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i think a core beef that i have with a lot of this "automation is bad" sentiment lately is that there is no inherent moral good in laboring the story of humanity is one of invention, where we improve our conditions by building things that help us do more things more easily

sort of along my recent repost, the issue at hand has been the same since the dawn of capitalism: when automation increases productivity, who gets to capture the value of that productivity increase? the beef is not with the productivity. it's with the value capture

Also the luddite movement smashed the machines in factories because they hated the *concept* of the factory and the exploitation factory labor inherently represented. They didn't _want_ to control the factories; they wanted to own their own labor and direct it as they pleased. Distributed capital.

I have seen some comparisons with luddites and people that have an extreme take on generative AI, but I'm interested where this comparison stops. Like the scale of how certain internet things impact people is not something that I've read about before, like social media and LLMs.

I think that most people have an outdated understanding of the Luddite movement in general, since the history was written by the capital-owning class after violently suppressing them. The factory-owners focused the narrative on "they're backwards-looking anti-technology freaks", but that's not true.

a thing i've been thinking about posting for a long time is "back in those days, the workers didn't say "eww factories were created by capitalists to enrich capitalists, we should abandon factories" they said "we should seize them and direct their output for the good of humanity"

I think the difference is despite the flaws it is easy to see how factories produce things that benefit people. A textile factory is going to make a blanket that keeps you warm, meat processing will keep you fed. Modern tech's benefits are niche

modern tech is way too big a set to make such a blanket statement about

I understand where you're coming from, but I also think it's worth thinking about the fact that the split in tone here is along the lines of people who are currently financially stable and the people whose livelihoods are *presently* being eroded by these technologies with no upside in sight.

If you think there's an upside to building this technology so it can be captured by labour, I think there needs to be an actual story being told about how that can actually be accomplished. Because otherwise, people whose careers are being destroyed today are just being told to stop resenting it!

Then let’s go nationalize all the best LLM models. Please lead that campaign as one of the spokespeople making these tools

and i'm not the first to say this, but it is a grave mistake that folks want to cede an important technology to the right we fight for technology so that we can direct it towards good ends. we don't just let the other side take good tools because we don't like how they use those tools

I find this especially weird when applied to existing open freely downloadable models that can run on your own hardware. You can hate how they were made, but not using them is like saying "I won't use this entire class of algorithms because bad people invented them".

I've seen more embrace on the anarcho-left side I think the general rejection of copyright/IP in that space means they don't have to worry about one of the major hurdles for folks closer to the center-left

is anyone fighting for AI to really and truly benefit humanity right now? everything I see just furthers the value capture by capital. apologies if this comes off as a troll, I'm genuinely curious what this actually looks like in practice

something related i typed last night on this topic.