Technology

The whole point of advancing technology is to make our lives easier.

The point is to make our lives better, not easier.
Is that the same thing? Maybe, maybe not.

Either way AI is doing neither right now.

I've had a few critisims with Bernie with what hes saying about ai recently.

I don't want to discredit him because I feel hes doing what he thinks is best, and honestly is kind of all we got for a big name right now. The people in the anti Ai space that I look up to havent really reached the average American you interact with daily in real life.

I think much like all the other politicians he doesnt fully understand the technology, and hes coming at it from the perspective he always has had. Which is protecting workers from corperations, and pushing for more socalist causes. Which I still think we need desperately, I'm not trying to say otherwise.

What I am concerned about is that Bernie is in some shape or form aiding these Ai companies in some way.

Like pushing for Ai devs who try to create agsi to be sent to prison for 20 years sounds great but then you realize that Sam altman and elon musk agree with him, and you wonder why. Regulation capture? A morally ethical excuse to slow down when ai is hitting brick walls in progress.

And with the idea of a 4 day work week, and ubi. In theory yes I do want those, but if you been paying attention to the conversations around Ai and stuff like ubi you learn that in order for ubi to work they have to remove social security, healthcare, food stamps, low income housing which cost dramatically more than the measly check you will receive every month. Thats my worst nightmare, everyone only gets 600-800 a month and is left to fend for themselves in a world where ai manipulates them with dark patterns into lighting national Forrest on fire so they can get rich on polymarket. Or they have to use the claud slot machine to pay for multiple spins on a chance to get working code for their gig working job, that takes a 30% cut ontop of all the api tokens.

So I'm torn in some ways because I'm worried that the path through all this is riddled with mine fields, and we could some how end up in position worse than we are in now just due to how much people are pushing for ANYTHING right now.

The change I ususally see fit is much more radical and not really realistic, and I don't see the general publics mindset really catching up for a few more years. And in two years the landscape could of changed dramatically.

A UBI would effectively enable a 4 day work week regardless.

Even when the progressives mention ubi it ALWAYS comes at the cost of removing all other social services like health care, low income housing, food stamps, social security. So imagine recieveing up to 5000+ dollars a month in benefits being taken away from you because the dumb majority is excited to get their 600-800 dollar a month bribe so that they can go yolo it all on so driven polymarket.

We need more social welfare not less. Trump already is gutting social welfare services to pump that money into ai.

The homeless don't even get benifits now due to work requirements, and they can't get a job because they don't have a home. And RFK is talking about putting them in camps.

I also think companies should start paying for commute times, and that the time paid should be adjusted based on the cost of living in the area and the salary.

Of someone chooses to live 3 hours away when they could live in walking distance, that's one thing. But I work for a municipality in a prohibitively expensive area. 0 city employees live in the city they work and literally 100% of households are multi-millionaires or better. I have a 90-120 minute commute depending on traffic because that's where I can afford to live on my salary, but it also means I'm essentially working 3-4 hours extra a day.

Of course the city isn't gonna pay me 50% again more money, but if they were required to pay for my commute time they'd suddenly agree that I only really need to be in the office about once a week for public meetings since mostly what I do is Teams meetings, plan review, phone calls and emails, which could be done just as easily from my home office as at City Hall.

Shit - I get more done remote because I don't have to deal with people walking in without an appointment and demanding a meeting.

4 10 hour days, right?

/s

The first couple of long weekends are nerve wracking but eventually your body enters rotting phase and then it's not so bad and you kinda don't want your 200 day weekend to end

I work like a truck, so 4x4 would be appropriate.

I don't care if they bring 0 work day if they pay me universal income. I could learn full stack, draw, read books, open a company, etc. Now all I do is word, excels, and a tiny bit of incident response.

I went to college for spreadsheets.

Copy paste from another reply to a comment:

Even when the progressives mention ubi it ALWAYS comes at the cost of removing all other social services like health care, low income housing, food stamps, social security. So imagine recieveing up to 5000+ dollars a month in benefits being taken away from you because the dumb majority is excited to get their 600-800 dollar a month bribe so that they can go yolo it all on ai driven polymarket.

We need more social welfare not less. Trump already is gutting social welfare services to pump that money into ai.

The homeless don't even get benifits now due to work requirements, and they can't get a job because they don't have a home. And RFK is talking about putting them in camps.

Oh that note, looking back, Andrew Yang might have been the best choice for a nominy in 2020.

Imagine if chatGPT came out and then the president of US, who fully understands the enshitification and rug pull model of Silicon Valley just slapped a huge VAT tax on it, or maybe forced companies to charge the real price.

Man Biden was such a bad choice in 2020

According to Bullshit Jobs it would be less than half the working hours if we just stopped doing those

Im surprised there are still people down on this first step of the ladder you're lingering on.

Even most AI pessimists these days agree its useful as a force multiplier, allowing one person to do a bit more work in a given time frame, while still maintaining that its not competent enough to entirely replace a human in all but the most fringe cases.

"Its useless and acheives nothing" is not a realistic take and anybody who does any kind of office job and has used an ai in the past year would be able to tell you the same.

You can remain anti-ai while still being realistic that it can be useful.

Especially if you acknowledge that the product is not the root of the problem, the late-stage capitalist system its being built to serve is the problem.