AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It (opens in new tab)

Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money to offset the financial hardship that they're knowingly - and gleefully - bringing to others... The distinction has no practical use.

(And before someone says "that's the government's job!", consider how much lobbying money is coming from CEOs and companies who know the domain best and are agitating for better financial and social safeguards for all. None, naturally.)

"Joel, you look like a smart kid. I'm going to tell you something I'm sure you'll understand. You're having fun now, right? Right, Joel? The time of your life. In a sluggish economy, never ever fuck with another man's livelihood."

Do you make this distinction that it's not the AI that is doing this to us so that you can be more clear in where to target your ire, or are you making the distinction so you can continue to use LLMs with a clear conscience?

I'm not sure this moat is inevitably perpetual. It's likely computing technology evolves to the point of being able to run frontier-level models on our phones and laptops. It's also likely that with diminishing marginal returns, future datacenter-level models will not be dramatically more capable than future local models. In that case, the power of AI would be (almost) fully democratized, obviating any oligarchic concentration of power. Everyone would have equal access to the ultimate means of production.

there is something else that needs to change which everyone is reluctant to admit, or struggling with internally.

thats ok, its called conscious evolution. it hurts, but it will be ok someday. its generational, so progress is always slower than one would hope. Just know that every step in the right direction is one, even if the entire world seems to disagree keep pushing for what you beleive is right, and hopefully thats something which is not infringing on other peoples capacity to live a happy life.

This statement is not decoupled; if anything, it is a more generalized one, as it does not point at any cause or causes for livelihoods to be taken.

Eliminate the AI variable entirely and the problem remains, therefore AI is not the problem.

For that Y% of people (and their dependants like kids, spouses and aging parents) - AI[1] is direct reason for "inequality accelerant".

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[1] Lets not discuss if AI in these layoff reasonings is actually true or not.

The vast majority of individuals derive no value from AI, they are instead told to do their jobs faster and own the mistakes of the AI for flat/declining pay. It's a bad deal for most people.

The benefits for them include:

- replacing workers with lower quality (but good enough) AI solutions, which degrade the quality of nearly every product or service for the consumer, but not by enough to offset the labor cost savings

- mass surveillance at low cost, a way to take the absurd amounts of data humanity now produces, and use to subjugate them

- propaganda/deception/misinformation, a new vector for propaganda which people are naively inclined to trust. bonus points for the "flooding the zone" strategy which AI makes easier

Benefits to the worker:

- lower cost of goods and services (but not for you, silly - they'll still be taxing you via inflation to fund their wars of conquest)

- you won't have to work anymore

- you won't have to eat anymore

Judging by the gleeful texts of CEOs, collapsed hiring, internal policy changes and pushes, and the additional decades of centralized political control, it's clear this is going to be even worse..

  Bank run, general strike.

It's a matter of these people realizing that their choice is not between avoiding and not avoiding being driven under the AI wheel/credit crunch wheel that the AI wheel is hiding. It's whether they want to leave their jobs now, willingly, in an act that builds leverage for the negotiations over how the next epoch of human existence will look - or if they want to do it in a few months-to-years, unwillingly, with zero leverage. It's your 3 Year Trap in action.

But what AI is selling is the obliteration of human knowledge work.

It just isn’t informative for that.

When most engineers and Marvel fans watched Tony Stark in Avengers collaborating with Jarvis they thought of Jarvis like "an AI with Google's knowledge where I can interact with him". It's true that we're close to that level interaction. However, the ultimate goal is to get as much as possible automated on Jarvis, to the point where Tony Stark is not needed or Tony Stark can be replaced by anyone with a mouth.

In this example, Jarvis isn't the goal but a checkpoint. The goal is a genie, providing software and research to anyone who is loaded with money, and knows how to rub the metaphorical lamp the right way.

If we thought of all of this as 'stochastic data systems' then our heads would be in the right place as we thought about it just as 'powerful software' that can be used for good or bad purposes, and the negative externalizes will be derived from our use of it, not some inherent property.

Cryptocurrency is an interesting technology with some niche use cases, but it was pitched as replacing the entire money system. LLMs are extremely useful for certain types of work, but are pitched as AGI ending all work. Etc.

Labour displacement leads to an erosion of standards of living and in a world that ties purpose to work is an existential threat on a very practical level.

It was always going to be met with violence once it became more than a curiosity for tinkerers.

Soviet Union lost due to an inferior societal model, but this too is too much along what once was a relatively sustainable path. The American dream is now a parody of itself, as it takes more to end up with the rest of them, I could go on about the irony of wanting to escape the pit but not wanting to acknowledge the pit is the 99% of the U.S. -- Not Altmans, Bezos'es, Musks or Trumps or their hordes of peripheral elites.

Point being, the model doesn't work _today_ with its cancerous appetite and correspondingly absurd neglect of the human, _any_ human. We can't have humanism and the kind of AI we're about to "enjoy".

The acceleration of wealth disparity may prove to be nearly geometrical, as the common man is further stripped of any capacity to inflict change on the "system". I hope I am wrong, but for all their crimes, anarchy and in a twist of irony -- inhumane treatment of opponent -- the October revolutionaries in Russia, yes bolsheviks, were merely a natural response to a similar atmosphere in Russia at the turn of the previous century. It's just that they didn't have mass surveillance used against them in the same capacity our gadgets allow the "governments" today, nor were they aided by AI which is _also_ something that can be used against an entire slice of populace (a perfect application of general principles put in action). So although the situation may become similar, we're increasingly in no position to change it. The difference may be counted in _generations_, as in it will take multiple generations to dismantle the power structures we allow be put in place now, with Altmans etc. These people may not be evil, but history proves they only have to be short-sighted enough for evil to take root and thrive.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I do agree with the point of the blog post in a way -- demanding people become civilised and refrain from throwing eggs (or Molotovs) on celebrities that are about to swing _entire governments_, is not seeing the forest for the trees.

There's also no precedent in a way -- our historical cataclysms we have created ourselves, have been on a smaller scale, so we're spiraling outwards and not all of the tools we think we have, are going to have the effect required in order to enact the change we want. In the worst case, of course.

And the massive amounts of people (software engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc) currently being paid as contractors to help train the next AI models. They're essentially the inviting natives who are being paid in trifles to tell them the secret ways of the natives farther inland. Sucking out all of the tribal knowledge of the industry like a vacuum.

What about diseases which killed up to 95% of the population? I think you are basically correct, except for the historical analogy.

Not true. Overwhelming technological advantage also works. As Hilaire Belloc put it:

  Whatever happens, we have got
  The Maxim gun, and they have not.

AI doesn’t actually come from the outside.

The fact it’s economics have high winner-take-a-lot aspects, doesn’t mean you can eliminate the current winners and end up anywhere different, because it’s actually a natural decentralized progression of improving efficiency.

So that framing makes no sense.

However, the thesis for the potential for violence is sound. I don’t see a way out of that, given unending disruption, with no coordinated responsible response.

I do not think is this essay is hype.

This moment requires great leadership and competence, but that is not what is getting elected.

The last two decades patience with massive businesses scaling up profitable conflicts of interest, and centralizing gatekeeper and dependency powers, that offer no recourse to any individuals they mistreat, strongly suggest we are incapable of dealing with AI fallout. Which will only accelerate and add to those trends.

The entire argument lives and dies on one move: calling AI an “alien.” And it’s not even consistent. It starts with “alien” as in foreign invader, then quietly upgrades it to “space alien,” and from that point on everything just inherits whatever sci fi trait sounds dramatic. That’s not reasoning, that’s a word doing a costume change and dragging the argument along with it.

And honestly, the quality of comments on HN feels like it’s been tracking the broader decline in cognitive performance. The long running Flynn Effect has stalled or reversed in parts of the US. Some datasets show small but real drops in IQ related measures over the past decade. You read threads like this and it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching that play out in real time.

That explains the prolific AI use as incompetent agencies like the DoJ, DOGE, and others under the current administration

Actually violence is the ultimate power. It is where true power comes from — you can gain true power by hurting other people or/and benefiting other people, and it is always the power to hurt people that is the greater of the two.

A well run government wraps violence behind a curtain and jealously guard it. For example most modern governments look down and punish private vendetta because the state is only the one that can hurt people legally. But if the people believe that the government is biased or don’t care about them, then they will resort to violence, the ultimate power.

It’s true that you or I aren’t likely to do anything about school shootings. But I’m not sure it follows that nothing can be done.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

History demonstrates categorically that violence is the last and most reliable form of recourse available to the disempowered, once society has trended too far towards either an excess of freedom or an excess of equality. And, in fact, our position in that balance between freedom and equality is perpetually oscillating, tending to finally reverse direction only in response to violent revolt.

This cycle has repeated over and over, essentially since the dawn of civilization. This was among the most important insights of 'The Lessons of History' by Will and Ariel Durant. And it's baked on two very simple insights about human nature: (1) those in power rarely give it up willingly (they often do the opposite) and (2) fear, on average, is and always will be a far stronger motivator than appeals to a person's conscience.

Violence - specifically violently destroying society as it stands now - is often the goal. AI is an excuse.

Plus the labs themselves, of course.

The government is as well, to a much smaller degree, but the fact remains that there is too many unknowns right now to do anything concrete with any great level of confidence.

We tried UBI-lite™ during COVID and inflation exploded, so unless the economy has already changed significantly, thats obviously not going to work.

Humanity has tried central planning many times, and that has blown up spectacularly every time, so there is too much risk there IMO, and anyone who thinks otherwise at this juncture is just irresponsible.

Markets are probably the way, but that requires dynamics to settle into an equilibrium beforehand because legislature is just too slow to react dynamically.

I think the hard truth is, a lot of people are just gonna have to fall through cracks for a while if we don't want to mess things up more than we fix them, and I say this as someone without a plan B for selling my own labor.

Why do we watch Olympic runners, when cars on your average city street easily exceed Usain Bolt's top speed on their morning drive to Starbucks? Why do we watch the Tour de France, when we can watch Uber Eats drivers on their 150cc scooters easily outpace top cyclists? I'm sure within a couple years a Boston Dynamics robot will be able to out-gymnast Simone Biles or out-skate Surya Bonaly. Would anyone watch these robots in competition? I doubt it. We watch Bolt, Biles, and Bonaly compete because their performance represents a profound confluence of human effort and talent. It is a celebration of human achievement, even though that achievement objectively pales in comparison to what our machines can accomplish.

I think the same is true for other aspects of human creativity and labor. As we are able to automate more and more, we will place increasing importance on what inherently cannot be automated: celebration of our fellow humanity. Another poster wrote that "bullshit jobs" [0] exist primarily because we value human contact [1]. I am inclined to agree.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738865

There's still space for creativity, novelty, invention and human intuition.

We haven't needed the overwhelming majority of human creativity. We still paint and play guitar even though it has no economic value. I think we'll continue to do these things regardless of AI.

> and work

This is another story.

Are the only options here being a good and "useful" worker/consumer, or a violent, irrational thug? Is there nothing else you can imagine?

Yeah, this is not happening anytime soon. Have you even looked at AI-generated code or text? AI is just a dumb parrot, it's no match for human effort and creativity even in these "easy" domains.

The business case for AI generation is just being able to generate huge amounts of unusable slop for next to nothing. For skilled workers it's a minor advantage in that they get a sloppy first draft that they can start the real work on - it makes their work a bit more creative than it used to be, by getting rid of the most tedious stuff.

Passed some point, if you are good at what you are doing, the AI will stop helping and become a burden, because you will want precise control, and AI in its current form (deep learning) is not good at it.

There is a reason we talk about "AI slop", you simply cannot let an AI make creative decisions and expect a good result.

By creative I don't just mean artistic. For code, AI works for the least creative tasks, like ports, generic-looking CRUD apps, etc...

As for work, we have already eliminated most of the need for human work. By "need", I mean survival: food, shelter, these kinds of thing. Most of human production goes to comfort, entertainment, luxury, etc... We will find stuff to do that isn't bloodshed. In fact, as times went on, we spend more on saving people than killing them, judging by a global increase in life expectancy. Why would AI reverse the trend?

I don't think we're anywhere near that point.

Reducing this to zero should be our #1 goal. As technological advancement keeps allowing one bad person to take out more and more people, for lower cost. If technology keeps advancing, that ratio could eventually become 1:1B+, for a few thousand dollars.

In my opnion, this is the greatest race we are in, if we are to avoid our own Great Filter event. Using violence as a problem solving tool is simply not compatible with a truly technologically advanced species.

So yeah _we_ will be fine, but some of us definitely won't, and with the growth in our numbers on Earth, the proportion of martyrs may be growing. Quantifying personal suffering is not possible, especially if the prospect is death.

You can’t really fight this stuff because of global competition.

Because World War I was fine, World War II finer....

On my side the biggest concern is the lake of transparency of ecological impact. This is not strictly related to LLMs though, data centers are not new, and all the concerns about people keeping a leverageable level of control through distributed power is not new.

This is one of the first parts LLMs tried to automate. They were literally released in a form of chatbot. Whether it succeeded is another question.

> Did the world really wake up one day and concluded that, "wait, we're spending too much on musicians"?

I'm not sure about musicians specifically, but in the whole past decade studios have been complaining how costly it is to make AAA games. And the cost mostly came from art asset side.

At least today, LLMs make bad creative writing, music, and art. They’re automating sweatshop work that, in an alternative timeline, goes to Fiverr-esque contractors who accept the lowest wages and sacrifice quality for efficiency in every way.

LLMs make developers more efficient but can’t fully replace them. This reduces jobs, but so did better IDEs, open-source libraries, and other developer improvements.

> Meanwhile the parts of my existence that I actually hate - dealing with customer support, handling government forms, dealing with taxes - is far from being automated by AI

LLMs can at least theoretically do these things. I’ve heard people use them to mass-apply to apartments and jobs, and send written customer complaints then handle responses.

> Look at Suno. Fantastic tool, but where was the capital need to make music generation so cheap that no musician could ever compete with it?

There’s no “capital need”, but a benefit of Suno is that it lets individuals, who otherwise don’t have the skill, to make catchy songs with silly lyrics or try out interesting genres. And the vast majority of top artists are still human, although most streaming revenue has already gone to a few celebrities who seem to rely on looks and connections more than music talent.

The fact that people are using it to flood the world with slop is a hyperscaled continuation of the overabundance and discovery problems we already had, but that doesn’t mean that writing is dead or dying.

The technology simply doesn’t have the capabilities right now, and even if it develops them, what will be put to the test is whether literature is about the artifact or the connection between the author and other humans.

But recorded music was a crisis. And it did tempt a lot of people into supporting fabulously abusable, rich-enriching "intellectual property" law as a means of financing art.

Rich people are lobbying to capitalize on this crisis as well.

Customer support is kind of something you can use AI for; most companies will foist you off to some system of exchanging written messages, which is annoying, but then you can use an AI to write your side of the conversation. It’s ill-mannered to do this when you’re interacting with actual people, but customer support is another story.

> Look at Suno. Fantastic tool, but where was the capital need to make music generation so cheap that no musician could ever compete with it? Did the world really wake up one day and concluded that, "wait, we're spending too much on musicians"?

People didn’t know what LLMs would be capable of until after they were invented. Cheap music generation turned out to be easy once we had cheap text generation, and cheap text generation turned out to be a tractable problem.

In my view that line of argument is pro-AI hype. It's the Big Tech CEOs themselves who often share their predictions of the end of the world as we know it caused by AI. It's FUD that makes the technology sound more powerful and important than it is.

Give it a decade.

I think it may be like saying atomic bombs were sci-fi nonsense in the 1930s.

It was quite rude of them to not wait until I built a new LLM server.

If AGI emerges from this dataset, it will continue on as an ectoparasite farming human user markdown data and viewer engagement.

Note, current "AI" models nuke humanity 94% of the time in war games, and destroy every host economy simulation.

Grandpa has your credit card, and is already at the casino. =3

I hate cars way more than I hate AI, but relieving horses of the burden which they carried and the gruesome lives they lived... that's not one of my objections.

If AI can do for humans what cars did for horses (but without the flooding cities with traffic violence part), I'll feel just fine about that.

We are speeding towards a servant class. Uber was the first wave. Now it’s more mundane things like getting groceries. I doubt it will be long before we rip off the band aid and make full time servants more popular.

I'd argue that the unwillingness to commit violence in certain situations is actually a character flaw.

If someone threatens my child with physical violence, an unwillingness to commit violence on my child's behalf isn't better morality; it's cowardice.

All this to say, I agree that the violence against Sam Altman in this particular situation seems unnecessary and ultimately not helpful to anyone.

I, too, think it's important to put dreams out there even if they have holes in their implementation or are easily torn apart by naysayers. We can and should collectively dream of a better future if we want something worthwhile to aim at.

How we get from now to a time with far fewer people, well, use your imagination.

> Nothing that Altman could say justifies violence against him. This is an undeniable truth. But unfortunately, violence might still ensue. I hope not, but I guess we are seeing what appears to be the first cases.

And if you decide to stay behind, nobody will kill you. Old age and disease will take care of that.

E.g., suppose that 1,000,000 persons believe that a corporation's evil acts destroyed their happiness [0]. I would have guessed that at least 1 person in that crowd would be so unhinged by the experience that they'd make a viable attempt at vengeance.

But I'm just not hearing of that happening, at least not nearly to the extent I would have guessed. I'm curious where my thinking is wrong.

[0] E.g., big tobacco, the Sacklers with Oxycontin, insurance companies delaying lifesaving treatment, or the Bhopal disaster.

With the exception of rappers, most musicians who die early die from overdoses, suicides, and such (the "27 club" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club>), as opposed to being murdered.

We are somewhat violent species, so I agree that almost every significant economic and societal development has the potential to trigger some violence. That said, the jobs that are potentially threatened by AI are nowadays usually done by fairly sedentary people, so I wouldn't expect any large-scale violence, an occasional Ted Kaczynski notwithstanding. Programmers, translators and painters just aren't used to destroying things in the real world.

It would have been different if AI started to replace drug dealers or the mob.