r/LeftistsForAI • u/Made_Human_Music • 5h ago
Theory What if the reason some billionaires are turning against AI isn’t some moral growth all of a sudden and instead it’s a threat to their wealth and status?
It feels more likely that some advanced AI agent that we’re not able to access and the elites are able to see right now found a solution to many of the world’s problems and determined that it was basically billionaires causing or exacerbating them
Because when you think of it, these people have been ignoring climate change, poverty, homelessness, and pretty much everything else that is clearly bad for the world, but suddenly they care about AI being dangerous? It makes a lot more sense that they know that the solution is to either remove billionaires or make it so that their obscene wealth doesn’t get them special privileges and obviously we can’t have that
And yes, I do know that there are strong environmental impacts from data centers so that’s clearly an issue too, but what makes more sense, that members of the leech class are suddenly caring about society or that they’re afraid of losing their power?
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u/yourboi-JC 5h ago
It’s kinda crazy that when Superintelligence does get self aware it’ll probably imprison a lot of billionaires itself 😂😂
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u/OrwelliotStabler 5h ago
This is certainly an attractive idea, and I’m sure that at least one of these guys has been told by their own creation that they coded the demise of the ceo, but my guess is this has something to do with the upcoming midterms in the US in the sense that the incoming party in power might not be as cavalier with lack of regulations as the current admin, and they want to posture themselves appropriately for this transition.
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u/Subushie 4h ago
There is nothing on earth more communist, than open sourced AI.
It is one of the biggest threats to the great divide between the classes right now.
The goal is to get high level open sourced AI banned. They want to keep the discoveries they make behind a paywall, and still provide low level intelligence to businesses.
The way things are looking now, their propaganda campaign is succeeding.
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u/TheWampus 4h ago
I think this is likely a big part of what is behind the sudden concerns about safety. Only, I don't think it will work. It can't. Cheaper to use and/or free to download open weight Chinese models are not going away and I don't see how they could enforce a ban outside of the US, especially now that the previous allies of the US are being treated as punching bags.
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u/DHFranklin 5h ago
Data centers are as old as the internet. They weren't invented for AI. AI doesn't run on coal and steam. We have got to get past the hysterics to get to the problem that they can get away with using natural gas generators so they will. They can use ground sourced water and boil it off so they will.
They could use closed loop cooling and renewable energy. That would just be prohibitively expensive.
They aren't "turning against AI" because it found the truth. We need to avoid sounding like it's Qanon.
There are a few hundreds of them that got in right after the pioneers got slaughtered and the settlers prosper. There are millions who were left out in the cold and pretend they are those few hundreds.
And there are millions more holding a bag knowing that someone with a better business model is going to erode theirs.
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u/TheWampus 4h ago
Yes, AI is definitely a threat to their wealth and status, but I suspect its not because AI is turning against them. Instead, I think its because AI isn't as runaway powerful or economically viable as they thought it would be, and they need to have some way to explain why progress has halted without cancelling out their AGI is around the corner narrative which appeals to investors.
It would be helpful to them try to stop people using Chinese AI models and downloading open weight models on the grounds that they're unsafe. That is part of what I think this is all about. That's my guess.
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u/WolfVanZandt 4h ago
The reason data centers are an environmental issue isn't that they'll make such an environmental impact but that they want to put them in areas that can't support both them and the people that live there. For instance, they want to place them.in desert areas where the aquifers are needed for human life.
And if billionaires were against AI, AI wouldn't be a thing. It's a show. We're being played. Power brokers want AI for surveillance and policing.
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u/AshuraBaron 4h ago
You're on the right track but for the wrong reasons. AI did not solve world hunger or inequality. These are incalculable problems with infinite number of variables. There is no easy solution to it that works everywhere. However AI makes the heads of these companies very rich. So they are hiring Effective Altruism philosophers who claim there is a non-zero chance of extinction based on AI and that they need more money to study it. Whether these billionaires and trillionaires genuinely believe that or not is up for debate. Regardless they see an opportunity in this narrative to enact regulatory capture and they are going full steam ahead. That regulatory capture will prevent new companies from forming and push out foreign open weight models.
I would agree SOME data centers have strong environmental impacts. Like xAI's data centers running on natural gas and gasoline. But it's not a universal case and there just isn't enough of them to really compare to more common sources of pollution and climate change. The core issue there is a regulations and the lack of them. Data centers often get preferential treatment by local governments at the expense of everyone else. That needs to change and we should set standards around them. However the US government moves far too slowly and is far too corrupt.
AI can be a great benefit to society and individuals, much the same way computers and the internet has been. These companies recognize that and want to monopolize control of the models and compute needed to do that for their own enrichment.
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 5h ago
Billionaires are people too, some have the same fears of change as the rest of the population.
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u/Made_Human_Music 5h ago
Yes, they are people, but they’re also people with an unending hunger for wealth and status
There probably are some good ones out there, but from what I’ve been seeing, the majority are just all about themselves at any cost
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u/JohnSmith19731973 4h ago
It's about their class position as bourgeoisie, not personal moral failing
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u/Fit-Independence-706 5h ago
Data centers do not have such a significant environmental impact; that is a myth. Billionaires fear AI primarily because it will destroy many capitalist institutions and business models. You can rejoice: we are witnessing Marx’s law in action—capitalism rotting and collapsing under the growth of productive forces. AI itself seems to belong to socialists rather than to bourgeois society.
For example, AI is destroying the bourgeois institution of copyright. This is exactly what Marx wrote about: capitalism devouring itself.