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Corvos
1d ago
There's AI and there's AI. People detection is a simple matter which you can do on-chip. Anything like
Automated trucks for logistics, all coming from automated factories. That's all eminently possible with 70% unemployment, plus more exotic stuff like satellite swarms spying on everybody in real time, decapitation strikes with novel nerve agents we can't even detect.
in the next 5-10 years, like automated coding or automated logistics, is going to be heavily relying on a handful of APIs (approx 4 now) provided by a handful of companies. China could shut down LLMs in China tomorrow if it wanted to - firewall OAI and Anthropic, close down Deepseek. Boom, done. America would have a slightly harder time but it's basically straightforward.
Neither wants to, yet. But if the societal disruption starts to become uncomfortable, they can and they may well. I'm not talking about evil AI, I'm talking about obvious and destabilising social disruption. More than immense wealth and power, governments like stability. China and America are quite capable of running private military AI research on things like YOLO whilst mutually deciding that giving public/corporate society access to AGI is too disruptive to tolerate.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If unemployment rises to 70%, then AI can also be used for combat power and war economy work.
Imagine a swarm of AI-equipped drones, faster and more coordinated than anything in Ukraine today. Imagine the ground-based robots they're trying out but with a machinegun on top: https://x.com/XHNews/status/1921201829066797357
Automated trucks for logistics, all coming from automated factories. That's all eminently possible with 70% unemployment, plus more exotic stuff like satellite swarms spying on everybody in real time, decapitation strikes with novel nerve agents we can't even detect.
How is a human military going to fight that, especially when AI is going to be deeply embedded in their communications? Perhaps a government or sections from a government will merge with a leading AI company or nationalize them earlier in the game but I can't see how they'd successfully shut them down without rendering themselves globally irrelevant. If they wait until 70% of people are unemployed, they might just get crushed.
What do you do if 70% of people are made obsolete? Shut down AI and send them to do useless work? Put tariffs on AI-made products overseas? Seems like delaying the inevitable.
Neither superpower wants to slow down, Trump's America explicitly wants to win the AI race with Stargate while China has allocated considerable effort to developing AI. It's bipartisan in America, Biden was also keen to restrict GPUs leaving the US. I don't think there's any anti-AI faction in China at all, I'm not aware of a single evil AI in the entire Chinese cultural corpus. We haven't even stopped the 'randomly develop gain of function megadeath viruses for no good reason' arms race after a megadeath virus leaked, so what are the chances of stopping the 'immense power and wealth' race after it gives out immense power and wealth?
Shirayuki
1d ago
This didn't happen during industrialisation and electrification though. Yes, to some extent the nature of work expanded and changed, but productivity grew very obviously and rapidly in those eras in a way that we don't seem to be seeing with computerisation.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
The shameless Han Chinese even boast that the Manchus were benevolent masters
They did keep taxes low. The administration was actually underfunded, causing considerable corruption as officials found ways to supplement their paltry incomes.
Anyway, pre-British India was also under foreign rule and had been for some time, when it wasn't a fragmented mess.
China is a rare exception for not getting smashed by Europeans, never being part of a non-Chinese empire. Yuan, Qing - sounds pretty Chinese to me. They weren't Han dynasties but they were Chinese. They took their administrative practices from Chinese tradition: exams, meritocracy, eunuchs, they used Chinese language, they were Chinese in character.
India got conquered by much more foreign foreigners, firstly by various Muslims and then by the Mughals, then by the British. None of them are significantly Indian in their origins or nature. Islam isn't Indian and Britain is almost as far from Britain as you can get in civilizational terms, in religion, language, customs, everything.
Anyway, history is second to contemporary affairs where China is absolutely mauling India in every area of competition besides 'influence in Washington'.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
Solow's Paradox
Parkinson answered this one in 1955. Work expands to fill available time. If you come up with a way to do useful tasks in less time, the tasks will be made harder or more BS tasks will be added.
No_one
1d ago
And the neat thing is, by the time those senior devs age out of the harness and you'd struggle with replacing them because junior devs have gone the way of the dodo and there's too few younger, experienced devs, AI agents will be good enough.
No_one
1d ago
Your system was the same dysfunctional managerial as today, except it was not under strain and the race communists have yet not obtained enough power.
All the shit you're dealing with now was in the same rusty pipeline, coming.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
Good luck, fix your food, be the centre of attention. Most issues that put women off are ones we carry inside, fixing them is a great first step.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
Great comment. I started at age 22, nearly three years ago and still am horny all the damn time. The side effects are real but very unlikely for most people, do not have much to add beyond my own experience since you worded this out better than I could have.
A lot of the ageing stuff happens due to poor life choices. Steve Maxwell is 72 and rolls regulalry, works out, all without taking any hormones. He has aged and looks half the size he was at 45 but men can retain a large amount of vigor and life force into middle ages. 60 and above will see a decline which can be slowed down to a trickle with a better lifestyle.
Taking fin saved my hair, I have a better head of hair than most guys I meet, not a complete norwood 0 kind but I am not actrively receeeding and can style my hair however I want. A tranplant will also require you to hop on the same meds so hop on them before you need a transplant.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
I did once, I was quite a loser at the time though, it blew up, I posted about it here 4 years ago. Women are great this way, quite malleabe. Do meet her irl before you go.
No_one
1d ago
There are bullshit jobs, but only in fat companies.
E.g. I know of a bank that has a whole dozen person 'enterprise architecture ' department that's supposed to manage their IT architecture.
They manage, instead, an erroneous, mostly fictional model of the actual IT architecture.
No_one
1d ago
These are mere engineering issues.
If you were a zoomer you'd have already solved a problem related to your chatbot getting insane and you'd know it's not a hard constraint.
No_one
1d ago
Lyme disease was supposedly improved by US army bioweapons dudes.
There's a whole documentary on it. Burgdorf allegedly cops to doing so.
Although it's unclear why the new & improved Lyme disease would be everywhere or spreading. There's a world of difference between molesting bacteria in a lab to get worse ones to said bacteria living in ticks worldwide.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
Yeah, and tbh I feel kinda bad for the kids coming up today. They’re unhealthy because of what adults are doing to them, and will likely grow to be even worse. They’ve been taught they can’t handle the outside world without help, so not only are they not learning how to deal with the real world, they have a fear of it, they don’t think they can handle it. They end up neurotic, anxious and depressed. Why wouldn’t they, they’re being sent out into a world they’ve never experienced and have been shielded from because they can’t handle it.
Shirayuki
1d ago
Great post.
I've recently learned about Solow's Paradox, the idea that productivity growth in developed countries doesn't appear to be reflecting the impact of computers / the internet / the smartphones despite their obvious incredible impacts on society and it's been pretty fascinating to think about.
Consensus seems to be split between productivity statistics overestimating inflation and underestimating real growth and theories that computing really just hasn't significantly moved productivity for various reasons [personally I think this would explain a lot....]
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1d ago
Lou Gehrig is nearly unique among all sports legends across all fields, in that he’s a man whose incredible Greatness at baseball is often overshadowed in public memory by his tremendous Goodness as a person.
It's overshadowed in public memory by a disease named after him. Until I read your post I thought he was a doctor.
Ioper
1d ago
I don't really remember that. People didn't talk much about parenting in the 90s in Sweden and when things heated up at the end of the 90s and in the 00s all the negative discourse seemed to be about the opposite: "helicopter" and "curling" parenting.
Talk about parental neglect emerged later with "latte moms" and then more recently about parents using smart screens as a baby sitter. That mostly concerns babies and preschool aged children though and I don't think that is what people are talking about when they say "free range parenting"
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
To be fair I'm mostly referring to local discourses, I'm not sure if "vapaa kasvatus" that was the bugaboo referred to here is the exact same thing as free-range parenting even though it's a fairly close translation.
In any case I'd say it was less safetyism and more a concern about whether kids would be getting properly civilized and steered into proper members of the society.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
Me too, I haven't really played around with AI for some weird anxiety about not being able to apply it effectively. I'm kind of sticking my head in the sand on AI to avoid thinking about my FOMO.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
I seem to recall that free range parenting was heavily dunked, particularly by small-c conservative types, in the 90s as hippie bullshit where negligent parents were allowed to turn their kids into unsupervised, uncivilized little menaces that would go on to terrorize their fellow citizens without reprimand.
Was that about "free range parenting" or about other trends that promoted not disciplining children or letting them do whatever they want ("stress-free upbringing", "unschooling")? The only controversy I remember about "free rage parenting" was a mother that let her kid ride the NY subway on his own, to the horror of safetyists throughout the country. I don't recall the safetyists having a particular political lean.
I seem to recall that free range parenting was heavily dunked, particularly by small-c conservative types, in the 90s as hippie bullshit where negligent parents were allowed to turn their kids into unsupervised, uncivilized little menaces that would go on to terrorize their fellow citizens without reprimand. Surely discourses of that sort were one factor why we've swung so heavily into the other extreme.
It might also contribute as much, if not more, than child safety concerns: free range parenting dismissed not so much due to the potential harm to child but the potential harm to the rest of the society. (Many fond memories of childhood spent outside on bikes without supervision often do include tales of mild or not-so-mild vandalism and other lawbreaking in it, after all.)
SerialStateLineXer
1d ago
Nice. I've been in the top 0.5% in Japan for a couple years now, but that's bush league. It might not even put me in the top 5% in the US.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
I think the main reason they are not as disruptive is because they aren't done cooking.
This is my take. Its still a nascent technology.
For some reason this popped into my head. and I compared it to this or even this.
I don't think AI is going to be a VR style hype train to nowhere.
Think of it this way: you've missed out on a bit, sure, but AI progressing so fast right now, that the value you left on the table so far is really insignificant compared to what you can get at any point you decide to jump in.
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