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i think a core beef that i have with a lot of this "automation is bad" sentiment lately is that there is no inherent moral good in laboring the story of humanity is one of invention, where we improve our conditions by building things that help us do more things more easily

sort of along my recent repost, the issue at hand has been the same since the dawn of capitalism: when automation increases productivity, who gets to capture the value of that productivity increase? the beef is not with the productivity. it's with the value capture

gonna just fully lean into being a stereotypical leftist here: yinz claim to have read marx yet clearly haven't read marx or internalized the ideas within bsky.app/profile/segy...

a thing i've been thinking about posting for a long time is "back in those days, the workers didn't say "eww factories were created by capitalists to enrich capitalists, we should abandon factories" they said "we should seize them and direct their output for the good of humanity"

I understand where you're coming from, but I also think it's worth thinking about the fact that the split in tone here is along the lines of people who are currently financially stable and the people whose livelihoods are *presently* being eroded by these technologies with no upside in sight.

If you think there's an upside to building this technology so it can be captured by labour, I think there needs to be an actual story being told about how that can actually be accomplished. Because otherwise, people whose careers are being destroyed today are just being told to stop resenting it!

This is more or less the crux of the issue for me. I am not actively hostile toward this new crop of AI technology, but I am generally hostile toward the SaaSification that enables the consolidation of its benefits in the capital class. Either we all own it or no one owns it.

yeah, i fully agree that presenting a good future is important, just like, for any political project generally. i think that i struggle to have *any* conversation about these things at all because it immediately gets so heated

i think it's also tough because when i'm not online, 99% of the conversations i have about this, *especially* with non-programmers, are positive and curious and excited about the future with these tools. the only real negativity i come across is devs, people online, and some minor IRL concerns

It may well depend on what kinds of people you're talking to, yeah. The filter bubble isn't just an online thing huh? Haha. People I talk to IRL tend to be ambivalent to negative, which it sounds like is pretty different from your experience!