According to this article written in July, it’s a bit more dire than that if you take a step or two back. Basically, openai and their copycats/derivatives are being held up by investments from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta, who in turn are being held up by investments from Nvidia. If/when the whole chain collapses it’ll be more than 0.5% of earnings that disappear.

Not that I disagree, just as someone who loves computers and programming it really feels like throwing out the baby along with the bathwater.

We could (should imo) be planning a sort of overthrow of the rich assholes who don’t share; make sure everyone has access to a computer, the electricity need to run it, and the knowledge to use it to their own benefit.

The second, longer quote in my previous comment is from the intro to a computer self-help/“how-to” book, Without Me You Are Nothing (pdf link).

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” – Frank Herbert

"Right now there is an explosive growth of the number of computers and things they can do. Not only are their numbers increasing at a dazzling rate, but the storage of information in giant data banks is growing in the same explosive way.

We have no way to control this now and none in sight. In fact, the very nature of this growth says that all controls will lag far behind computer developments. Any attempt to ban them will only drive com- puters underground. Never lose sight of the fact that computers “crunch time.” The speed at which computers can operate tells us that laws cannot keep up with them. The person with a computer can dance rings around you while you react as though you were embedded in molasses.

What can you do?

Get your own computer. Learn how to use it. We are here to help you make that first step: how to find the one that fits your needs and your pocketbook, where to put it, how to program it-all of the essentials. If you don’t do this, the Bill of Rights is dead and your individual liberties will go the way of the dodo." – also Frank Herbert

I hate how much we seem to be slowly careening towards Frank Herbert’s vision like the worse case of collective target fixation.

Empathy and intelligence are not the same. As evidenced by some highly intelligent people displaying a shocking lack of empathy, and some highly empathetic people not displaying the greatest intelligence.

Personally, I’d rather talk about knowledge and behavior. Intelligence and empathy are hard to quantize.

Leaning into natural selection, proposing we need to let it “run it’s course”, in a way, to “weed out the weak traits” is eugenics. So is thinking that some traits are “good” and others “bad” without qualifying “for the current social/environmental context”. Stupidity might be a good defense against existential depression.

Why do you yourself call the thought “scary” if you don’t think it’s eugenics? What exactly is scary about letting “weak traits perish” if not that it’s inviting a certain form of eugenics to decide who gets to reproduce and/or be born?

You’ll note I didn’t claim you advocate for it directly, just that your arguments are eugenics-flavored.

Wealth inequality is returning to pre-WW1 levels and climate change’s effects are becoming visible to the average person, making people desperate for a way out. Education budgets in the US have been steadily slashed, far-right agit-prop by people like Steve Bannon has flooded the internet while the political class that could oppose it are pacified by corporate donors.

No need for social darwinism or sketchy eugenics-flavored arguments to explain this.

Part of the problem is also that, while an acre of land can feed a family of 4, there’s no way to generate enough surplus from that single acre to be able to afford a tractor in the first place. So the tractor creates the need for much larger farm plots being owned by a single person, which way up all the supposed extra free time the automation/mechanized tool was supposed to bring.

In the end, less people can work the land to sustain themselves and the only people better off are those who already had more than enough to go buy.