For folks keeping score, the rhetoric around #GenerativeAI contains deeply dehumanizing language about everybody who is not wealthy.
-
For folks keeping score, the rhetoric around #GenerativeAI contains deeply dehumanizing language about everybody who is not wealthy. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella referring to "virtual employees" (1) and suggesting that #LLM ingestion of copywritten works is no different from humans reading textbooks (2) are recent cases in point, but this kind of language is rampant.
We live in a time where we're constantly bombarded with dehumanizing language. A significant amount of this is coming from "the top". I find it unacceptable, personally.
#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #ClassWar
(1) Referring to computer programs. Which employees are not, unless Nadella intends to start paying tax to the IRS on every piece of software every Microsoft employee uses.
(2) These are fundamentally different processes. The work this suggestion is doing is leading one to believe that human beings creating or reading text are no different from LLMs. That is exceedingly dehumanizing, and is quite alarming coming from someone in Nadella's position.
-
@abucci So do I, but there's not much I can do about it.
Just furtively look over my shoulder and wait until I get replaced by a "virtual employee".
-
@[email protected] There is a lot you can do about, one class of action being to re-assert your humanity at every opportunity.
-
@abucci Which I do, in the ways I can think of.
But the owning class isn't going to care. When they *can* eliminate us, they will.
-
@abucci And by then our humanity will be very evident: We need food to eat, warm clothes for the winter, and somewhere to sleep.
"Virtual employees" don't.
-
@[email protected] The things you listed are almost all animal. Which is part of being human, but not all there is.
I feel like the owning class has always aimed to dehumanize those of us not in it; they couldn't hold slaves, oppress peasants, conquer or colonize otherwise. That's kind of how that relationship works.
-
@abucci That was on purpose. The human condition is an animal condition. I have more in common with my pet lizard than I do with a "virtual employee".
Of course, I also admire art and experience literature. But that is not relevant to survival if the owning class destroys my livelihood - and those are also things the AI industry means to destroy.
