalism it will not occur. Homelessness, poverty and unemployment exist because they are necessary for the economic system to function, not because of a lack of resources or lack of a solution. The benefits of ai will be limited by and subsumed into the ideological system - a system designed to give power and luxury to a tiny few via enforcing deprivation on the majority.

“A truly post AGI world would not have any human labour”

Perhaps, but my point is only that benefits in production and material abundance predominantly do not flow down to the working class/average person but up into the profits of the rich. Capitalism as we know it could not continue in a world where labour is unnecessary, but without changing the relations of power, the new system that emerges will simply mirror the old one. I could envision - as one possibility - a sort of tech neo-feudalism, where a Universal Basic Income is paid in return for some kind of military or other public service. But this income will go straight into the hands of the owning class - to rent, and to various rentier schemes (you will own nothing and you will be happy”, as the WEF put it). Of course this is only one scenario, but without changing the power relations, the system of deprivation for the masses and wealth and luxury for the few will remain regardless.

“You think China lifted it's people out of poverty without capitalism”

No - I agree China used capitalism to do that. But it was a different kind of capitalism to what is used in the West - goal oriented, with a long-term vision and a materialist, Marxist outlook, which aims to use capitalism as a tool to develop productive forces and to the end of benefitting it’s citizens and ultimately transitioning to socialism. This is very different from the blind profit seeking capitalism of the West.