![Stop telling me AI is the future [Still Vreni]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4bb4b8e1-242a-4f66-ae86-60cf2e04f996.jpeg){kind=link}
Transcript
Title text: This is how you all fucking sound
[A smug tech bro wearing a sideways cap, watch, chain around his neck stands in front of a data center by a lake with dead fish. A smoke stack blows pollution into the air]
Tech bro: AI is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a suit with cigarette in hand stands in a restaurant while two disgruntled diners cough from the smoke]
Suit: Smoking indoors is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug man in a top hat and suit stands in a factory with two sad and dirty children]
Hat: Child labor is already here, there’s no going back.
[A smug plantation owner stands in front of a field with with two angry slaves]
Plantation owner: The Atlantic Slave trade is already here, there’s no going back.
Look, I get pissed off at AI and the AI industry every day. I definitely don’t hate it as much as some people, but I’m not a fan either.
That said, it seems like there’s not many comic artists out there who are able to actually articulate a coherent and rational criticism of AI. 90% of anti-AI comics end up being weak, strawman, or just generally sort of confused and vague. It’s shocking to me because it seems like the problems and ways to criticize it are so plain. But comics like this and many others show how silly, reactionary, and unthinking a lot of these complaints are. There can be such thing as overreacting to a bad thing, there can be such thing as being confused about what’s bad about a bad thing, etc. And in the case of this comic we have confusion about the nature of the problem and about its solution.
Ngl, it really irritates me seeing these artists think they’ve served up epic poignant AI ownage when they’ve really just demonstrated their own poor thinking ability.
And I never cease to get amazed how many upvotes they get despite being logically incoherent. Kinda disappoints me to think the average lemming isn’t any better at critical thinking than the tiktokers we love to make fun of.
Yeah, for most people the only gate something needs to pass is whether it expresses a view they agree with. It’s certainly a minority that imposes additional constraints. I don’t know to what extent this is educational, cultural, vs. just human.
I may as well explain this because apparently I can read better than everyone else.
The comparison to chattel slavery,
is relevant
because we ended chattel slavery.
We . can . change . society . if . we . want . to.
That was not the issue I took with it actually
What, then?
The comic is, specifically, a response to the faux defeatism of pro-AI sentiments, and is perfectly cogent.
As others have pointed out, AI is a technology. It is an understanding of a certain way to program a computer. It’s not a behavior, but rather it’s a piece of information. That makes it different from the other three things, which are behaviors more than being technologies.
The reason why this matters and isn’t just some pointless nitpick is because the comic is conflating the sentiment of not being able to go back from AI with having a bunch of pollution and gigantic data centers. In the other images, for instance, they depict smoking indoors, and say smoking indoors is already here. what they depict and what they say is already here and can’t be gone back from are one in the same thing. But data centers and pollution are not the same thing as AI because AI is a technology, not a behavior. It would be fully possible to develop the same AI models without expanding the data centers or polluting any more than we already did. In fact, it would even have been possible to train AI models with sustainably sized data centers and recoverable amounts of normal pollution. It would just take longer. but the comic draws a false equivalence between the technology and the way that the technology is currently being implemented.
It’s wrong because there really is no going back from AI. We’ve never, ever, ever, ever gone back from a piece of technology. It’s always known how to create it. And regulations to stop it don’t really work, as we’ve seen with nuclear weapons. Because once knowledge of how to do something is out there, it’s pretty hard to stop people from, at the very least, knowing how to do it. And AI models can even be trained on a local computer, though obviously not very powerful ones
But just because there’s no going back from AI doesn’t mean that we can’t build a better world where there’s not irresponsibly gigantic data centers creating irreparable pollution, and all these other problems that we see with AI today. In the same way that just because there’s truly no going back from nuclear weapons doesn’t mean that we need to constantly be living in a cold war situation. We can indeed build better behaviors that regulate that technology.
But conflating the two is a serious mistake because it leads people to think that the only way to fix one problem is to get rid of the other and that’s going to produce a lot of pointless hopelessness and confusion because it’s just not true.
Bitcoin, NFTs, asbestos, CFCs, leaded substances, the metaverse, 3D TVs like the 7 or 8 different times they’ve tried to make that a thing, VR gaming, wearable computers, segways, ubiquitous RFID tags, google search (considering they are fucking up their own service, this absolutely counts), the iSmell?, folding-glass phones (culturally insignificant), modular phones (culturally insignificant), gesture control devices for your PC (culturally insignificant), the Internet of Things (culturally insignificant), paper clothing (wtf?), sailors forgetting and rediscovering the cure for scurvy several times, self-healing concrete had to be rediscovered, …
I imagine you think this list is making the same mistake, but you don’t understand this as a cultural issue.
The choice to use it is a behavior.
You, while claiming it is other people who are doing this, are conflating the existence of a technology with the acceptance of it.
Using your own interpretation, we can’t go back from cigarettes either. The technology is known. They still exist. People still smoke them. They still give people lung cancer. If we shut down tobacco companies, people can still roll their own. There’s no stopping it. It’s a societal pitfall we can’t climb out of.
And yet, somehow, I can go into a restaurant today without being assaulted by a Counter Strike smoke bomb.
Let’s review something else you’ve said.
In the absolute sense? Like, one person in the middle of Utah won’t let it go? Do you really think that I care about them?
This sentiment damages hope for our cause.
You are either doing so deliberately, or do not understand the goal.
Please, spare me the pedantic lecture about what “going back” is supposed to mean.
Maybe I can restate my point more succinctly and spare you a pedantic lecture while still having a useful conversation.
In the other panels, the act depicted (smoking indoors) is fully identical with the act discussed (smoking indoors).
In the AI panel, the act depicted (pollution) is not fully identical with the act discussed (AI). It is closely related, but not identical.
The comic therefore undeniably conflates two separate (but indeed closely related) things. This alone is a mistake in the artist’s thinking.
In your counter-argument with smoking, you make the same sort of mistake. The comic discusses smoking indoors, and then you discuss cigarettes. Cigarettes and smoking indoors are related, but not identical things.
We cannot go back from cigarettes, as you agreed. But we can go back from smoking indoors. Similarly: We cannot go back from AI, but we can go back from polluting to produce it.
Because the comic conflates the cessation of pollution to produce AI, which is possible, with the ability to go back from AI, which is not possible, the comic mistakenly implies that it is not possible to stop polluting, contrary to its own purpose, hence why I say the artist is confused and makes a flawed case.
I would love it if you could specify what sentiment exactly it is that damages hope for our cause, and what exactly our cause is. My post, in my opinion, expresses a positive sentiment that would increase hope that there can be a future where there’s not pollution for the sake of AI. The comic is what damages hope, according to my reasoning above - Although I would never assume the comic was made in bad faith.
The fact that you think I agree with you on the cigarettes point is part of the problem.
To insist on this difference is to divert public attention into pointless bickering. I’ve read the CIA document, I know how this works.
If you’re going to come into every strategy meeting with useless bullshit on this level, I am kicking you off the team. With prejudice.
It is possible if I cut off your apartment’s electricity. Think of it like Morpheus liberating Neo from the Matrix.