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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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At the current rate, few normal people will even be able to afford a computer or a smart phone in a few years, let alone run a private AI. These algos aren't being made for normal people, they're being made to benefit the privileged few. You can try all you want to be as altruistic with your design as you want, all that's going to come of it is a cage for the vast majority of people. Whether Musk builds it, or Amodei builds it, or China builds it, it's going to leave the vast majority of people shut out and struggling to survive. There is no kinder, gentler atom bomb. There is no world where these tools aren't a global catastrophe that will ultimately cost billions of people their lives.
So the problem is everything moving to the cloud and that cloud being mostly controlled by a small number of big players, right? I still don't know what the solution to that should be. In my mind, we can either assume that they'll successfully take over and we give up (so why not make our lives easier while we're here?), or we fight back while we still have access to the technology.
Make AI unusable. Keep Data Centers rare, keep tokens expensive, make sure no one is willing to spend on AI, and let the megacorps collapse under the weight of debt they can't pay off. When they can't fight back, start passing laws that outlaw private AI development and nationalize the major models. Start fighting for anti-trust laws with teeth, reduce corporate copyright entitlements while enforcing human IP rights, and void the whole concept of software patents.
Or die. Dying is always an option. I think we'd all rather avoid that one though.
I think we should clarify what we mean by AI first. I'm under the impression that you're talking about generative models. I don't think it makes sense to ban all form of automation. But if you really do mean all automations, then I'd like to hear the reasoning for that.
If you want to drop the marketing buzzwords and be specific, yes, LLMs, image generation/graphic design and other generative models, but also machine assisted data analytics need to be heavily regulated and taxed into a box. Military and law enforcement applications need to be strictly state owned, automated surveillance needs to be put on a bonfire entirely. There's a lot of different classes and categories of "AI" that need to be completely re-thought, but you are correct, I am not entirely against all categories of automation.
It seems we are in agreement on most of this. These generative models aren't going to fill your pantry or do your chores. They can help through world models, but I'm hoping to get things working without that.
Of course, then you run into the problem of access vs cost. Running the AI requires resources, those resources have market value so you need to make money. Setting aside the fact that by definition you are making sure those resources aren't being expended on something else potentially more conducive to life, you now have to limit access and/or features to those who can pay, ie. not the people who are struggling the most and could most use the help. Given the price of processing power alone right now, let alone the rest of it, how do you propose these tools become available to the places they can do the most good?
There's also the problem that most engineers scratch their own itch, not other people's. The tools you're developing almost always tend to focus on things that are personal struggles. Your tools are often going to be solving problems the typical person will never have, or at the very least, are so low priority compared to everything else your tools are inconsequential. What you need is people, and feedback mechanisms that can help identify opportunities... you know like a bureaucracy.
If it works out, the AI would produce more than it consumes. Requiring anyone to pay for that would be a choice, not a necessity.
We already have committees to decide what we should be working on. In Canada, one of the major ones of NSERC. I don't think they adequately capture what everyday people struggle with though, and you can get just about anything approve. The whole process of writing papers and grants can be summarized as game of framing your work in different ways to convince different people that your work is relevant to their goals.
Ah, yes, I'm sure AI is going to defy the first law of thermodynamics any day now.
Sure in a couple hundred years, and a dozen new paradigms down the road we might get somewhere that AI is nearly as efficient as a human brain. Generative AI of this generation isn't going to do that, I'm pretty sure that's obvious to everyone by now. We're never going to live in a world without money, because the people with all the money are never going to allow that. You think they don't realize they are mediocre in almost every facet of life than shaking hands and raping babies?
Who fills those committees, who appoints the boards? This is not made for us, this is made for them. It is not the tools that are the problem, its who those tools are designed to benefit. Because it isn't the people being forced to use them to eat.
Humans as a whole already produce more than we consume. Why should it not be possible for robots to do the same?
And you know that it only happens because people put the work in to make it happen, right?
Regarding the rest of your post, I choose to believe that we can change the world for the better. I'm very aware that the current system has problems. I don't know if you're just looking to complain or if you have solutions to propose. I was kind of hoping for the latter because I don't have any ideas so far.
Order of operations. You cannot produce ethical systems in a socioeconomic system that will only reward unethical outcomes. Trying to build ethical AI models under the current social conditions is only handing the most powerful tools ever built by human hands to people who will use it to hurt everyone else on the planet.
To use an analogy, the is no world in which unlocking nuclear fusion in Hitler's German ends well for mankind.