Despite AI being recent, this problem is very well documented in Marxist literature for over a century. Based on the organic composition of capital, the two forms of capital is constant (nature, machines, etc.) and variable capital (workers). When you automate work, that means more variable capital becomes constant capital. But that also means that you can’t exploit it like you exploit humans through surplus value. So while it makes sense in the short term for capitalists, this is also a factor that leads to an economic crisis and everything that follows it.
So, slight nitpick: the thing youre calling AI was invented in pretty much its current form by Turing and Minsky in like 1951. This shit is damn near 75 years old, closer to the first use of a nuclear weapon in war than we are to Hilary Clinton getting her ass beat by trump. The first LLM ran on vacuum tubes. These things predate the integrated circuits we use today by several years. As does their abandonment by actual smart people. I think the first ones literally ran on vacuum tubes (yes MOSFETs existed, but I think tubes were still in use?)
Also, it’s not AI, it will never be AI, it will never lead to AI, and it is possibly the largest extant obstacle to the development of AI.
Agreed though. Capitalists love them some slaves. it’s not even just functional; the power, the exploitation, it gets them off, validates their existence. It really is pederasty and cocaine all the way down.
Eternal reminder that ELIZA, the first chatbot, ran on an array of potatoes and people still believed it was sentient.
And it was all a joke because some guy was annoyed with Freudian psychotherapy grifters and, correctly, thought that a simple machine could do their job.
They did the math determining that it was a dead end. They were right. Yes it requires a certain bigness of data set to function, but after that the returns diminish logarithmically. It basically peaks at the software I’m using to type this on my phone. These massive data centers may as well be using that energy and water to breed monkeys and make typewriters.
There are other niche uses, but this is mostly it.
I should clarify; the utility of large language models isn’t in the utility of the technology, but the utility of the propaganda. It’s selling a dream, so we stay asleep, it’s selling the liberal holy Grail of the endless perfect excuse and abdication, and the fascist one of a perfect inhuman system, simultaneously an impossible future and a bullshit homogenized soup of half remembered past and a composite of us all in which we are a consciousness wothout a body (but without all thar pesky interiority)that will grind us all into the mud
Its not about being good at stuff. If you see an “AI” engineer, offer them a cocktail made with your favorite whiskey and drain cleaner.
Despite AI being recent, this problem is very well documented in Marxist literature for over a century. Based on the organic composition of capital, the two forms of capital is constant (nature, machines, etc.) and variable capital (workers). When you automate work, that means more variable capital becomes constant capital. But that also means that you can’t exploit it like you exploit humans through surplus value. So while it makes sense in the short term for capitalists, this is also a factor that leads to an economic crisis and everything that follows it.
So, slight nitpick: the thing youre calling AI was invented in pretty much its current form by Turing and Minsky in like 1951. This shit is damn near 75 years old, closer to the first use of a nuclear weapon in war than we are to Hilary Clinton getting her ass beat by trump. The first LLM ran on vacuum tubes. These things predate the integrated circuits we use today by several years. As does their abandonment by actual smart people. I think the first ones literally ran on vacuum tubes (yes MOSFETs existed, but I think tubes were still in use?)
Also, it’s not AI, it will never be AI, it will never lead to AI, and it is possibly the largest extant obstacle to the development of AI.
Agreed though. Capitalists love them some slaves. it’s not even just functional; the power, the exploitation, it gets them off, validates their existence. It really is pederasty and cocaine all the way down.
Eternal reminder that ELIZA, the first chatbot, ran on an array of potatoes and people still believed it was sentient.
And it was all a joke because some guy was annoyed with Freudian psychotherapy grifters and, correctly, thought that a simple machine could do their job.
Mathematically yes, but the ability to store and transmit such a large amount of information for learning models to work practically is fairly recent.
AI in the deterministic algorithm sense is truly very old though.
They did the math determining that it was a dead end. They were right. Yes it requires a certain bigness of data set to function, but after that the returns diminish logarithmically. It basically peaks at the software I’m using to type this on my phone. These massive data centers may as well be using that energy and water to breed monkeys and make typewriters.
There are other niche uses, but this is mostly it.
What if we breed monkeys to be our telepathic typewriters
I should clarify; the utility of large language models isn’t in the utility of the technology, but the utility of the propaganda. It’s selling a dream, so we stay asleep, it’s selling the liberal holy Grail of the endless perfect excuse and abdication, and the fascist one of a perfect inhuman system, simultaneously an impossible future and a bullshit homogenized soup of half remembered past and a composite of us all in which we are a consciousness wothout a body (but without all thar pesky interiority)that will grind us all into the mud
Its not about being good at stuff. If you see an “AI” engineer, offer them a cocktail made with your favorite whiskey and drain cleaner.