Can we all stop comparing ourselves to the Luddites? They destroyed machines that *actually did the thing they were designed for*.
Meanwhile, we are protesting (vociferously but apparently without result) against systems that don't achieve what they're meant to AND burn the planet's resources.
The Luddite comparison is incomplete, but I don't think the situation would necessarily be "better" if AI worked.
The Luddites knew the machines were making lower quality products, but they were against being replaced by the machines, which AI's owners very clearly want it to do.
I've always been on the side of the Luddites in terms of the social upheaval they were resisting. There's more than just profit in a society. But at least if you were a weaver being replaced by a machine, that machine produced cloth! Not just something that looked vaguely clothy from a distance.
From the point of view of capital owners, the machines were better.
Profit, not quality, is what matters in capitalism. And AI does not deliver profit (at least not yet, and I doubt it will ever do that).
Good points, but businesses further down the pyramid don't have to care about whether OpenAI or whoever is solvent or not.
They're looking at their own finances and seeing that a Creative Cloud subscription is cheaper than paying a salary or commission for a writer or an artist, for example.
Of course. And that's true now, but what about when they ramp the prices of these things up and there's nobody left who *can* do the thing? So they're paying as much (or more, why not?) as they used to for a human, but still getting shite quality!
