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Comment by cbeach | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why capitalism (free markets, individual liberty, personal responsibility) should specifically frighten us in relation to AI.

Imagine the horror of the USSR, or Mao's China, or Jong Un having this technology.

Would we honestly prefer a far-left totalitarian dictatorship having control and leadership over AI?

At the end of the day, we'll always fear and distrust AI being owned by someone other than ourselves. Questions over the ownership of AI is important - in fact, too important to be conflated with our populist gripes against capitalism.

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The advantage of capitalism is that more capital generate more capital. More machines you have to produce things... which will help you to produce even more machines...

The machines are operated by the labor forces, the real humans. However, the exponential compounding benefits of theses feedbacks loop us are mostly redirected to the ones owning the machines, the owner of the means of production.

Of course, the labor forces operating the machines/means of production benefits it, because they have either cheaper, or more goods. However they doesn't get this compounding effect.

AI is the god of the machines, the ultimate means of production. The amount of labor forces needed to operate it is very few. When the owner of capital invest a specific amount of money for their company, they get X amount of tokens, enabling them to work on Y amount of tasks. It's reward with low-risk.

The drift between capital owners and labor forces will become wider and wider. Until the labor forces doesn't have any more capacity of buying the goods produced. And then the system will implode.

But if goods and services become so cheap and easy to mass produce, won’t they become vastly cheaper? Thus helping to bridge the gap created by production concentration and job elimination?

> Imagine the horror of the USSR, or Mao's China, or Jong Un having this technology.

The irony of this comment, while social media and AI are being weaponized right now in elections all over the world for political alignment with the MAGA kleptocracy.

> Would we honestly prefer a far-left totalitarian dictatorship having control and leadership over AI?

As opposed to the far right totalitarian dictatorship having control and leadership over OpenAI and Anthropic?

… before the downvote, just a reminder that by sidelining Congress after the first 60 days of war in Iran, he has literally become a dictator in the original sense of the world.

And if you say he doesn’t have commandership of AI companies, I have to point out that he effectively blackballed Anthropic by labeling them as a national security supply chain risk because he didn’t like the terms of a contract

Are there no negative aspects of capitalism (libertarianism) in your mind?

> Would we honestly prefer a far-left totalitarian dictatorship having control and leadership over AI?

Far left, far right. You say potato...

> At the end of the day, we'll always fear and distrust AI being owned by someone other than ourselves.

Maybe invent an AI that destroys other AI's?

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