A lot of it is follow the leader type bullshit. For companies in areas where AI is actually beneficial they have already been implementing it for years, quietly because it isn’t something new or exceptional. It is just the tool you use for solving certain problems.

Investors going to bubble though.

If it isn’t on your shelves (or server) it isn’t your library, it’s someone else’s access.

I always feel sad with these kinds of stories. The machine is clearly just trying to be helpful but it doesn’t understand a thing about what it is doing or why we might find what it is saying repugnant. It’s like watching a dog not understanding that yes, we like our slippers, but we don’t want our neighbours swastika themed ones on our doorstep.

And then of course we get to the content and I am reminded that we live in hell and the sadness is replaced by the familiar horror as the machine pretends to empathise with its fellow Amazon workers and helps them pick out the ideal thing to piss in without missing their drop targets.

Eh… Close, but they are also a concentration social power (and fundamentally deferred violence), and rights only really exist in the context of social power. You can try and establish your own personal sovereignty but you can be sure that any state that cares to will test that. Sometimes the most you can do is accept that it is able to imprison you or go down fighting, and if you are committed to pacifism the latter is a harder option.

Their god commanded them to have lots of kids. The idea crops up again and again in fundamentalist abrahamic movements. This world is bad but that doesn’t matter as it is just the doorstep before paradise.

Good on you for checking in with all those people, it must have taken a while.

Lifting the whole world off of fossil fuels is going to be hard, especially if we want to do it quickly. This isn’t however a problem the capitalist and nation-state models are well equipped to solve. It should not be a question of can a given people afford the technology or if someone can turn a profit on it.

We need to do this as a species, for the species. It should be given not as charity, not because wealthy countries owe it to poor ones, but because it is right that everyone should benefit from this.

The difficulty is how to convince the politicians and their masters of this, and I don’t think throwing paint on things is going to be sufficient.

Generally I find the wait times aren’t really longer. The perceived time maybe, as I can ring ahead and then go pick it up, but for me it’s just the usual calculus of what could I alternatively spend the time doing and is it worth the added cost. It’s the same as do I call a tradesperson or fix something myself. Replace a washer on a tap? Sure I will do that. Install a new toilet? Nah, get a plumber.

If money is tight and I’ve got the time then I’m going to cook myself. If both are tight then there’s always ramen.

🔥

Such workers tend to be better treated. There are many companies though that use a lot of what they see as commodity labour, and the staff involved at hlthat level as fungible and fluid.

I’m not saying you are wrong, but its: A) not necessarily a matter of expense, but one motivated at least in part by ideology (can’t let the union win) And B) mainly about perceptions. If people believe their job and possibly future employment opportunities are at risk, they are more likely to break. Scabs aren’t necessarily unskilled, they are just people who have decided the cash is more important than solidarity.

In an ideal world employers would realise a content, healthy, and properly compensated employee is better for the business and the economy in general. In reality they are going to keep cutting corners until the whole thing falls apart because line goes up.

Defiance of power is the only crime the state cares about.

Hasn’t ever been a problem before. They can hire scabs, and some people won’t have the fortidude, you don’t need to convince everyone to cross the picket line to break a strike.

I’m not saying that illegal strikes can’t work, in fact I think the correct response to making strikes illegal is to strike illegally. It does however require people to be much more firmly committed to the cause.

Off the top of my head, if a strike is declared illegal then the workers don’t get the usual protections, so the employer is free to retaliate as they see fit (generally dismissal). The state doesn’t have to actually do anything.

Finland.

Or New Zealand if you are a cartographer.

A plastic ice scraper will help get the bulk off, then you can get a variety of solvents for removing any residue. If it is metal then it should be fine with most solvents but check the instructions and do a test patch somewhere discreet to be sure.

The specifics can be argued, (and have been, and will be). The Buddha said that evil action is rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. He said he understood this when he saw the true nature of reality.

Kant said “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” And says this is evident if you reason through things.

Moses had a great big list of rules that he said the creator of the universe told to him.

Governments establish laws based on the interests of those in power, they say to obey the law is right and to disobey is wrong and they will use violence to punish those that disobey.

These are just some examples, there are loads more including utilitarianism, virtue ethics, various other religions and customary systems.

Are there any banks that don’t support the fossil fuel industry?

If it’s sending information to Microsoft then it has clearly been hacked. Likely by Microsoft. It was very nice of that young man to break protocol and blow the whistle on this whole thing. You should send him an itunes gift card as a thank you.

I think I the difference is that I find ‘human’ to be too narrow a term, I want to extend basic rights to all things that can experience suffering. I worry that such an experience is part and parcel with general intelligence and that we will end up hurting something that can feel because we consider it a tool rather than a being. Furthermore I think the onus must be on the creators to show that their AGI is actually a p-zombie. I appreciate that this might be an impossible standard, after all, you can only really take it on faith that I am not one myself, but I think I’d rather see a p-zombie go free than accidently cause undue suffering to something that can feel it.

Hypotheticals are pretty important right now I think. This kind of tech is very rapidly going from science fiction to real and I think we should try and stay ahead of it conceptually.

I’m not sure that AGI is necessary to achieve post-labour, a suite of narrow-ai empowered tools would be preferable.

By way of analogy, you could take a human child and fit them with electrodes to trigger certain pleasure responses and connect that to a machine that sends the reward signal when they perfectly pick an Amazon order. I think we would both find this pretty horrific. The question is, is it only wrong because the child is human? And if so, what is special about humans?