I used to be the most excited-about-tech kid. Tinkered with coding around age 10, built tech companies, generally felt good about the improvements technology brought to the world.
I just watched the Google I/O keynote. "So whatever's on your mind, you can come to Google and truly ask anything"
I feel visceral disgust. Where is this taking our social fabric, our values, our skills?
I feel like the remaining truth of the world is vanishing in front of our eyes and all the skills I used to be proud of are turning worthless.
Is anyone else feeling the same way? I have never experienced climate anxiety, because I was and still am hopeful that we might be able to stop the catastrophe.
But with AI, I hear the crowd cheering dystopia.
I think AI is a wonderful tool if used intelligently, but it can be -- and is -- used for just about anything, with the consequence that we live in a sea of intellectual and artistic slop whose level is very slowly yet steadily rising.
I don't have an answer beyond using AI as intelligently as possible for your personal purposes. The technology is there, and its misuse doesn't negate or obviate its beneficial uses, nor do those uses contribute to the rise in the level of the sea of slop.
"I'm not a fan of actually-existing late-stage capitalism, frankly.
What I want is Banksian fully automated luxury gay space communism.
(You can quote me on that. I hate what tech has turned into.)"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48163649
(Charlie wrote the book on our emerging ai dystopia, prophetically, decades ago)
Most likely not. Luddites hate all automation and machinery.
There is probably a name for something in the middle of that spectrum. Even the Amish are not Luddites, not even close. The definition of that name would have to include some aspects of pragmatism, logic, common sense and balance. Just because new tech is launched and may be temporarily popular does not mean it should be praised, adored or even accepted. AI will destroy the environment and make electricity expensive.
For example, I would never give up my 1947 tractor. It can do more work than a horse. The used UTV I bought is also very handy. I like old trucks though I absolutely despise what people call modern cars and what they have become despite their crappy implementations of environmental improvements that they have fooled and reprogrammed people with that makes the oil and automotive industry orgasmic. Drive by wire and internet accessible is equal to assassination on demand RIP Anne Heche. Modern vehicles are intellectually disgusting and abhorrent. Modern touch screen controls are just irresponsible.
In my view technology and some machinery have taken giant steps backwards and not wanting to accept such vial abominations is not being a Luddite rather it is just being practical, having some common sense and not being enamored by the hype machine.
Firstly, "Luddite", "artisan", etc. is a pejorative label, a label we should not accept. It is a rhetorical trick that AI marketers use shut down skepticism by trying to shame those who question their sales pitch. If "Luddite" is valid discourse on HN, so is "AI huckster" and "AI grifter" and we should label these shady AI promoters as such.
Secondly, not all tech has net positive outcomes despite initial benefits. Leaded gasoline is a historical example. Despite AI being useful to me as a tool, it is not clear that that it's positives outweigh the negative societal impact. Only time will tell but it is not wrong or "Luddite" to express those doubts.