So let's all just give zero fucks about our moral values and just multiply monetary ones.
You are misconstruing the original point. They are simply suggesting that the moral qualms of using AI are simply not that high - neither to vast majority of consumers, neither to the government. There are a few people who might exaggerate these moral issues for self service but they wouldn't matter in the long term.
That is not to suggest there are absolutely no legitimate moral problems with AI but they will pale in comparison to what the market needs.
If AI can make things 1000x more efficient, humanity will collectively agree in one way or the other to ignore or work around the "moral hazards" for the greater good.
You can start by explaining what your specific moral value is that goes against AI use? It might bring to clarity whether these values are that important at all to begin with.
Is that the promise of the faustian bargain we're signing?
Once the ink is dry, should I expect to be living in a 900,000 sq ft apartment, or be spending $20/year on healthcare? Or be working only an hour a week?
Edit: There is some research covering work time estimates for different ages.
We can live without a flat screen TV (which has gotten dirt cheap). We can't live without a decent house. Or worse, while we can live in some 500 sq ft shack we can't truly "live" if there's no other public amenities to gather and socialize without nickel-and-diming us.
Not really a "want" as much as "move where the jobs are". Remote jobs are shakey now and being in the middle of nowhere only worsens your compensation aspects. Being able to live wherever you please is indeed a luxury. The suburb structure already sacrificed the aspect of high CoL for increase commute time to work.
I also do think that dismissing aspects of humanity like family, community and sense of purpose to "luxuries" is an extremely dangerous line of thinking.
But that's not what they said, they said they want to work less. As the GP post said, they'd still be working a full week.
I do think this is an interesting point. The trend for most of history seems to have been vastly increasing consumption/luxury while work hours somewhat decrease. But have we reached the point where that's not what people want? I'd wager most people in rich developed countries don't particularly want more clothes, gadgets, cars, or fast food. If they can get the current typical middle class share of those things (which to be fair is a big share, and not environmentally sustainable), along with a modest place to live, they (we) mainly want to work less.
But it requires giving up things a lot of people don't want to, because consuming less once you are used to consuming more sucks. Here is a list of things people can cut from their life that are part of the "consumption has gone up" and "new categories of consumption were opened" that ovi256 was talking about:
- One can give up cell phones, headphones/earbuds, mobile phone plans, mobile data plans, tablets, ereaders, and paid apps/services. That can save $100/mo in bills and amortized hardware. These were a luxury 20 years ago.
- One can give up laptops, desktops, gaming consoles, internet service, and paid apps/services. That can save another $100/months in bills and amortized hardware. These were a luxury 30 years ago.
- One can give up imported produce and year-round availability of fresh foods. Depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save almost nothing, or up to hundreds of dollars every month. This was a luxury 50 years ago.
- One can give up restaurant, take-out, and home pre-packaged foods. Again depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save nothing-to-hundreds every month. This was a luxury 70 years ago.
- One can give up car ownership, car rentals, car insurance, car maintenance, and gasoline. In urban areas, walking and public transit are much cheaper options. In rural areas, walking, bicycling, and getting rides from shuttle services and/or friends are much cheaper options. That could save over a thousand dollars a month per 15,000 miles. This was a luxury 80 years ago.
I could keep going, but by this point I've likely suggested cutting something you now consider necessary consumption. If you thought one "can't just give that up nowadays," I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just hoping you acknowledge that what people consider optional consumption has changed, which means people consume a lot more.
It's not clear that it's still possible to function in society today with out a cell phone and a cell phone plan. Many things that were possible to do before without one now require it.
> - One can give up laptops, desktops, gaming consoles, internet service, and paid apps/services. That can save another $100/months in bills and amortized hardware. These were a luxury 30 years ago.
Maybe you can replace these with the cell phone + plan.
> - One can give up imported produce and year-round availability of fresh foods. Depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save almost nothing, or up to hundreds of dollars every month. This was a luxury 50 years ago.
It's not clear that imported food is cheaper than locally grown food. Also I'm not sure you have the right time frame. I'm pretty sure my parents were buying imported produce in the winter when I was a kid 50 years ago.
> - One can give up restaurant, take-out, and home pre-packaged foods. Again depending on your family size and eating habits, that could save nothing-to-hundreds every month. This was a luxury 70 years ago.
Agreed.
> - One can give up car ownership, car rentals, car insurance, car maintenance, and gasoline. In urban areas, walking and public transit are much cheaper options. In rural areas, walking, bicycling, and getting rides from shuttle services and/or friends are much cheaper options. That could save over a thousand dollars a month per 15,000 miles. This was a luxury 80 years ago.
Yes but in urban areas whatever you're saving on cars you are probably spending on higher rent and mortgage costs compared to rural areas where cars are a necessity. And if we're talking USA, many urban areas have terrible public transportation and you probably still need Uber or the equivalent some of the time, depending on just how walkable/bike-able your neighborhood is.
> It's not clear that it's still possible to function in society today with out a cell phone
Like I said... I've likely suggested cutting something you now consider necessary consumption. If you thought one "can't just give that up nowadays," I'm not saying you're right or wrong. I'm just hoping you acknowledge that what people consider optional consumption has changed, which means people consume a lot more.
---
As an aside, I live in a rural area. The population of my county is about 17,000 and the population of its county seat is about 3,000. We're a good 40 minutes away from the city that centers the Metropolitan Statistical Area. A 1 bedroom apartment is $400/mo and a 2 bedroom apartment is $600/mo. In one month, minimum wage will be $15/hr.
Some folks here do live without a car. It is possible. They get by in exactly the ways I described (except some of the Amish/Mennonites, who also use horses). It's not preferred (except by some of the Amish/Mennonites), but one can make it work.
This idea that increased consumption over the past century has been irrelevant to quality of life is just absurd.
Past 50 years...meh.
I've been alive slightly longer than that. And can't say life today is definitively better than 50 years ago in the USA.
It was the tail end of one income affording a house and groceries for a family. So to afford the same things, for many families requires almost double the labor.
A lot of new medical treatments, less smoking and drinking, overall longer life spans. But more recently increases to longevity have plateaued, and an epic of obesity has mitigated a lot of the health care improvements. And the astronomical increases in health care costs means improvements to health care capabilities are not available to a lot of people, at least not without greatly reducing their standard of living elsewhere.
College and university costs have grown exponentially, with no discernible increase in the quality of learning.
Housing prices far outpacing inflation of other goods and services.
Fewer intact families, less in person interactions, and the heroin like addictiveness of screens, have ushered in an epidemic of mental illness that might be unprecedented.
Now AI scaring the shit out of everyone, that no matter how hard you study, how disciplined and responsible you are, there's a good chance you will not be gainfully employed.
I frankly think the quality of life in the world I grew up in is better than the one my kids have today.
But if we take "surprisingly small salary" to literally mean salary, most (... all?) salaried jobs require you to work full time, 40 hours a week. Unless we consider cushy remote tech jobs, but those are an odd case and likely to go away if we assume AI is taking over there.
Part time / hourly work is largely less skilled and much lower paid, and you'll want to take all the hours you can get to be able to afford outright necessities like rent. (Unless you're considering rent as consumption/luxury, which is fair)
It does seem like there's a gap in terms of skilled/highly paid but hourly/part time work.
(Not disagreeing with the rest of your post though)
>I'm just hoping you acknowledge that what people consider optional consumption has changed, which means people consume a lot more.
Of course it's changed. The point is that
1. the necessities haven't changed and have gotten more expensive. People need healthcare, housing, food, and tranport. All up.
2. the modern day expectations means necessities change. We can't walk into a business and shake someone's hand to get a job, so you "need" access to the internet to get a job. Recruiters also expect a consistent phone number to call so good luck skipping a phone line (maybe VOIP can get around this).
These are society's fault as they shifted to pleasing shareholders and outsourcing entire industries (and of course submitted to lobbying). so I don't like this blame being shifted to the individual for daring to consume to survive.
As an aside, every thread I see here has a comment by you lol, that's some good effort but maybe take a break from such strenuous commenting, I say this sincerely as I also used to get into all these back and forths on HN and then realized, much of the time, it's a waste of my own time.
If you think your life is a waste right now, do something with it. That's actually the number one thing people don't expect from being retired, how bored they get. They say in FIRE communities that all the money and time in the world won't help if you don't actually utilize it.
Then the hospital takes the house to pay off the rest of the debts. Everybody wins!
There's more to cosume than 50 years ago, but I don't see that trend continuing. We shifted phone bills to cell phone bills and added internet bills and a myriad of subscriptions. But that's really it. everything was "turn one time into subscrition".
I don't see what will fundamentally shift that current consumption for the next 20-30 years. Just more conversion of ownership to renting. In entertainment we're already seeing revolts against this as piracy surges. I don't know how we're going to "consume a lot more" in this case.
But _somebody_ will be living in a 900,000 sq ft apartment and working an hour a week, and the concept of money will be defunct.
And I believe they (and I) are suggesting that this is just a bad faith spin on the market, if you look at actual AI confidence and sentiment and don't ignore it as "ehh just the internet whining". Consumers having less money to spend doesn't mean they are adopting AI en masse, nor are happy about it.
I don't think using the 2025 US government for a moral compass is helping your case either.
>If AI can make things 1000x more efficient
Exhibit A. My observations suggest that consumers are beyond tired of talking about the "what ifs" while they struggle to afford rent or get a job in this economy, right now. All the current gains are for corporate billionaires, why would they think that suddenly changes here and now?
Where are you going to draw the line? Only if it effects you, or maybe we should go back to using coal for everything, so the mineworkers have their old life back? Or maybe follow the Amish guidelines to ban all technology that threatens sense of community?
If you are going to draw a line, you'll probably have to start living in small communities, as AI as a technology is almost impossible to stop. There will be people and companies using it to it's fullest, even if you have laws to ban it, other countries will allow it.
The same could be said of social media for which I think the aggregate bad has been far greater than the aggregate good (though there has certainly been some good sprinkled in there).
I think the same is likely to be true of "AI" in terms of the negative impact it will have on the humanistic side of people and society over the next decade or so.
However like social media before it I don't know how useful it will be to try to avoid it. We'll all be drastically impacted by it through network effects whether we individually choose to participate or not and practically speaking those of us who still need to participate in society and commerce are going to have to deal with it, though that doesn't mean we have to be happy about it.
Yes, absolutely.
Just because it's monopolized by evil people doesn't mean it's inherently bad. In fact, mots people here have seen examples of it done in a good way.
Like this very website we're on, proving the parent's point in fact.
I don't know if HN 2025 has been a good example of "in a good way".
It won't be as hard as you think for HN to slip into the very thing they mock Instagram of today for being.
Yup, story of my life. I have on fact had a dozen different times where I chose not to jump off the cliff with peers. How little I realized back then how rare that quality is.
But you got your answer, feel free to follow the crowd. I already have migrations ready. Again, not my first time.
Not really. Or at least, "just be happy" isn't a good response to someone homeless and jobless.
The goal of AI is NOT to be a tool. It's to replace human labor completely.
This means 100% of economic value goes to capital, instead of labor. Which means anyone that doesn't have sufficient capital to live off the returns just starves to death.
To avoid that outcome requires a complete rethinking of our economic system. And I don't think our institutions are remotely prepared for that, assuming the people runnign them care at all.
AI wouldn't fall into that bucket, it wouldn't be driven entirely by the human at the wheel.
I'm not sold yet whether LLMs are AI, my gut says no and I haven't been convinced yet. We can't lose the distinction between ML and AI though, its extremely important when it comes to risk considerations.
Machine learning isn't about developing anything intelligent at all, its about optimizing well defined problem spaces for algorithms defined by humans. Intelligence is much more self guided and has almost nothing to do with finding the best approximate solution to a specific problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning
You are free to define AI differently but don't be surprised if people don't share your unique definition.
How about we start with "commercial LLMs cannot give Legal, Medical, or Financial advice" and go from there? LLMs for those businesses need to be handled by those who can be held accountable (be it the expert or the CEO of that expert).
I'd go so far to try and prevent the obvious and say "LLM's cannot be used to advertise product". but baby steps.
>AI as a technology is almost impossible to stop.
Not really a fan of defeatism speak. Tech isn't as powerful as billionaire want you to pretend it is. It can indeed be regulated, we just need to first use our civic channels instead of fighting amongst ourselves.
Of course, if you are profiting off of AI, I get it. Gotta defend your paycheck.
It will be, of course, but only until all human competition in those fields is eliminated. And after that, all those billions invested must be recouped back by making the prices skyrocket. Didn't we see that with e.g. Uber?
You not liking something on purportedly "moral" grounds doesn't matter if it works better than something else.
According to the logic of your argument, it's perfectly okay to drive a 360t BelAZ 75710 loaded to its full 450t capacity over that bridge just because it's a truck too.
Guess you mmissed the post where lawyers were submitting legal documents generated by LLM's. Or people taking medical advice and ending up with hyperbromium consumptions. Or the lawsuits around LLM's softly encouraging suicide. Or the general AI psychosis being studied.
It's way past "some exceptions" at this point.
You don't see how botched law case can't cost someone their life? Let's not wait until more die to reign this in.
>Someone could search on Google just the same and ignore their symptoms.
Yes, and it's not uncommon for websites or search engines to be sued. Millenia of laws exist for this exact purpose, so companies can't deflect bad things back to the people.
If you want the benefits, you accept the consequences. Especially when you fail to put up guard rails.
Removing all personal responsibility from this equation isn't going to solve anything.
That argument is rather naive, given that millenia of law is meant to regulate and disincentivize behavior. "If people didn't get mad they wouldn't murder!"
We've regulated public messages for decades, and for good reason. I'm not absolving them this time because they want to hide behind a chatbot. They have blood on their hands.
But you may indeed be vying against your best interests. Hope you can take some time to understand where you lie in life and if your society is really benefiting you.
For instance I work for one of the companies that produces some of the most popular LLMs in use today. And I certainly have a stake in them performing well and being useful.
But your line of reasoning would have us believe that Henry Ford is a mass murderer due to the number of vehicular deaths each year, or that the wright brothers bear some responsibility for 9/11. They should have foreseen that people would fly their planes into buildings, of course.
If you want to blame someone for LLMs hurting people, we really need to go all the way back to Alan Turing -- without him these people would still be alive!
Okay, cool. Note that I never asked for your opinion and you decided to pop up in this chain as I was talking to someone else. Go about your day or be curious, but don't butt in then pretend 'well I don't care what you say' when you get a response back.
Nothing you said contradicted my main point. So this isn't really a conversation but simply more useless defense. Good day.
Didn't think that would go so cleanly over your head given you're all the way up there on your high horse of morality.