Each new technological advancement seems to be more marginally valuable to the top of our society than to the bottom, and that delta seems to be growing over time not shrinking. I suspect “lower level” innovations in the value chain would be different, e.g. agriculture or energy, but let’s be honest about what actually consumes most of our industry’s talent and capital (as allocated by very very few unelected billionaires).
Even if absolute quality of life/prosperity increases, the delta itself is a really, really serious destabilizing force. In fact we know that people can live stably and happily in fairly destitute conditions, not that that should be the goal.
If you're better off than a king was 100 years ago, and there’s a billionaire out there that’s a thousand times richer than you are, what’s the issue? I’d rather live in a high-delta society than a society where everyone is equal, but equally destitute (Venezuela, Cuba, etc).
Working your a* off for free (yep, in many countries you have a lot of free labour, free internships, slavery-like conditions) for future opportunities™ and still fighting for remote working.
my ancestors worked from home (as sharecroppers the land was literally behind the house) and at least they had lunch paid for by the feudal lord.
One could be forgiven for feeling like we're caught in a swift tide toward a big, ugly global conflict, the way a lot of currents are flowing right now.
It’s quite concerning to me that nearly everyone wielding influence over AI development has done the same. The ends will always justify the means to them - what is not worth doing when the supposed end is a techno-utopia where trillions live in endless pleasure?
It’s a very convenient fact that up until this techno-utopia, folks like Marc will be well positioned to reap most of the benefits from technology development.
To be fair to Marc Andreessen, he's not the first to have this grandiose vision, and politically almost every ideology have had their fair share of "manifestos".
With that said, it's not a very interesting manifesto, it tries everything in it's book to justify it:
- Appeal to authority (citing various people, such as Milton friedman)
- Appeal to emotion (every time someone doesn't create an AI, someone dies)
- Dehumanize in the name of humanity (the classical the end justifies the means)
If people were to believe in this drivel, I wouldn't be surprised if it spawned yet another extreme and radical political ideology, as it doesn't seek to try and see the world for what it is but instead reject reality and substitute it with their own vision.
However I'm also a bit skeptical of using "facts and stats" to debunk the manifesto, facts and stats are good but since most manifestos are radical by nature, and as such I think that fact checking only will lead to self-satisfaction instead of an actual debunking, since the supporters will hand-wave it away.
The only people who argue about perfect equality are those setting up straw man arguments. I have no issues with a hard working person having 10x more than a lazy person. Or even 100x. Hey, why not 1000x even!
It's when it becomes 10,000,000x the amount that a hard working person could realistically make in their lifetime that I think inequality might just have gone a bit far.
That reads as either naive or ominous, depending on whether "us" is interpreted as "the entire human race" or "Marc and his billionaire cronies"
Uhh, does Marc Andreesen know how things went down historically for alchemy…? Or how the word “alchemy” is used colloquially?
"Fox turned into a hardcore porn channel so gradually I didn't even notice."
There are more than a few parallels between AGI and philosopher’s stones.
Base metals were never successfully turned into gold, and we are literally not making sand think.
If there would be techno pessimism we wouldn't have many life saving medicines, cars, heating and other comforts.
But on the other hand: are humans more content with life? Social media is cancer in 95% of cases.
Tech will solve many things, but the problem of the human mind and it's emotional and irrational tendencies is what actually needs to be solved and understood.
For example, the terms 'Orbital-mechanics-optimism' or 'Orbital-mechanics-pessimism' would sound ridiculous, at most it can be said that certain groups are optimistic or pessimistic about asteroids and comets hitting the Earth, or space probes being sped up using certain manoeuvres, etc...
Something like two billion people have been lifted out of abject poverty in the last 25 years. That’s the direct result of technology.
It’s a little bit ridiculous to bring up social media discontent in the same breath. These problems are not remotely the same.
I’m not anti-technology by the way. It’s undoubtedly reduced human suffering by a large amount. I just think that the story is a lot more nuanced.
Almost every paragraph has some questionable claims, but one of the more laughable ones is the claim that the free market “killed millions” when rich countries didn’t share Covid vaccines worldwide. Or that markets are ineffective for lifting people out of poverty because global inequality exists.
In truth they are all the same thing. The utterly useless casting themselves as essential like the typical liberal arts professor, but with less use for general writing writing. A billion "critiques of capitalism" have done less for the poor than one outsourcing to a third world nation. What has the "precautionary principle" wrought for anybody?
Might it be that those “useless” people are doing what they can to try to steer toward good outcomes?
“All those goddamn useless people writing articles about dumping chemicals into the river and they’ve never even dumped any chemicals into the rivers themselves!”
Citation needed
apex parasites, Marc. that's all you are.
You may not owe "Marc" better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
