Fire in the hole!

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[–] 43 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Star Trek's universe: Federation citizens live in essentially zero scarcity where labor is optional and people can dedicate their lives to basically anything they like that this within their capabilities.

Star Trek's AI: A typically flawless tool (when the plot doesn't require an incident), optionally used by the individual, to perform complex calculations, simulations or provide immersion entertainment, complimenting whatever task needs done.

Our universe: We live in a capitalist society where the survival of 95% of the population requires them to sell their labor, where the majority of the population works in any job(s) they can get to make ends meet, where working in a creative or intellectually fulfilling field is a rare blessing and prohibitive to most, where your capitalist overlords claim the majority of your productivity for themselves and see the wages they do pay you as a burden to them that should be minimized regardless of your well-being.

Our AI: Devalues or replaces creative and intellectual roles. Forced down the throats of workers and consumers. Used to collectively monitor everyone. Used to push more wealth to a concentrated few. Notably and constantly unreliable while given unearned trust. Not actually intelligent, just good at specific kinds of prediction and parroting based on training from real works from real people that was stolen without the consent of the creators to be fed into the machines to be plagiarized on request. A genuine risk to the stability of our economy. A nightmare for the mental health of children and those vulnerable to delusions and/or thoughts of self-harm. Increasingly used to replace thought and skill development making us collectively dumber and more reliant on it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago*

    I would argue star treks AI is constantly going wrong, and the fact that it can create objects which can actually harm you, is taken with a grain of salt by them.

    Holodecks are incredibly dangerous, easily hacked, and the holo style workers they they, like the doctor on Voyager, will IMMEDIATELY TURN EVIL WHEN ANYTHING TOUCHES THEIR ETHICS SUBROUTINES!

    Their use is AI should be terrifying to us.

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