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Comment by lmpdev | Hacker News Reader

This thread is caught up in semantics, which is regrettable

The thesis of the article should have been articulated "AI is disproportionately used as a surveillance technology owning to its computational requirements, the current state of industrial-user relations and the inability for legal systems to respond fast enough to protect individuals"

Edit 1: I don't know how to make that more consise without losing the meat of the argument

Edit 2: the emphasis should be directed to (yet again), industrial-user relations. We really need the equivalent to unions but for representating the rights of users. We're in an unchecked second guilded age and it's wreaking havoc on not just individuals but future businesses. These ill-gotten gains are going to devastate the tech sector, when it inevitably gets corrected in 5-x years

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> We really need the equivalent to unions but for representating the rights of users.

You mean like https://eff.org?

I love the eff, but I think the comment still stands — it’s not a mass market organisation. Unlike unions, it’s not clear what service eff provides to individuals, and so the market for membership is lower. That’s not a critique of eff, but perhaps a constraint on its effectiveness in contrast to unions in labour relations.

I don't see how eff has any leverage on large tech companies?

>and the inability for legal systems to respond fast enough to protect individuals

Is it really inability when not doing so benefits you and your lobbying friends?

I mean it's probably not helped by the fact that most regulators can't even change their phone's wallpaper without help from an intern. But also they are not even remotely scrambling to solve the problem either so, both? Both.

Cynicism isn't insight.

Actually it is insight. Much closer to the facts on the ground than the opposite. It is a take informed by actual experience of reality, as opposed to boy-scout naivety.

The semantically significant bit is "technology" and that is what is tripping up the "mah local model" group.

Technology develops as the result of focused application of capital and shaping the evolution of that technology to serve the interest of that capital. The driving force behind AI -- when ranked according to impact and significance -- is being funded by surveillance capitalists. In that sense one can say "AI is fundamentally a surveillance technology".

AI and Capitalism are a toxic mix, in my opinion.

> AI and Capitalism are a toxic mix

The only worse combinations would be AI+Communism, or (arguably what we have) AI+Facism

Did you apply semantics? I think so

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