horsesaysweird

No, as the title says, this book is about the social aspects of AI and what the new far right movements (hope to) gain from it. It does explain a little what "AI" is and isn't and how it basically works, but it's not really about the technical side of things. I have zero interest in using AI and I feel like I already knew everything the book explained about the technology.

I'm currently reading AI and the New Fascism by Rainer Mühlhoff which is exactly about this.

I'm only about 30 % through and probably forgot half of that, but one point that stuck was that AI has parallels to immigrants from the point of fascists. Both are powerful forces that threaten our way of life as we know it. We must keep AI/immigrants in check by whatever means necessary, even if it means we're violating basic human rights or destroy whole ecosystems. There is no time to argue about this because the threat is so severe and we must act now before it is too late.

Fascists also like AI because it discriminates against any deviants. If you are uncommon in any way, it is more likely that AI will not recognize your medical issues, ignore your social needs, etc, which makes life harder for you. Fascists are all about social conformity, so they love this aspect.

Could be bots or misclicks. I accidentally downvoted a comment just a few hours ago. It felt surprisingly bad even though I quickly fixed it.

I think the point is that you can't trust any software. Hardware you can only trust if you built it yourself from simple logic components like transistors. Not sure how you would observe network traffic on that basis, but it's probably physically impossible to do because it would be so slow that you would die before you finished checking just one day worth of HTTPS requests.

But you are still driving your car because it benefits you. Nobody thinks they are helping others by driving through a busy city center.

You misunderstand me. I agree that being a pedestrian or cyclist should be more convenient and safer, and I don't care if that means car drivers are inconvenienced by whatever it is that needs to be done to achieve that goal.

But you are inconveniencing car drivers while also making the situation worse for pedestrians, cyclists and everyone else. What you are doing has no positive effects for anyone, except maybe you feeling righteous for a moment.

No, they don't drive their cars because they think it's good for you, they drive them because they think it's good for them.

Deciding what is good for random strangers and then forcing them to enjoy whatever it is you came up with doesn't sound like very good idea.

And how is this helping your situation? Breaking and accelerating increases noise and pollution. If cars have to spend more time on the street instead of being at their destination, they either need more road space or they spend more time in traffic jams that, again, increase noise and pollution. Cars are the least likely to be involved in accidents when they are cruising, so you are also making your city less safe.

Just to be clear: I'm absolutely in favour of banning cars in cities, but you are making the already bad situation worse for everyone.

Relevant sketch from A Bit of Fry & Laurie from ~30 years ago.