| ▲ | merelydev 2 hours ago |
| I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology. The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role. So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology? |
|
| ▲ | sealeck an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers. |
|
| ▲ | steveBK123 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The technologists who create it believe they should control it I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments. |
| |
| ▲ | knollimar 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now. We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs | | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please? | | |
| ▲ | knollimar 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Sorry for being salty, a bit hyperbole perhaps in the 2:1 numbers. I draft and write some code for construction companies and personally saw layoffs and not taking work due to increased material costs. The structural companies we worked with similarly did a few layoffs. The average pay of these jobs was 60k+. Manufacturing of steel is very competitive and I haven't seen the American steel drop in price. I can't personally imagine it adding more than a few thousand jobs since it's so competitive (thin margins) and you would have to add a ton of production to add one job. Meanwhile, the profitability of building a building is a direct feed into whether buildings get built. A building not being built directly led to laying off about 100 field guys for us. |
| |
| ▲ | dgellow 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs They knew that was the case. They don't care. The maga crowd isn't acting in good faith. Nobody other than the cult members and people who aren't paying attention thought that would actually bring manufacturing back to the US. The point of the tariffs is to devalue USD (something Trump wants to do since circa the 80s) and to strengthen Trump power/influence. He wants everybody in the world to be forced to come and negotiate directly with him so he can see them bend their knees. The whole thing is a power play |
|
|
|
| ▲ | fidotron an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here. |
| |
|
| ▲ | mentalgear 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation. It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few. I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level). |
| |
| ▲ | xp84 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N. But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one. | |
| ▲ | merelydev 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would you agree that to some extend, the ability to control technology is an incentive for companies to develop/innovate, and the more control they have the more profitable it is? |
|
|
| ▲ | NickNaraghi 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Worth checking out the heart of what people were doing with DAOs |
|
| ▲ | lacunary an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| yes it's called "actually having democratic elections" |
| |
| ▲ | merelydev an hour ago | parent [-] | | What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics? | | |
|
|
| ▲ | matusp an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century. |
| |
|
| ▲ | Borg3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too. Dark times ahead... |
| |
| ▲ | amelius an hour ago | parent [-] | | The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes. |
|
|
| ▲ | nicechianti an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [dead] |
|
| ▲ | ricardo81 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps. Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism. The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field. |
| |
| ▲ | krapp an hour ago | parent [-] | | What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology. | | |
| ▲ | ricardo81 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The point being that's the solution. I didn't say it is decentralised. | | |
| ▲ | krapp an hour ago | parent [-] | | How is it possible to decentralize a technology that needs data centers the size of Manhattan? It doesn't seem like a reasonable solution. A better solution would be to just not have AI at all, outside of the few research roles where LLMs actually make sense. | | |
| ▲ | ricardo81 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Because it has extremely plausible uses beyond the example you gave. More to the point it's trained on copyrighted material, so why entertain any use at all on that front if anything. If it's trained on the world's information, give the world the model. It doesn't need a tech company to pilfer everything and charge X if we're going to ignore the IP. |
|
| |
| ▲ | mike_hearn an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really. Search engines are a tech so centralized only two of them exist in the west, Google and Bing. There are zero open source search engines of any usable quality. Whereas there are lots of models out there, some free to download. | | |
| ▲ | krapp 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "only two search engines exist in the west" and "only two search engines in the west are of usable quality to me" are contradictory statements. The models free to download aren't the models used by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. You aren't going to get all of OpenAI downloaded to your desktop and running fully on just your hardware. And in each case (search and AI) the potential to decentralize and maintain "usable quality" is limited by these technologies requiring physical infrastructure at a scale that isn't available to the home consumer. |
|
|
|
