auris

No app store, have to rely on Alexa, who is definitely collecting and storing your personal data to do things by telling it everything, and a year ago they changed their terms so you can't opt out of your Alexa recordings being automatically sent to Amazon... every day billionaires are closer and closer to successfully turning our phones into telescreens.

And I bet the phone is gonna be full of ads and product placement too, if it happens. I know before I finally ditched my Alexa over a year ago it was trying to suggest shit for me to buy I didn't need.

"Alexa phone, call the doctor, I'm sick I need an ap—"

"You sure? This pack of cold medicine on Amazon has 5 star reviews, and is much cheaper than your doctor visit! Would you like me to add it to your cart for same-day delivery?"

Like. That's maybe a little more time down the line in dystopian hypotheticals, but the vague implications behind the AI doing everything so you don't have to gives up so much free will, and I'm just saying... it's a power grab disguised as efficiency. Ugh.

Just giving my two cents. Before I read the book I already was making the same predictions based off what we are seeing; but after reading it, it let me know I wasn't alone in the pattern recognition. My point is that it's no new thing for people to be making this connection between AI and fascism.

Technology is great, but once the direction starts to be toward replacing human work rather than supplementing or truly enhancing it without direct interference, that's when it's easy to get taken advantage of quickly by those up top who don't have your best interest. If you don't hold a little bit of skepticism about the intentions of those forcing AI into every space even where it makes no sense, and those refusing to regulate it, it's easy to forget your own worth, and forfeit your privacy.

Anyway, I understand 1984 isn't a direct form of evidence; but it is a piece of art that pretty effectively warns of this pattern. The book is dystopian fiction, but it was written for a reason.

1984 was written 80 years ago, yet somehow in multiple parts it describes perfectly what we are seeing today and how AI is a weapon against us.

If you're truly curious, since I am willing to explain in good faith; the people up top investing in all that AI are investing in ways that not only make us dependent on it with its forced integration into everything and quicker means of doing things, but it is to undermine us as well so that less people can realistically get jobs that require them to be creative, passionate, or expressing personal thought. If they can de-motivate the population and sway them to begin to be dependent on AI to tell them what to think or write for them or create things, they can erase individuality.

Not to mention corporations will force artists to either get paid substantially less, or be forced into manual labor instead.

I love technology. Don't get me wrong. It's cool. I'm an artist myself. But I don't hate AI art because it's made by a machine; I hate it because ever since it's been a thing, so many people who use it claim they can't draw or have no talent, when art is a thing that you learn and practice and put love into and feel proud of. It isn't easy even for those who make it look so, but it's fulfilling; and all AI art gives one who generates it a quick hit of dopamine, because the addiction factor is how fast it is, and how cool it seems.

I'll leave it there, but I just wanted to draw the connection between AI and fascism in good faith here in case you were curious as to the real harm it does. It's undermining and forced dependency disguised as efficiency. What sucks is so much AI tech could potentially do cool and useful things; but you just have to remember that the rich CEOs investing in the tech aren't investing in it to help us. They're investing in ways for them to depend on us less, so we depend on them more and are devalued.

edit: typo

The "I'm not homophobic! You can do what you want but just dont force it on me or my kids" crowd, everybody.