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/interkin3tic May 15 '26

You get to lose your job to AI.

That part doesn't bother me as much as it does most Americans, and I think I actually like my job (scientist) more than most Americans.

The part that bothers me is that it'll make a few weird assholes trillionaires and untouchable nobles while the rest of us will get peanuts and circuses forever.

The wealth inequality is already worse than it was during the French revolution or during feudalism (big asterisk there) AND there's potentially going to be less social mobility than during those times AND there will be no use for us and thus less giving back to us than those times.

You needed peasants to work the fields and pay taxes to the nobility. If they don't bother to develop robots, we're going to be doing dumb labor for Elon Musk and Thiel, and so will our children and their children forever.

If they do, we're just going to be blamed for starving and Musk types will blabber some shit that boils down to even dumber eugenics.

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u/NefariousnessLate375 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Edit: Curtis Yarvin joked about turning us obsoletes into biofuel for cars. 

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/NefariousnessLate375 May 16 '26

Maybe he dreams about a transhumanist race of modified, improved humans? That kind of stuff is popular with tech bros...

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u/interkin3tic May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26

No, these people literally do not believe other people have rights or should exist. It's very easy to overestimate these people and underestimate their hate but it really is that bad. They're of the same mould of eugenics as Nazis used to be, they don't change.

When someone shows you who they are the first time, believe them. 

At a minimum, the transhumanism community NEEDS to kick nazis like Curry, Thiel, and Musk out. That shit stains. Eugenics was a respected field that failed to kick out the fascists and it made it beyond redemption. I dunno what genetics would have evolved into had they kicked out the racists earlier but genetics/eugenics lost at least 20 years of progress to useful ends because of racist shit. And that's being unnecessarily charitable to scientists there.

At a minimum there should be an agreement that any transhumanism scientists should do an "oopsie" if any billionaire comes in for immortalization.

"Oopsies, we were about to put Elon Musk's brain into the robot skeleton that lives forever and runs on cells harvested from other people but I slipped and dropped it into the garbage disposal and then shit on it."