Somewhat funny to read all these holy, well-tamed, moral people condemning violence with most dumb, ungrounded "violence bad" that cannot even hold a second of scrutiny.
Yes, violence shouldn't be the first resort, and when violence is unleashed innocent suffer as well, but there is a great difference between choosing not to use violence due to whatever consideration, and being so toothless and tamed that a sight of dog that finally bites when being constantly beaten sickens you.
I think it’s the opposite: many of these keyboard warriors advocating for violence in 2026 in America have no fucking clue what they’re advocating for, or how stupid they sound.
It's not good for this sort of disagree with a CEO stuff. Fighting Hitler is ok. Typed from England where we fought Hitler but don't generally go for CEOs. Is that privileged?
Good article, but I cannot help myself to not bring up lack of appreciation for humanities in tech circles.
Article mentions Searle and Chalmers, but we literally have at least two centuries of critical thought that expressed itself through Nietzsche, Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, Weber, Durkheim, Foucault, Debord, Baudrillard, and many others (obviously I am mentioning those I am most familiar with). If you read Dialectic of Enlightenment, you'll find that slop isn't something that had arisen in last few years. If you read Discipline and Punish you'll find that surveillance and coercion isn't a problem that was born with internet or Palantir. And Baudrillard had few words to say about simulation and reality.
But STEM crowds for decades cried we don't need such thinking, and science and technology are all that we need. Historians, philosophers, culture critics etc. supposedly have nothing to offer us. Who needs to read Marx or Marcuse if sci-fi novels offer all you need, maybe sprinkled with some PG essays and blogpost from you favorite tech blogger, and we happen to live in the best of possible worlds with the best of possible economic systems.
> Would you rather feel justified in the knowledge that the Luddites were principally right and resist, or would you rather learn the lesson of their fate and adapt?
Keep your poison. If everyone adapted this way, we would not have worker rights, and our children would still work in mines and factories for pennies.
Where the commenter is right is that luddites didn't have (or had they?) a global competitor more than happy to push their entire system aside. Not that they personally thought about this argument, just that the context and possible consequences were different.
> I'm a bit more optimistic about democratized access to AI. Even today's weaker open source/weight models are plenty powerful enough to supercharge our individual capabilities, and based on current trends, they won't be more than 3 - 6 months behind the frontier models. This may not bode well for the AI labs because their moat is always evaporating, but it's a huge boon to us plebs
Point me to something real that happens rights now that would support such optimistic vision.
I always read on how much power AI can bring to common people, and it it always without any evidence whatsoever.
> I always read on how much power AI can bring to common people, and it it always without any evidence whatsoever.
Not really "much power" but more like a viable alternative: in a world where everybody needs LLMs to do their white-collar work, you can't force me to use your paid LLM subscription as my local-running model is close enough.
The power of AI is that it amplifies individual capabilities. So the same aspect that lets employers reduce their headcount also lets individuals start ambitious projects that would have previously required an entire team... and hence, a significant amount of funding. The moment you need money, the people who provide that capital hold a lot of power and influence.
But now you don't need their money, and so the capital class lose their power over you.
As an example, I'm iterating on a niche product based on computer vision -- something I had no background in when I started -- that in the past would have taken a team of 2 - 3 and at least a semester or two of an advanced course in computer vision. Instead, I'm solo bootstrapping this project.
There are multiple accounts like mine, and you can find many comments on HN or other forums to this effect. Now, I know this is a very tough path for most people because, well, now everybody needs to be an entrepreneur, but a path exists.
AI is a double-edged sword, and more people need to become aware of the edge that is available to us.
Again, I want concrete evidence on positive impact among general population, not speculation on how AI could be used or your amazing experience as bootstrapping entrepreneur.
1. This is not speculation. Individuals and small teams are already developing and deploying ambitious projects that previously required entire teams. Entire open source projects have been rewritten from scratch and relicensed by individuals with an AI. People have posted GitHub repos where you can go investigate the commit history. You've been on HN long enough to see the comments and stories. If you're still asking for proof, well, that says something.
2. You're stance is equivalent to "show me concrete evidence that the advent of the automobile will have a positive impact on horse-drawn buggy coachmen" while I'm saying, "the automobile is coming, we all better get off our high horses and learn how to drive."
> I would deny that AI poses any such threat. There are actors who would use the tool in ways that threaten as you described, but that is a threat from said actor, not AI
Of course, it is popular to deny it. People constantly tell themselves "it is people, not tech". They make valid, yet banal and inconsequential statement. This distinction has no bearing on reality.
> So you're saying that if people hadn't invented weapons, there would be no violence?
If anything, if people hadn't invented weapons, they would not use weapons to enact violence, and this in turn will impact the practical nature of violence.
> The claim that AI is itself dangerous has no merit.
My claim is that considering any technology by itself is pointless. There is no such thing as thing by itself. Technology always exists in structural setting, and in turn shapes this structure.
There is also elitism of lack of expectations. Common people should be helped to rise up over the mud produced by culture industry. Meeting them and staying with them in this mud is an actual elitism.
Yep, STEM people asked why we need humanities. And now they are starting to hold hot debates that strangely resemble things that humanities discussed centuries ago.
One curious thing. My country was erased from maps for 123 years (Poland). During that time, universities in all three occupied parts could freely teach engineering, physics, math or biology. Occupiers didn't care, they even wanted to have access to talent pool of specialists educated on these universities. On the other hand, teaching of history, philosophy etc. was highly controlled and restricted.
One can wonder - if humanities are so useless for the society, why did they even bother?
Yes. Private companies are capable of the same, with addition of having profit as a sole purpose of existence.
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