Zacryon
@Zacryon@feddit.org
- Comment on Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying 4 days ago:
After what Snowden has uncovered, Palantir plain in the open, companies like Meta/Facebook and Alphabet/Google shitting on your privacy , I am absolutely sure you will be subject to spying always and regardless of what you’re doing.
- Comment on Robots will solve wealth inequality, they say 1 week ago:
TL;DR:
Automation erodes the base of the labor market faster than new roles emerge, while our current economic system depends on human labor as the primary source of income distribution.Solution ideas:
In the short term, mitigate the effects of automation-driven job loss through mechanisms like automation taxes and universal basic income.
In the long term, move toward a system where access to basic needs is decoupled from labor entirely, as human work loses its role as the primary source of value distribution.Long version:
I am a robotics reaearcher working in the field of cognitive systems, the lemmy-wide beloved AI. From my point of view we are at a crossroads: one path leads to a robotic utopia, the other to a dystopia.The near-future reasons are mainly of socio-economic nature: AI powered robots will replace more and more jobs that are low on the required job-skill hierachy and iteratively improve over time with regard to costs as well as capabilities. And the speed of this developments is increasing. While some may embrace it since this frees capacities such that people can seek positions that require higher qualification, I think that this will not be the case, because I suspect we have something that I would call a “job pyramid”. At the broad lower end we have many jobs available that require only low skills. As we look further towards the top, the availability of jobs becomes more scarce as the qualification level rises.
“It is lonely at the top”: not everyone can become a CEO, a professor, or take some other high ranking position, because there are not enough openings available.
At the same time, robots and AI devour the lower end of the pyramid more and more, kicking people out of the level where they would’ve gotten a job and throwing them into an existential crisis.I need to emphasize that my “job pyramid” perspective is just a hypothesis and I did not have the time yet to conduct thorough research on this to see whether this is actually justified. It also does not consider other market dynamics such as the evolution of new or small market segments that could result from the economic pressure. (I suppose though that the options are too limited in that regard as well.)
An additional failure mode (ignoring access to education) is that people are not just motivated enough by money in order to take on the education necessary to get those high qualification positons. Otherwise most of us would probably try to become tech CEOs for example and we just don’t see that happening. This is apparent already at an academic level: most people do not pursue higher education at universities or alike. That’s a systematic incompatibility with how humans actually tic. They are not just simple economically optimizing agents, since human motivation and actions are much more multi-faceted. Therefore, “just reskill upwards” is not a universal solution.
We have long crossed the threshold where robots became cheap to build, deploy and maintain and much more efficient, safer as well as cheaper than human labour. And that’s what the capitalists see: they do not really see a marvellous new technology that improves the lifes of everyone and leads us into a world where nobody would have to work. They see cheap work force.
From a business point of view this is fair game, even if ethically questionable.So how do we get out of this? If robots and AI steal more and more of the jobs that humans would’ve done, job openings becoming scarce, and financial pressure starts affecting more and more people in an increasingly worse manner, what can we do?
From my point of view: we need to move towards a post-scarcity society in this regard.Currently, labour only has value because it can not be replaced easily. But the devaluation of work will continue. Also, even though it currently looks like a meaningful path for more and more companies to pursue increasing the amount of automation in the short term, this will sooner or later rebounce: if people don’t get enough money, they can not pay for goods and services, which will lead to those companies loosing profits, which will lead to less people being able to afford a basic living and so on.
To fix this temporarily, we could, for example, impose an automation tax on companies: determine the amount to which a company could be automated and then impose a tax proportional to the amount they were actually automated. If we allow purposing specific taxes, we could use this automation tax to finance a universal basic income. Starting with those people who are not able to make a living due to an increasingly automated society. This tax should strike a balance to still allow making it attractive for companies to go for automation and stay competitive.
However, this is only a temporary solution, because in the long term, this leads to the same issues I already described before.
I am convinced that the core issue is an inherent incompatibility of advancements in robotics and AI with a capitalistic society. And for as long as this is the case, there is a creeping doom approaching, leading to a long period of a dystopia where the few keep getting richer while the many will struggle for life. We already have this issue without automation in our society today.
Wealth re-distribution might help, money is only meaningful if it is being kept in circulation. But I suppose this is also just a bandaid fix.
We need to move to a state of things, where living a basic life is granted and virtually free of charge. To get there the above solution ideas can help. But ultimately, we will probably need communist robots to open the path towards the utopic future. Someday nobody has to work, but is free to pursue their happiness and unfold their potential, even if it is working on something in the end anyway. But no one would have to fear not getting basic needs met. Everyone could get shelter, enough food and so on. (We are wasting insane amounts of food anyway already today. Isn’t that cruel?) That is the future I am dreaming of.
But one thing is certain: robotics and AI will continue to develop and the momentum increases. It has come to stay, one way or the other. It is not some basic technology that makes only few jobs obsolete, it will keep distorting the labour market more and more in the future. So we will have to deal with it.
I have been saying this for what feels like half an eternity and advocating for legislation worldwide to develop new laws and structures in order to deal with this, because we are missing crucial time and are already starting to see how wrong this can go, if we do not act accordingly.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
- Comment on Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines 1 week ago:
You guys are still using Google?
- Comment on send thoughts and peer review 2 weeks ago:
It has helped to improve on those issues though.
- Comment on I don't have money to pay premium to not see ads. What in the world makes you think that I have money to buy what you are advertising me? 2 weeks ago:
If a business can not sustain itself without marketing, then the product is possibly not worth having.
- Comment on Sony is testing dynamic pricing: one game - different prices on the PlayStation Store 3 weeks ago:
Next up: highly personalised dynamic pricing by analyzing your bank account, payment behaviour, your age, gender, location, your app and website interaction patterns, the color of your shit, the time spend on digital media and breathing, your credit score, your biometric data, whether you are white or a terrorist, your political voting behaviour, the number of hairs you have, your likely age of death, your medical and mental health history, your probability of being captivated by addictive patterns anf gambling mechanics, and maybe even your game collection, to maximize squeezing each and every last penny of your barely or even non-existent disposable income.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
This is almost every horror movie or series.
- Comment on there is a special place in hell for these scientists 3 weeks ago:
And now bring artificial neural networks, i.e., AI, into the picture to make it even more spicy.
- Comment on Windows 12 release date in 2026 possible, with AI features that may force CPU upgrades 3 weeks ago:
It was certainly the last one that I voluntarily used.
- Comment on Dear Faith II 4 weeks ago:
Not using colors in scientific writing is discarding a valuable information channel and therefore inefficient. When you are already limited in the allowed word count, this can speed up conveying information and reduce cognitive strain on readers (and possibly yourself). So it’s a win-win.
This should not end in chaos though, where colours are more confusing than helpful.
The times when we had to print out each and every single page on a crappy black/white office printer are luckily becoming more and more a thing of the past. So even this is no longer a good reason to not use colours.
- Comment on AI blamed again as hard drives are sold out for this year 5 weeks ago:
It’s nice how AI datacenters step by step swallow virtually all available hardware resources to provide digital services to users who won’t be able to use those services due to the lack of available hardware.
- Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem 5 weeks ago:
if anything the defamation was coming from emopunker, declaring people upvoting the thread […] as ‘the same person’
Fair point.
I am on the fence about the ‘snark comm’ ordeal. I think such communities are – to some degree – meaningful for a critical discourse. Imo, one should be allowed to point out and criticise users, communities, whole instances.
Then again, this should not make someone a target for harassment.
From my pov, it’s a question of balancing interests here: civilised criticism is important and should be allowed. Especially in such public spaces. Denying this due to a hazard of making them a target for people who see this as a ‘call to action’ would suffocate such discussions completely. So I’d address the harassers and sanction them, instead of people who merely point things out they find suspicious, as in this case.
So unless Emopunker directly incited the harassment or did it themselves, I’d lean towards: “yeah, somewhat uncool to throw such accusations in the room without further proof, but that doesn’t make them the culprit”.
- Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem 5 weeks ago:
Basing this on a temporal chain of events alone is weak. I’ll give you, that there might be a connection: names listed -> harassment started.
That does not mean that Emopunker is responsible though. Could have been another user. Could have been you for all I know. Could also have happened for other reasons. And, there is still the possibility that it might have no connection to this at all.
You’ll need to provide some stronger evidence, otherwise I’ll take this as baseless accusations and, possibly, a defamation attempt.
Feel free to deliver, especially since you seem to be observing this. I’d like to know whether an admin on the instance I am using is harassing people.
- Comment on Elder Scrolls 6 Is Powered By New Version Of Creation Engine 5 weeks ago:
Shit, don’t got much time left to finally play through Skyrim.
- Comment on Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's Zionist Bar Problem 5 weeks ago:
I followed your link. It shows a comment you made, yet with another link to a comment by Emopunker@feddit.org. And you claim that they harass people. The comment by Emopunker shows a screenshot where three usernames are listed that share similarities. Emopunker says that they have the suspicion that the shown users are the same person with alt accounts.
In conclusion: I wonder whether you forgot to attach some context, because based on this alone I don’t see anything that support your claims.
- Comment on YSK you can poison your personal data to fight against surveillance capitalism. 1 month ago:
Nope. It just started another arms race.
- Comment on 'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives 1 month ago:
Stoat (formerly Revolt), is a strong FOSS competitor with a Discord-like feeling stoat.chat github.com/stoatchat
- Comment on This kid gets it 1 month ago:
There are already a few that have a name in that direction.
- Comment on Scientists have confirmed that a 26ft tall, tree-trunk-shaped organism, first discovered in Scotland in 1843, isn't a fungus or plant, but an entirely distinct evolutionary branch of life 2 months ago:
About 7,9248 m
- Comment on Jensen Huang Is Begging You to Stop Being So Negative About AI 2 months ago:
To be fair, capitalism is inherently incompatible with advancements in robotics and AI. Doesn’t mean the technology is destroying the economics and society. The eco-societal system was already broken to begin with.
- Comment on Self-Care 2 months ago:
I really need to do this. Will be a fun day at work.
- Comment on really makes you think 2 months ago:
Different waters taste differently. Tap water taste differs from region to region. Bottled water tastes differently between brands and also compared to tap water. This is also caused by varying amounts of minerals.
If you think your sense of taste works fine, but can not tell taste differences in water, try making direct comparisons. Take some bottled water and some tap water (if it is safe for drinking whereever you live). Then take a sip, focus on the taste. Try making out differences. Repeat a couple of times.
If you still can’t make out any differences and you weren’t impatient, it might be worth training your sense of taste first, because water does have a flavour. - Comment on I love science 2 months ago:
Do what fills your heart and belly.
- Comment on G-Assist is ‘real’: NVIDIA unveils NitroGen, open-source AI model that can play 1000+ games for you 2 months ago:
Apart from games, where this can also be used for more capabable and behaviourally more “interesting” NPCs (including computer opponents or teammates), the used techniques can be transferred to robotics. Quite a cool architecture.
- Comment on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is 100.00% decompiled 3 months ago:
Important
This repository does not contain any game assets or assembly whatsoever. An existing copy of the game is required.
This project itself is not, and will not, produce a port, to PC or any other platform. It is a decompilation of the original game code, which can be compiled back into a binary identical to the original.
- Comment on Firefox Will Ship with an "AI Kill Switch" to Completely Disable all AI Features - 9to5Linux 3 months ago:
“Kill switch” is a bit dramatic. It’s an on or off toggle. Would be funny though to call every toggle a kill switch. “Yeah, using the kill switch on GPU acceleration may help with rendering on some systems.”
“Use the kill switch for preventing Firefox of starting a new session without restoring the old tabs.”
“Kill all of your browser data upon exiting Firefox by enabling the kill switch.”
“Make Firefox your default browser by enabling the ‘set as default browser kill switch’.”
Extended to other UI interaction classes: “You don’t like English? Kill it by using the battle royale language selector to choose only the one language you like.”
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 3 months ago:
I do as long as it stays open source.
- Comment on xkcd #3182: Telescope Types 3 months ago:
www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/…/3182:_Telescope_Types
I missed some puns as it seems. E.g. the comoving or proper distances in gravitational lenses.
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 3 months ago:
- Comment on Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox 3 months ago:
Yes. But we will have to see whether it’s opt-in or opt-out. This can make quite a significant difference.
