I am wonder why leftists are in general hostile towards AI. I am not saying this is wrong or right, I just would like someone to list/summarize the reasons.
It’s generative and LLM AI that is the issue.
It makes garbage facsimiles of human work and the only thing CEOs can see is spending less money so they can horde more of it. It also puts pressure on resource usage, like water and electricity. Either by using it for cooling the massive data centers or by simply the power draw needed to compute whatever prompt.
The other main issue is that it is theft plain and simple. Artists, actors, voice actors, musicians, creators, etc are at risk of having their jobs stolen by a greedy company that only wants to pay for a thing once or not at all. You can get hired once to read or be photographed/videoed and then that data can be used to train a digital replacement without your consent. That was one of the driving forces behind the last big actor’s union protests.
For me, it’s also the lack of critical thinking skills using things like ChatGPT fosters. The thought that one doesn’t have to put any effort into writing an email, an essay, or even researching something when you can simply type in a prompt and it spits out mainly incorrect information. Even simple information. I had an AI summary tell me that 440Hz was a higher pitch than 446Hz. I wasn’t even searching for that information. So, it wasted energy and my time giving demonstrably wrong data I had no need for.
Thank you. Well, personally I do not use ChatGPT and this is one of the reasons why I asked humans this question :)
Lots of reasons.
It’s yet another thing that is only going to benefit corporations. Because they get unsleeping workers that don’t get sick or talk back or strike. They get to charge us for the benefits.
It’s built entirely off of everyone else’s work and content.
The servers that house the AI are draining water sheds and power grids and in the case of Elon Musk and Tennessee literally poisoning people.
It sounds way too much like a cult. Promising the sun and moon on essentially a chatbot.
It looks way to much like a bubble, our stock market is currently going up because of Nvidia largely.
AI taking over is literally one of the main plot points of Sci fi.
It’s infuriatingly blameless. If the AI therapist says “try meth” you can basically only sue the massive faceless organization that built it spinning your wheels for possibly nothing.
Driving people manic by feeding into delusions
It’s a God send to scammers, trolls, propaganda, sexual harassment, people in college just for the paper degree at the end, teachers who can’t be bothered to write, upper and middle management who can’t be bothered to write. Lots of just terrible people.
And for every new protein and material that’s discovered because of it. (Some of the most useful and least destructive uses of it) They are immediately gobbled up by patents for a corporation that now has even more control of the universe and everything useful in it. And no human can decide to just open it for the world like vaccines.
Counterpoint: are right leaners “pro AI”?
I feel like there’s a big distinction between tech bros and, say, MAGA diehards.
…And again, this is a very artificial polarization, as talk to any ML researcher or tinkerer, and they will hate the guts of Sam Altman or Elon Musk.
I feel like there’s a big distinction between tech bros and, say, MAGA diehards.
What’s the distinction? They’re all collaborating towards the same goals. I think the only difference is that the rich “AI” grifters actually hang out with Trump.
Whose definition of “leftist”?
The Communist Party of China is throwing a whole lot of money at AI in its various forms integrating it into all kinds of services. They’re not against it. They’re against the willy-nilly shoving of it into everything without any thought given to its negatives. Is that leftist enough for you?
Or do you mean the faux-left of the USA (which is, on its most extreme end a, moderate centre-left in sane parts of the world)? If that’s the “leftists” you mean, I’d guess it’s largely based on (focusing here on LLMbeciles and other popular degenerative AI forms):
- The environmental disaster (in terms of energy used to train and operate, as well as the water costs) that the rapacious capitalists cause with their grossly inefficient LLMbecile implementations.
- Most artists, being educated more than the average, tend to lean left and the main applications of degenerative AI is aimed straight at them.
- The mass theft of human culture from around the world to feed the machines, only to have them churn out shit writing, shit pictures, shit music, shit videos, etc.
- The very obvious fact that the technology cannot ever actually be profitable; it’s clearly a pump and dump stock scheme that’s sucking money away from actually productive elements of society to line the pockets of grifting billionaires.
- The general pairing of LLMbeciles and other degenerative AI forms with techbrodude “consent, what’s that?” bullshit. It gets crammed into places nobody wants it, there’s no plausible way to turn it off (Microsoft…), there’s no way to be sure it has been turned off when you try (techbrodudes are prone to being lying sacks of shit).
In general, “leftists” don’t like degenerative AI because they’re on the whole better-educated than “rightists” and thus know shit like the points I brought up … among dozens of others. And they’re smart enough to know that if crony-capitalists are pushing it as the greatest thing since sliced bread it’s probably bad for humanity.
Or do you genuinely believe people like Musk, or Thiel, or Bezos, or Zuckerberg, or … are interested in humanity?
Thank you for the explaination, by leftists I meant the ones I met most frequently, that is, the lemmy community :)
See to me, Lemmy at its most left barely qualifies as left wing from what I see.
I’ve seen a lot of people cosplaying as leftists here, but prick an American leftist and they typically bleed a fascist.
What would you consider ‘left’ then?
People actually doing something instead of raging on social media to “raise awareness”. People actually engaging the supposed beneficiaries of their (usually middle-class white) largesse. People less interested in labelling and finger-pointing and more interested in getting out there, getting their hands dirty, and helping.
What are you actually doing?
How do you know what people do or don’t do on this site? You seemed to be having issues with people’s opinions, not their actions in your original comment.
Join progressive victory if you want to do something.
This is exactly the type of thing ZDL was criticizing. I don’t think siphoning energy towards a Democratic Party PAC is what they had in mind when talking about doing something.
PV is easy and realistic. It’s not the best, but most people don’t want to be in jail for killing a ceo. People need easy ways to make the world better, otherwise they’ll just sit at home and do nothing.
That would entail going to the USA which I decided I would never set foot in again … IN 1999.
As to how I know what people do or don’t do? In the broader sphere, I look at results. And there aren’t any. Well, sorry, there are. All negative. The English “left” gave us Brexit and now Keir Starmer. The American “left” gave us two terms of Trump and the world’s latest Nazi state.
I’ll believe there’s a meaningful American (and British) “left” when I see it. Until then, it’s basically a rounding error in terms of influence.
Whose definition of “leftist”? The Communist Party of China
lmao. Ok, buddy.
That’s an interesting question, especially since at least one poll suggests that BOTH sides of the political spectrum have significant reservations about A.I.
It steals from the copyright holders in order to make corporate AI money without giving back to the creators.
It uses insane amounts of water and energy to function, with demand not being throttled by these companies.
It gives misleading, misquoted, misinformed, and sometimes just flat out wrong information, but abuses its very confidence-inspiring language skills to pass it off as the correct answer. You HAVE to double check all its work.
And if you think about it, it doesn’t actually want to lick a lollipop, even if it says it does. Its not sentient. I repeat, its not alive. The current design is a tool at best.
Thank you, for the sake of completeness, I’d add something like this: https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
It steals from the copyright holders in order to make corporate AI money without giving back to the creators.
This is a liberal criticism, not a leftist one. Leftists do not believe in private property, let alone expanding private property to include ideas as “intellectual property”
A leftist framing of this critique is that one of the primary objectives of LLMs is to bring publicly accessible information, i.e. the commons, into the realm of private property, where one must exchange one’s personal data (read: power) to access what already exists in the commons.
Namely, the scraping required for LLM training can be considered exploitation of workers for profit. Workers or volunteers created, wrote, organized, or edited the content. Content that is now used to generate a profit, profit that the workers never see a penny of. This content is repackaged and sold back to the workers.
Shit, my bad. I read it as left-leaning viewpoints, not leftist viewpoints.
You read correctly. Just wanted to clarify for posterity. :)
I see two reasons. Most people that are “left leaning” value both critical thinking and social fairness. AI subverts both of those traits. Firstly by definition it bypasses the “figure it out” stage of learning. The second way is by ignoring long establish laws like copyright to train its models, but also its implementation which sees people lose their jobs
More formally, it’s probably one of the purest forms of capitalism. It’s essentially a slave laborer, with no rights of ability to complain that further concentrates wealth with the wealthy.
AI removes critical thinking for you.
Not mentioned so far:
- the costs involved in creating a market competitive AI is high, restricting who can enter the market. Effectively funneling control of what the magic answer box says to a select few.
I will not be surprised when they collectively stop mentioning some facts, then slowly start to deny them, then start to gaslight you into thinking you made it up.
Good point. Only the biggest companies are owners of massive data, which is a new form of capital.
… the costs involved in creating a market competitive AI is high, restricting who can enter the market …
DeepSeek has entered the chat.
Ah yes. The company backed by a hedge fund. The shining model of the underdog if I saw one.
Compared to American “AI” firms it’s positively a pauper. They put in a few million dollars, not multiple tens of billions.
But go ahead. Completely look past the obvious point so you can score Innarwebtube points. Just do it without me. Buh-bye.
bc those who own AI are against left-leaners’ principles.
It’s doesn’t solve any problem I care about. In fact, it only worsens ones like climate change or wealth inequality.
Because they’re obviously a tool for the rich to get more control over our lives
Personally I think the environmental impact and the sycophantic responses that take away the need for one to exercise their brain are my 2 biggest gripes.
It was a fun novelty at first, I remember my first question to chat gpt was ‘how to make hamster ice cream’ and I was genuinely surprised that it gave me some frozen fruit recipe along with a plea to not harm hamsters by turning them into ice cream.
Then it got out of hand very quickly, it got added onto absolutely everything, despite the hallucinations and false facts. The intellectual property issue is also of concern.
It’s too energy hungry, it steals art and is giving artists a rough time. It’s the pinnacle of dehumanising hypercapitalism.
On top of every fucking company trying to find ways to replace people with some BS AI solution. Causing layoffs or just less hiring.
Just look at audible replacing human voice actors with AI voices. The backlash there was visceral. Then there’s all the companies using AI for customer support. Although it might do a better job than some humans there it still adding a few more steps before you can talk to a human with a pulse.
Because small number of people benefit from collective creation. Billionaires owned companies benefit from stealing and selling this stolen goods to people, saying them this is a thinking computer.
What if I go to your house, take picture of everything including your face and sell those pictures to porn company ? Are you ok with that ?
