Ask HN: Have I Become a Luddite?

6 pointsholistio6d ago3 comments

I'm in my early 30s.

I used to be the most excited-about-tech kid. Tinkered with coding around age 10, built tech companies, generally felt good about the improvements technology brought to the world.

I just watched the Google I/O keynote. "So whatever's on your mind, you can come to Google and truly ask anything"

I feel visceral disgust. Where is this taking our social fabric, our values, our skills?

I feel like the remaining truth of the world is vanishing in front of our eyes and all the skills I used to be proud of are turning worthless.

Is anyone else feeling the same way? I have never experienced climate anxiety, because I was and still am hopeful that we might be able to stop the catastrophe.

But with AI, I hear the crowd cheering dystopia.

3 comments

Michelangelo116d ago

I am basically with you.

I think AI is a wonderful tool if used intelligently, but it can be -- and is -- used for just about anything, with the consequence that we live in a sea of intellectual and artistic slop whose level is very slowly yet steadily rising.

I don't have an answer beyond using AI as intelligently as possible for your personal purposes. The technology is there, and its misuse doesn't negate or obviate its beneficial uses, nor do those uses contribute to the rise in the level of the sea of slop.

1 more reply

Fricken6d ago

Charlie Stross here on HN 2 days ago:

"I'm not a fan of actually-existing late-stage capitalism, frankly.

What I want is Banksian fully automated luxury gay space communism.

(You can quote me on that. I hate what tech has turned into.)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48163649

(Charlie wrote the book on our emerging ai dystopia, prophetically, decades ago)

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