When I was a kid, computers expanded your mind and your freedoms, bringing power to the individual. With AI, now it does the thinking for you, takes your job, gives power only to a few billionaires. (lemmus.org)

submitted 5 months ago by realitista@lemmus.org to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

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When I was young and starting out with computers, programming, BBS' and later the early internet, technology was something that expanded my mind, helped me to research, learn new skills, and meet people and have interesting conversations. Something decentralized that put power into the hands of the little guy who could start his own business venture with his PC or expand his skillset.

Where we are now with AI, the opposite seems to be happening. We are asking AI to do things for us rather than learning how to do things ourselves. We are losing our research skills. Many people are talking to AI's about their problems instead of other people. And they will take away our jobs and centralize all power into a handful of billionaire sociopaths with robot armies to carry out whatever nefarious deeds they want to do.

I hope we somehow make it through this part of history with some semblance of freedom and autonomy intact, but I'm having a hard time seeing how.

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[-] tomiant@piefed.social 8 points 5 months ago

Any good thing will inevitably be corrupted by capitalism, because that is what capitalism does. It is a cancer, and it will consume everything and us all in the process.

I don't know if it was in Strauss' "Accelerando" that humanity told an AI to solve some complex problem at any cost, and the AI promptly turned all the matter in the solar system into a supercomputer capable of solving it.

That's capitalism in a nutshell: "do profit" is the only imperative, and it will destroy everything, just like a cancer is predicated upon "do growth", forever, at any cost, regardless of whether the host organism dies.

[-] zombiebot@piefed.social 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Librarian here, can confirm.

I started my Master's in Library and Information Science in 2010. We were told not to worry about the internet making us obsolete because we would be needed to teach information literacy.

Information literacy turned out to be something people didn't want. They wanted to be told what to think, not taught skills to think for themselves.

It's been the single greatest and most expensive disappointment of my life.

[-] _cnt0@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

With AI, now it does the thinking for you [...]

No, it doesn't. It's just mimikry. Autocomplete on steroids.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 0 points 5 months ago

This was true last year. But they are cranking along the ARC-AGI benchmarks designed specifically to test the kind of things that cannot be done by just regurgitating training data.

On GPT 3 I was getting a lot of hallucinations and wrong answers. On the current version of Gemini, I really haven’t been able to detect any errors in things I’ve asked it. They are doing math correctly now, researching things well and putting together thoughts correctly. Even photos that I couldn’t get old models to generate now are coming back pretty much exactly as I ask.

I was sort of holding out hopes that LLM’s would peak somewhere just below being really useful. But with RAGs and agentic approaches, it seems that they will sidestep the vast majority of problems that LLM’s have on their own and be able to put together something that is better at even very good humans at most tasks.

I hope I’m wrong, but it’s getting pretty hard to bank on that old narrative that they are just fancy autocomplete that can’t think anymore.

[-] _cnt0@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

That's a lot of bullshit.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 5 months ago

If you can't see it you're not paying attention.

[-] _cnt0@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

If you're seeing it, you're delusional.

[-] IronBird@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

this bubble can't pop soon enough

was dotcom this annoying too?

[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months ago

was dotcom this annoying too?

Surprisingly, it was not this annoying.

It was very annoying, but at least there was an end in sight, and some of it was useful.

We all knew that http://www.only-socks-and-only-for-cats.com/ was going away, but eBay was still pretty great.

In contrast, we're all standing around today looking at many times the world's GDP being bet on a pretty good autocomplete algorithm waking up and becoming fully sentient.

It feels like a different level of irrational.

[-] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Dot com bubble was optimistic. AI bubble is pessimistic. People thought their lives would improve due to improved communication and efficiency. The internet was seen as a positive thing. The dot com bubble was more about monetizing it, but that wasn't the zwitgeist. With AI people don't see much benefits and are aware it's purpose is to take their jobs.

With the dot com bubble, it was mainly mom and pop investors that were worst off, but many companies died. With AI bubble it seems like it's the companies that will do worst when it crashes. Obviously, it affects everyone, but this skews more to the 1%. So hopefully it's a lesson on greed. Unlikely though.

[-] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

I'm pleased to inform you that you are wrong.

A large language model works by predicting the statistically-likely next token in a string of tokens, and repeating until it's statistically-likely that its response has finished.

You can think of a token as a word but in reality tokens can be individual characters, parts of words, whole words, or multiple words in sequence.

The only addition these "agentic" models have is special purpose tokens. One that means "launch program", for example.

That's literally how it works.

AI. Cannot. Think.

[-] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

AI isn't the only thing you can use a computer for now. If you ignore AI and corporate software, there's loads of mind expanding activities in computing.

Take a look at what you can self host with commodity hardware (barring the insane RAM prices right now).

[-] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 1 points 5 months ago

I don't think AI is taking jobs, I think dumbass execs use it as an excuse to fire people though.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 5 months ago

It's definitely taking some jobs. Not a huge amount yet, but it's unfortunately still getting better at a pretty good clip.

[-] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 0 points 5 months ago

Maybe, which jobs though?

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 5 months ago

Graphic artists, translators, and copywriters are losing jobs in droves. It's expanding. I sell contact center software and it's just kicking off in my industry, but it's picking up.

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months ago

Bud.. they said the same thing about computers when I was a kid in the 70s.

[-] realitista@lemmy.today 0 points 5 months ago

I certainly don't remember that. And I was there.

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 0 points 5 months ago

I was certainly there and I do.. this is from a google search

Key Themes and Examples from the Era

Concerns about automation and job displacement by computers were widely documented, particularly as computer technology became smaller, cheaper, and more integrated into various industries, from manufacturing floors to office settings.

Manufacturing and "Blue-Collar" Jobs: The introduction of computer numerical control (CNC) machinery led to a 24% drop in employment for high school dropouts in the metal manufacturing industry, fueling concerns about job security for skilled factory workers in the "Rust Belt".
Office and "White-Collar" Jobs: White-collar workers also felt unease. Innovations like the automated teller machine (ATM) threatened bank tellers, while photocopiers were viewed with suspicion by some in publishing. The transition to computers on every desk in the late 70s and early 80s initially led to the firing of secretarial pools, forcing others (often men) to learn typing and computer skills.
Media Coverage and Public Discourse: The topic was covered by major publications.
- In 1965, Time Magazine ran a cover story on "the computer in society," which included a prediction of shorter workweeks due to automation.
- In the UK, Prime Minister James Callaghan requested a think tank to investigate the potential impact of new technologies on employment.
- The term "job killer computer" was a popular slogan expressing the fear of technological unemployment.

[-] lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

Is this an AI summary

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months ago

..yeah..

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I overall like AI, but it's not great for making this type of argument because it doesn't offer anyone anything they can really use to update their beliefs about what's true. Any of the factual claims there could be hallucinated, and most are only tangentially relevant to the question of how strong the parallels between the attitude towards computers 50 years ago are to attitudes towards AI now. If someone wants to seriously consider the question, it isn't useful.

A better way to do it is to use it like a search engine to find relevant citeable information and then make your own case for its relevance. Or maybe in this case just some personal anecdotes would work pretty well, you're claiming personal experience as your main source here and I kind of wanted to hear more about it, having not been there.

[-] lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 months ago

lol way to prove a point

fucking fuck

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months ago

Are you under the impression that before ai, there were people prepare search responses?

An automated thing got replaced by an automated thing.

[-] barryamelton@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Unless you were a hard GNU fan when you were a kid, it was the same process of giving power to billionares. Just that now it sits on 50 years of wins for the billionares side. So it's closer to the endgame.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 5 months ago

I've been a GNU fan since 1995. And yes, while buying software did make some billionaires, I never felt like it was taking away my abilities or autonomy or freedom until now. Back then I felt like it was giving me more of those things.

[-] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If AI can even half ass your job you barely had one to begin with. All us healthcare workers and the tradies are still making a half decent wage for real work just like we always have. And the food service and sanitation workers still aren't doing the absolute best but they're not hurting for work either. I'm not going to tell you I like the way my work is valued under capitalism but at least I'm tangibly benefitting other humans.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don't think it's fair to say that just because you were a commercial graphic designer or translator or copywriter that you were doing bullshit work that was barely worth being called work.

Yes, healthcare is a very commendable line of work, no doubt, but we will see radiologists out of work fairly soon IMO, as well as anyone who interprets lab results, and very likely those who make diagnoses of all types. These are all things that AI will likely be doing better if they aren't already.

Physical care will take longer and won't be replaced until we have AI robots, but the gains there are happening fast too. We may only have another decade or so until we see a lot of that stuff being automated. It's really hard to tell how fast this will all happen. Things do tend to happen slower than the hype around them, but the progress that's happening every year is pretty staggering if you are really tracking it. I'd love to think that my job which requires mostly creative ways of dealing with people and negotiation is safe for some time, but I'm really doubting that I can make it the next 12 years I need to until retirement without some disruption.

[-] YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago

When I was a kid being interested in computers was a sure-fire way to avoid getting laid.

this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026

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