• shirro@aussie.zone
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    1 hour ago

    The owners of capital demand slave labour. Take the work houses away and they demand chattel slavery. Take the chattel slaves away and they want convict labour. Take the convict labour away and they want undocumented foreigners to exploit. Take that away and they casualise work and pay people in tips or commissions. Take that away and they export work to countries that will do all the things they can’t do at home.

    The investment in LLMs is purely a scam at this point but much of the initial enthusiasm was driven by the disdain for labour. Highly skilled labour like engineers keep arguing with the MBAs that their cost cutting is going to kill people or destroy the company and that really upsets them and risks the bonuses and share buyback program.

    While the drudgery of work isn’t great, I would much prefer the capital class invested in R&D and equipment to make their skilled, specialized workers more productive and improved our remuneration and conditions as happened in previous generations before the MBA apocalypse. Instead they are trying to cut us out. Too many people are living paycheck to paycheck and unable to afford housing as wealth inequality escalates.

    Mistreatment of animals or brain cells in a box isn’t the same as putting a child to work in a mine but the mindset that drives us in this direction is.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    People, people. This is WIRED.

    This is what they do.

    1. “Here Come the Zippies”

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      And I bet right-wing profiteers pastors would have nothing bad to say about human-machine hybrids that can’t technically be slaves because they don’t have souls.

  • aim4harmony@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    What’s the point with this artifial intelligence race anyways? Why is there a sudden need for that after all?

    I understand that AI as a tool can be useful for some tasks, but do we really need to go further than that?

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      I think it’s a combination of things. One, they are good at synthesizing huge amounts of data and detecting trends, which is useful for surveillance if you’re not that hung up on being exactly right all the time. Two, they are very energy-costly, so their use drives up the price of energy, which drives up the price of fossil fuels.

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
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      2 hours ago

      What’s the point with this artifial intelligence race anyways?

      Free labor. Humans are expensive, but robot slaves are comparatively cheap (hypothetically).

      Ultracapitalists have a harder time getting a slave labor force, so robots that can think like people are the next best thing for that purpose.

  • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    And, the billionaires asked scientists, “Can we just get the brain? Brains don’t have any rights, do they?”