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   22 (22@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 01:29:17 JST 22

   in reply to

   Oops, managed to delete this brilliant bit from #TedChiang

   “Today, we find ourselves in a situation in which technology has become conflated with capitalism, which has in turn become conflated with the very notion of progress. If you try to criticize capitalism, you are accused of opposing both technology and progress. But what does progress even mean, if it doesn’t include better lives for people who work? What is the point of greater efficiency, if the money being saved isn’t going anywhere except into shareholders’ bank accounts? We should all strive to be Luddites, because we should all be more concerned with economic justice than with increasing the private accumulation of capital. We need to be able to criticize harmful uses of technology—and those include uses that benefit shareholders over workers—without being described as opponents of technology.” https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey

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     22 (22@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 01:29:18 JST 22

     More from the recent New Yorker piece:

     “Sure, shopping online is fast and easy, and streaming movies at home is cool, but I think a lot of people would willingly trade those conveniences for the ability to own their own homes, send their kids to college without running up lifelong debt, and go to the hospital without falling into bankruptcy. It’s not technology’s fault that the median income hasn’t kept pace with per-capita G.D.P.; it’s mostly the fault of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. But some responsibility also falls on the management policies of C.E.O.s like Jack Welch, who ran General Electric between 1981 and 2001, as well as on consulting firms like McKinsey. I’m not blaming the personal computer for the rise in wealth inequality—I’m just saying that the claim that better technology will necessarily improve people’s standard of living is no longer credible. …

     The only way that technology can boost the standard of living is if there are economic policies in place to distribute the benefits of technology appropriately. We haven’t had those policies for the past forty years, and, unless we get them, there is no reason to think that forthcoming advances in A.I. will raise the median income, even if we’re able to devise ways for it to augment individual workers. A.I. will certainly reduce labor costs and increase profits for corporations, but that is entirely different from improving our standard of living.” https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/will-ai-become-the-new-mckinsey

     Matthew Lyon repeated this.