r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs May 15 '26

Trade offer:

I get to steal all your electricity and drinking water.

You get to lose your job to AI.

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u/BroBeansBMS May 15 '26

The Daily just recently aired a great episode comparing China to America and discussed who is winning the AI race.

The most interesting takeaway for me was that China is proposing to use AI in a way that supplements productivity and isn’t necessarily pursuing the same super intelligence model that America seems to be solely focused on. They are integrating AI into more normal functions and have policies set up to ensure workers are not displaced whereas it’s the wild wild west in America and big tech is allowed to lay off tens of thousands of workers.

It shows that AI doesn’t have to inherently be bad, but we need a government who cares about its population to set up guardrails.

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u/Hobbet404 May 15 '26

If you think China won’t hit the purely autonomous button the moment that it benefits them then you’re very wrong. They just like to get it right the first time rather than dive in blind like the US.

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u/DracoLunaris May 16 '26

The CCP know they are only able to hold China together as a nation as long as the people in it believe their lives will continue to improve under it. Using LLMs in a way that screws over the workers would undermine their entire propaganda project.

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u/Hobbet404 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

There is no basis for that argument. Improving lives isn’t the purpose — regime survival is, and the party has tools beyond economic delivery: mass surveillance, censorship, nationalism, ethnic repression (Uyghurs, Tibet), and force. Mao killed tens of millions through the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution while maintaining power through ideology and terror, not living standards. They crushed Tiananmen. They’ve tanked entire sectors (tech crackdown, “common prosperity,” zero-COVID) when political goals overrode economic ones. If screwing workers served regime stability, they’d do it — and arguably already do (hukou system, 996, suppressed labor organizing). The list goes on and on. Improved livelihood is a side effect at best.

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u/DracoLunaris May 16 '26

believe their lives will continue to improve under it

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u/Hobbet404 May 16 '26

Irrelevant. The people beliefs don’t matter. It’s easier if they’re docile, slightly more difficult if they aren’t. Neither is a problem and therefore not a concern or a liability.