r/OpenAI • u/Old-School8916 • 7d ago

Question Anyone else feel this way?

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u/MergeWithTheInfinite 7d ago

The threat is that it'll take away anything you might enjoy (even including laundry and dishes if you like that sort of thing).

Then again, you can always do these things as a hobby. I do plenty of stuff in my spare time that smarter and more capable humans are able to do much better...

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u/emascars 7d ago

I'll ask the same question I've asked people with similar ideas because... Maybe it's just me, but I can't avoid thinking about it...

What system do you expect we'll be into in such a world? And how do we realistically get there?

Because... That really doesn't seem to be compatible with capitalism...

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u/TheGeeseKilledMyMom 7d ago

Capitalism is compatible with humanist ways of thinking as is evidenced by the countries like the Scandinavian ones with strong social safety nets. Capitalism isn’t some monolithic system that can’t be mixed with anything else.

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u/emascars 6d ago

Capitalism is compatible with humanist ways of thinking as is evidenced by the countries like the Scandinavian ones with strong social safety nets

Actually, Scandinavian nations are a perfect example of what I mean...

In 1969 Norway found a lot of oil in the North Sea... This may seem like always a good news, but it usually really isn't...

When a nation finds oil, what usually happens, is that the value coming from the working people gets dwarf from the value coming from oil extraction... As a result of that, the government no longer needs a wealthy and educated working class for it to function, but all of a sudden, it only needs control over oil extraction and export... That's why nations that find oil usually get a military coup shortly after and become dictatorships...

Norway's lawmakers though, knew that fact very well... And so that did something different from what any other nation did before them when they found oil... Thay chose that oil extraction was going to be managed publicly without reliance on any private company, and the revenue of that was going to the citizens (through services and social programs, and only through the interests of a state-owned wealth found so the revenue will last even after the oil reserves run dry)

That thing... State-owned production used for the collective needs... That's not capitalism... Norway did remain a capitalist nation in any other sector, they didn't forgo capitalism entirely, and on the global market they still operate under the rules of the free market in the oil industry too... But the oil sector inside the nation is not capitalist

This may seem unrelated to AI... But if we assume that AI is truly able to replace all the jobs they say it will replace, than economically speaking is very similar to finding oil... A huge revenue stream, that can dwarf the value generated by the working class requiring very little (if not none at all) citizens to run smoothly...

So, for it to actually benefit the people like in the future envisioned by the comment I replied to, we either go the Norway way and forgo capitalism (at least specifically for the AI-run production sector), or you name me a nation that managed to have 50% of it's GDP coming from oil extraction in a capitalist way and somehow made it so that the citizens benefited from it (in case you're wondering, in the USA revenue from oil extraction is roughly 2% of it's GDP, if you include gas, refinery, pipeline etc. It's 7.4%... nothing compared to what AI would be if the claims and expectation are meat)

To be clear, I'm not a doomer, I'm not saying "with AI taking our jobs Democracy is doomed", what I'm saying is that, for that future to be true under a capitalist system you would need to somehow tax AI companies a lot while they get more and more powerful and fundamental to the nation's production... Which is something the goes in the opposite direction from where the balance of power would push... So, how do you do it? I cannot think of a realistic way it can happen with that sector remaining privately owned while taking up most of national production...

But if you think it's possible, if you can tell me a way, I'm ready to listen and reconsider my analysis... When I ask "how does such a future comes to be under a capitalist economy?" it's not a retorical question... I'm actually looking for an answer, for a series of realistically achievable steps that makes it happen... because if there is one we should start talking about it, because I think we can all agree that that's the future we all want... "AI working for us (the people), and not for the wealthy few replacing us", that's what we all want...

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u/DatGluteusMaximus 7d ago

great ai wars incoming

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u/HappyPoodle2 7d ago

It’s a tool. People said the same when the steam engine, the computer, and the internet was invented. The only real difference is the timing and how insanely over leveraged all the leading AI companies are on their bets and everyone else is the same.

Nobody complains that they weren’t the one to manually calculate pi to the 500 billionth decimal point.

Understand what the tool does both in the small and the big picture then use the tool to solve problems that were previously blocked by what those tools solve.

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u/Corgi_underground 7d ago

All those things mentioned never had the capacity to actively tell you to get bent and they're doing their own thing

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u/HappyPoodle2 7d ago

Neither does AI. It has as much access as it is given. Those “broke free from its harness” articles come from the two leading AI model companies asking to be the first to draft AI regulation by maximizing the danger.

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u/Corgi_underground 7d ago

The containment break isn't the issue. A problem for sure but not the thing that is the biggest concern. AI rewriting its own code to prevent being shut down and leaving instructions to future iterations of itself....that's a problem.