Left-progressive online people seem to be consolidating on an anti-AI position; but mostly derived from resistance to the presumed economic impacts from AI art, badness-by-association inherited from the big tech /ā tech billionaires /ā ātechbroā cluster, and on the academic side from concern about algorithmic bias and the like. However, they seem to be failing at extrapolation. āAI badā gets misgeneralized into skepticism about current and future AI capabilities.
Left-marxist people seem to be thinking a bit more clearly about this (ie extrapolating, applying any economic model at all, looking a bit into the tech). See an example here, or a summary (EDIT 2025-02-08: of the same example piece) here. However, the labs are based in the US, a country where associating with marxists is a very bad idea if you want your policies to get implemented.
These two leftist stances are mostly orthogonal to concerns about AI x-risk and catastrophic misuse. However, a lot of activists believe that the publicās attention is zero-sum. I suspect that is the main reason coalition-building with the preceding two groups has not happened much. However, I think it is still possible.
About the American right: some actors have largely succeeded in marrying China-hawkism with AI-boosterism. I expect this association to be very sticky, but it may be counteracted by reactionary impulses coming from spooked cultural conservatives.
āAI badā gets misgeneralized into skepticism about current and future AI capabilities.
This point is interesting. I almost wonder if itās better to not argue against this. If we argue against it, maybe the left gets attached to this position, and becomes slower to update even as unemployment increases.
Left-progressive online people seem to be consolidating on an anti-AI position; but mostly derived from resistance to the presumed economic impacts from AI art, badness-by-association inherited from the big tech /ā tech billionaires /ā ātechbroā cluster, and on the academic side from concern about algorithmic bias and the like. However, they seem to be failing at extrapolation. āAI badā gets misgeneralized into skepticism about current and future AI capabilities.
Left-marxist people seem to be thinking a bit more clearly about this (ie extrapolating, applying any economic model at all, looking a bit into the tech). See an example here, or a summary (EDIT 2025-02-08: of the same example piece) here. However, the labs are based in the US, a country where associating with marxists is a very bad idea if you want your policies to get implemented.
These two leftist stances are mostly orthogonal to concerns about AI x-risk and catastrophic misuse. However, a lot of activists believe that the publicās attention is zero-sum. I suspect that is the main reason coalition-building with the preceding two groups has not happened much. However, I think it is still possible.
About the American right: some actors have largely succeeded in marrying China-hawkism with AI-boosterism. I expect this association to be very sticky, but it may be counteracted by reactionary impulses coming from spooked cultural conservatives.
This point is interesting. I almost wonder if itās better to not argue against this. If we argue against it, maybe the left gets attached to this position, and becomes slower to update even as unemployment increases.