Microsoft has Copilot Plus PCs loaded with AI, and rumors are that Apple is all in on AI, too, but if you don't want AI in everything you do, there is another option: Linux.
It’s not the “AI nightmare”, it’s a nightmare of capitalism, proprietary software and user-hostile behavior by a greedy, profit-extracting Big Tech corporation.
It’s not just Linux, but free & open source software in general. And it’s not just desktop PCs that are plagued by this corporate spyware, it’s much worse when looking at the mobile device landscape. The only real solution for mobile devices is GrapheneOS with FOSS software installed from the F-Droid marketplace. Browsers are also under attack by proprietary software corporations, Google just intentionally broke adblockers on all Chromium-based browsers, so they can generate more ad revenue. Last year, they tried to push a proposal that would have massively extended their monopoly on web browsers (WEI). All the streaming services are screwing their users over and increasing the subscription prices while making the content library smaller. It’s such a fucking scam, and it’s almost sad to see how many people are dumb enough to fall for it.
You’re not wrong. AI is just another tool to scrape cash to the top while eliminating jobs. Could it realize benefits like doing specialized research and testing? Sure…but again, the results of that work are lost human jobs and scraping money to the top. We can argue about advancing technology in a horse cart driver vs automobile thing (won’t anyone think about the poor farriers out of work?) but we’ve already done everything we can to eliminate blue collar jobs with as much automation as possible. Now AI is set to attack middle class jobs. Economically I don’t think that’s going to work out well.
I mean, the problem isn’t the existence/obviation of jobs, but what we do next when it happens. If the people whose jobs are automated away are left out with no money or employment, that’s a serious problem. If we as a society support them in learning something new that puts their skills to good use, and maybe even reduce the expected working hours of a full-time job to 35 or 32 hours a week, that’s an absolute win in my book.
Well that’s the point. We don’t support them as a society. From education to health care once you lose your job, you’re SOL, and in this hyper-capitalist dystopia we keep tipping towards I don’t see that changing.
It’s not the “AI nightmare”, it’s a nightmare of capitalism, proprietary software and user-hostile behavior by a greedy, profit-extracting Big Tech corporation.
All true, and all a problem for which linux has been a solution (in the computing world) for decades now.
It’s not just Linux, but free & open source software in general. And it’s not just desktop PCs that are plagued by this corporate spyware, it’s much worse when looking at the mobile device landscape. The only real solution for mobile devices is GrapheneOS with FOSS software installed from the F-Droid marketplace. Browsers are also under attack by proprietary software corporations, Google just intentionally broke adblockers on all Chromium-based browsers, so they can generate more ad revenue. Last year, they tried to push a proposal that would have massively extended their monopoly on web browsers (WEI). All the streaming services are screwing their users over and increasing the subscription prices while making the content library smaller. It’s such a fucking scam, and it’s almost sad to see how many people are dumb enough to fall for it.
You’re not wrong. AI is just another tool to scrape cash to the top while eliminating jobs. Could it realize benefits like doing specialized research and testing? Sure…but again, the results of that work are lost human jobs and scraping money to the top. We can argue about advancing technology in a horse cart driver vs automobile thing (won’t anyone think about the poor farriers out of work?) but we’ve already done everything we can to eliminate blue collar jobs with as much automation as possible. Now AI is set to attack middle class jobs. Economically I don’t think that’s going to work out well.
I mean, the problem isn’t the existence/obviation of jobs, but what we do next when it happens. If the people whose jobs are automated away are left out with no money or employment, that’s a serious problem. If we as a society support them in learning something new that puts their skills to good use, and maybe even reduce the expected working hours of a full-time job to 35 or 32 hours a week, that’s an absolute win in my book.
Well that’s the point. We don’t support them as a society. From education to health care once you lose your job, you’re SOL, and in this hyper-capitalist dystopia we keep tipping towards I don’t see that changing.