Long, long before this AI craze began, I was warning people as a young 20-something political activist that we needed to push for Universal Basic Income because the inevitable march of technology would mean that labor itself would become irrelevant in time and that we needed to hash out a system to maintain the dignity of every person now rather than wait until the system is stressed beyond it’s ability to cope with massive layoffs and entire industries taken over by automation/AI. When the ability of the average person to sell their ability to work becomes fundamentally compromised, capitalism will collapse in on itself - I’m neither pro- nor anti-capitalist, but people have to acknowledge that nearly all of western society is based on capitalism and if capitalism collapses then society itself is in jeopardy.

I was called alarmist, that such a thing was a long way away and we didn’t need “socialism” in this country, that it was more important to maintain the senseless drudgery of the 40-hour work week for the sake of keeping people occupied with work but not necessarily fulfilled because the alternative would not make the line go up.

Now, over a decade later, and generative AI has completely infiltrated almost all creative spaces and nobody except tech bros and C-suite executives are excited about that, and we still don’t have a safety net in place.

Understand this - I do not hate the idea of AI. I was a huge advocate of AI, as a matter of fact. I was confident that the gradual progression and improvement of technology would be the catalyst that could free us from the shackles of the concept of a 9-to-5 career. When I was a teenager, there was this little program you could run on your computer called Folding At Home. It was basically a number-crunching engine that uses your GPU to fold proteins, and the data was sent to researchers studying various diseases. It was a way for my online friends and I to flex how good our PC specs were with the number of folds we could complete in a given time frame and also we got to contribute to a good cause at the same time. These days, they use AI for that sort of thing, and that’s fucking awesome. That’s what I hope to see AI do more of - take the rote, laborious, time consuming tasks that would take one or more human beings a lifetime to accomplish using conventional tools and have the machine assist in compiling and sifting through the data to find all the most important aspects. I want to see more of that.

I think there’s a meme floating around that really sums it up for me. Paraphrasing, but it goes “I thought that AI would do the dishes and fold my laundry so I could have more time for art and writing, but instead AI is doing all my art and writing so I have time to fold clothes and wash dishes.”.

I think generative AI is both flawed and damaging, and it gives AI as a whole a bad reputation because generative AI is what the consumer gets to see, and not the AI that is being used as a tool to help people make their lives easier.

Speaking of that, I also take issue with that fact that we are more productive than ever before, and AI will only continue to improve that productivity margin, but workers and laborers across the country will never see a dime of compensation for that. People might be able to do the work of two or even three people with the help of AI assistants, but they certainly will never get the salary of three people, and it means that two out of those three people probably don’t have a job anymore if demand doesn’t increase proportionally.

I want to see regulations on AI. Will this slow down the development and advancement of AI? Almost certainly, but we’ve already seen the chaos that unfettered AI can cause to entire industries. It’s a small price to pay to ask that AI companies prove that they are being ethical and that their work will not damage the livelihood of other people, or that their success will not be born off the backs of other creative endeavors.

My issue is that the c-levels and executives see it as a way of eliminating one if their biggest costs - labour.

They want their educated labour reduced by three quarters. They want me doing the jobs of 4 people with the help of AI, and they want to pay me less than they already are.

What I would like is a universal basic income paid for by taxing the shit out of the rich.

I’m beyond the idea that there could or would be any worldwide movement against Ai, or much of anything if we’re comparing healthcare, welfare and education reform. People are tuned out and numb.

Not destroying but being real about it.

It’s flawed like hell and feeling like a hype to save big tech companies, while the the enduser getting a shitty product. But companies shoving it into apps and everything, even if it degrades the user expierence (Like Duolingo)

Also, yes there need laws for that. I mean, If i download something illegaly i will nur put behind bars and can kiss my life goodbye. If a megacorp doing that to train their LLM “it’s for the greater good”. That’s bullshit.

I’m not against it as a technology. I use it for my personal use, as a toy, to have some fun or to whatever.

But what I despise is the forced introduction everything. AI written articles and AI forced assistants in many unrelated apps. That’s what I want to disappear, how they force in lots of places.

First of all stop calling it AI. It is just large language models for the most part.

Second: immediate carbon tax in line with the current damage expectations for emissions on the energy consumption of datacenters. That would be around 400$/tCO2 iirc.

Third: Make it obligatory by law to provide disclaimers about what it is actually doing. So if someone asks “is my partner cheating on me”. The first message should be “this tool does not understand what is real and what is false. It has no actual knowledge of anything, in particular not of your personal situation. This tool just puts words together that seem more likely to belong together. It cannot give any personal advice and cannot be used for any knowledge gain. This tool is solely to be used for entertainment purposes. If you use the answers of this tool in any dangerous way, such as for designing machinery, operating machinery, financial decisions or similar you are liable for it yourself.”

For it to go away just like Web 3.0 and NFTs did. Stop cramming it up our asses in every website and application. Make it opt in instead of maybe if you’re lucky, opt out. And also, stop burning down the planet with data center power and water usage. That’s all.

Edit: Oh yeah, and get sued into oblivion for stealing every copyrighted work known to man. That too.

Edit 2: And the tech press should be ashamed for how much they’ve been fawning over these slop generators. They gladly parrot press releases, claim it’s the next big thing, and generally just suckle at the teet of AI companies.

I do not need AI and I do not want AI, I want to see it regulated to the point that it becomes severly unprofitable. The world is burning and we are heading face first towards a climate catastrophe (if we’re not already there), we DONT need machines to mass produce slop.

What do I really want?

Stop fucking jamming it up the arse of everything imaginable. If you asked for a genie wish, make it it illegal to be anything but opt in.

Im not a fan of AI because I think the premise of analyzing and absorbing work without consent from creators at its core is bullshit.

I also think that AI is another step into government spying in a more efficient manner.

Since AI learns from human content without consent, I think government should figure out how to socialize the profits. (Probably will never happen)

Also they should regulate how data is stored, and ensure to have videos clearly labeled if made from AI.

They also have to be careful and protect victims from revenge porn or general content and make sure people are held accountable.

Gen AI should be an optional tool to help us improve our work and life, not an unavoidable subscription service that makes it all worse and makes us dumber in the process.

Destroy capitalism. That’s the issue here. All AI fears stem from that.

(Ignoring all the stolen work to train the models for a minute)

It’s got its uses and potential, things like translations, writing prompts, or a research tool.

But all the products that force it in places that clearly do not need it and solving problems could be solved by two or three steps of logic.

The failed attempts at replacing jobs, screen resumes or monitoring employees is terrible.

Lastly the AI relationships are not good.