I went to a conference on AI recently. I’m a skeptic, and I really wasn’t there to drink the Flavor Aid. I was there to see what the vibe was from the developers themselves.
The verdict? These people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. They have a lot of primitives, and they’re clumsily trying to jam them together in to some kind of product. The hype is real, and most of these people are just there to make a quick buck. Strike while the iron is hot, and so forth.
Which gives me hope honestly, because I think AI is being viewed from the outside as the kind of cult mindset that the whole of silicon valley is bought into. Don’t get me wrong, there IS a cult. But I think the engineers themselves who work on this are just here for a paycheck and don’t necessarily want to follow the pied piper to their doom.
The people at the top though? Those are the cultists. These are the people I worry about at night. The AI hype is born of a dream that, without doubt, the die-hard capitalists have held in the back of their minds since… oh let’s say 1865-ish. These people want cheap, round-the-clock labor. Period.
The 13th Amendment says that they can’t have human slaves. And god bless them, they’ve been dragged kicking and screaming in to the future - by doing everything in their power to side-step this pesky amendment. Union busting, off-shoring labor to slave-friendly countries, wage theft, company towns, child labor, private prisons, the list goes on.
For the first time since the end of the civil war, there is an entity who (1) is promised to think with a similar level of intelligence as a human, (2) is powered off of the power grid directly, (3) can be scaled up and down with the press of a button, and (4) has absolutely zero legal rights. THIS. IS. LITERALLY. NIRVANA.
Yes that’s right, at the heart of this cult-like movement, I believe, is the age-old desire for free labor. White collar employees are costly. They tire easily. They need food. They need sleep. And medical care. And rights. AI needs none of this at all. Hallelujah!
And as for blue-collar labor? Well obviously that’s a little harder. You need robotics for that. And such technology does exist, but I think the logistics are a bit trickier - they overheat, they need to be recharged, you can’t scale them up and down at will, etc. Physics is such a bitch.
But nevertheless, they will try. Mark my words, the end goal here is for the capitalists to have ALL of the resources, ALL of the free labor, and NONE of the obligations to society. They wish to be free from need, free from expectations, free from obligations, and free from the law.
Of course, all of this is theory. The reality is that this is all a pipe dream at the moment. Engineers will tell you that AI isn’t actually intelligent, it’s just a big probability game that plays out giving the illusion of understanding. It’s a really, really cool parlor trick.
The question is: when the people at the top discover that it’s just a parlor trick, will they give up their dream? I say no. I think that once they discover there are genuine limitations to the technology, they’ll have such blue balls from the experience that they’re going to go mask-off authoritarian, and just get slaves the old fashioned way.
There’s already some who are suggesting this. Look no further than Curtis Yarvin, someone who wants a genuine monarchy with a CEO-like figure as king. They want the tyrrany of a corporation, without the limits of democratic government. Just like Jesus hisself intended, I’m sure.
This is all suggestive of a deep rot. We have, as a society, failed to curtail captalism’s worst impulses, and now the centuries-old colonization mindset is once again asserting itself. The AI hype isn’t about some dream to create life (although I’m sure it is, for some). It’s about our capitalist overlords once again daring to dream that they can just take what they want without consequence. That power over others can be theirs if they just want it badly enough. AI is just a back door in to a very old building that they had (rightly) assumed was shut down for good.
They want slaves. They’ll do it with silicon for now. If they fail, or grow impatient, what makes you think they’ll give up? And worse, if they succeed, what makes you think they’ll stop there? This is a sickness, masquerading as a slick technology.
Fuck those who feverishly pursue AI. The pseudo-religious, faith-based, “speak no ill of this divine technology” asshats are either too stupid or too evil to possess this technology. AI can do good. But our legal system is far too slow (and these days, too weak) to intervene in time.
That’s why I’m against AI. As a technology, it’s fine. It’s not great, it’s not the best thing ever, but it’s kinda cool. But as a political tool, well, this is a millstone around all of our necks.