I test drove the first-generation Tesla Roadster. I once lived on Soylent powder shakes for a month. My Twitter account is almost old enough to drive. I wrote a book about the iPhone.

Also, I’m a Luddite. That’s not the contradiction that it might sound like. The original Luddites did not hate technology. Most were skilled machine operators. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, what they objected to were the specific ways that tech was being used to undermine their status, upend their communities and destroy their livelihoods. So they took sledgehammers to the mechanized looms used to exploit them.

  • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It’s like saying that someone who built the steam engine and the engineers building trains actively killed native Americans is US, because trains helped colonization of north America. The steam engine and trains were a great thing. Politics must deal with social changes. Because we know that any technological advance can result in social instability if left in the hand of wrong people.

    This is exactly the topic of the linked article. Nothing wrong with ML, AI and technology as is. Wrong applications are the problem

    Edit. For context https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/TRR

      • machinin@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I think you need a little more help with logic and reading comprehension before you respond so condescendingly.

        OP’s point is that the technology will not create a paradise or hell. It is the political environment that does that. The technology is simply a tool that will be used.

        • NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          But if the political environment is oppressive, do we want to give it another tool and just be like “now be sure to use it for good”.

          I agree that no technology is inherently evil, not even something like the atomic bomb. But you have to consider the actual and likely future environment that the technology will be in. And this state of regulatory capture, let the largest pocket book have the most speech, ever consolidating wealth and power situation is not one in which I believe we should be contributing new potentially oppressive technologies. We should be hindering them as we simultaneously work to reform our government and economic structure.

      • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I am well, thanks for asking.

        Currently the tech I am a huge fan of is helping me a lot handling the daily business. It has been a godsend for my mental health. It is helping me in a lot of areas I struggle with (paper work and meaningless corporate processes), it helps me better organizing my work, and it support me in areas where I used to heavily rely on Google and forums. It helps me to learn and improve. Overall I am a happy chatgpt customer.

        Other than that, we don’t have AI yet, still layoffs are at record number. Layoffs and suffering are not caused by AI, or whatever fancy tech. They are caused by current economic system that cannot redistribute wealth and business practices built to concentrate wealth. They’ve been there before AI, they’ll be there after AI.

        If you believe that blocking AI will change anything… No it won’t. It won’t change anything.