Hacker News Reader

Comment by jatora | Hacker News Reader

I find these nefarious intention theories shallow. It can both be the case that the endstate is them owning the means of production without that being the intended guiding goal. Companies can chase profit without being Leninistic boogeymen.

View on HN

There is no nefariousness in owning all the means of production, it's the endgame of maximizing profit.

However the result is exactly the same, concentration of power.

This is such a defeatist and low agency take. "means of production" are not a limited resource like gold that you have to extract from natural sources or divvy up. They are fundamentally skill and knowledge that anyone can attain and put to use, maybe not on the same scale as a well funded business but even those businesses had to start somewhere in order to grow to the size they are now. So rather than casting aspersions on them, your time would be better spent learning how you too can create some means of production and start producing value.

You think AI tech doesn't use rare earth metals?

Rare earth metals aren't rare, it's a misnomer.

Depends on how you define rare. Also irrelevant — the only thing important to the argument is that they are "limited resources."

AI companies are trying to mechanize skill and knowledge and to own the infrastructure around it. If they succeed, your suggestion does not work. Even if they can't succeed, they will try because that's the most obvious path to maximizing profit for them.

Also about "creating" means of production, these companies actively try to sabotage this as another profit maximization strategy. They buy all the ram, so others cannot compete. They buy startups who succeed, so they stop competing.

It's not aspersions, it's just describing the phenomenon.

Even if I take your suggestion to heart, once my company would be big enough, if I wanted to optimize for profit, I would have to do the same as these companies.

The end result is concentrated power.

No nefariousness other than the subjugation of the majority of humanity? You're insane

What I meant is that nefariousness from people is not a prerequisite. It's a machine that wants to maximize all profit and all the evil is a natural product. If you magically put saints in charge they would be eaten and replaced by the same kind of people very quickly if the end goal remains.

The "evil" is not just in the effect, it is in the callous, sociopathic disregard for the sanctity of life that lives in Zuckerberg and all the individuals involved; that is the evil "prima materia" out of which downstream actions and outcomes are borne.

Sam Allan has said some things that would make Lenin blush

Reply on news.ycombinator.com