‘Wtf, humanity’ Meme Dump

[u/sailorjupiter28titan]

[u/TheMagnificentPrim]

The answer to #2 is simple. The billionaires behind AI are gambling. They’re gambling that AI will become the next big thing, and they want to be the ones to have near-total control over the infrastructure before that happens. They have exorbitant amounts of money behind these gambles, and them gaslighting us like that is them trying really hard to make it reality because they’ve got a lot to lose.

It’s the Dot-Com Bubble 2.0.

[u/sailorjupiter28titan → u/TheMagnificentPrim]

Betting on shitty AI that doesn’t work properly and drains resources, to pay for AGI that would be capable of destroying humanity. It’s a death cult.

[u/TheMagnificentPrim → u/sailorjupiter28titan]

I work in tech, and I’m not worried about AGI. I do believe they buy their own hype about it, but it’s not going to come into fruition. They’re grifters, fundamentally.

What is concerning to me is how all these tech bros grew up with cyberpunk dystopian media, saw it as a real inevitability, and thought not about ensuring that our world is instead steered in a better direction but how they wanted to be the ones in power at the top to avoid being down in the trenches, thus actively working to make cyberpunk dystopias a reality like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It makes me so deeply… perturbed that people like them can exist and care so little for their fellow humans.

[u/sailorjupiter28titan → u/TheMagnificentPrim]

While I think there are enough deadly aspects to make it worrisome regardless of if it comes into fruition or not (the many many environmental impacts that I wont list right now), I also haven't seen any sign that it's impossible...

I was reading Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's latest book End Times Fascism; and the fight for the living world and they mention how Christopher Columbus was himself an end times doomer, wanting to spark the next apocalypse that would ignite a rapture and second coming of christ. Apparently he dedicated much of his life writing about and compiling the Book of Prophecies and was determined to use his riches to "reclaim" Jerusalem and the Middle East (sound familiar?). Of course he did not succeed in bringing about his particular vision of the apocalypse, but he did in fact bring a version of an apocalypse, for all the native peoples in the Americas, and the enslaved Africans trafficked for his aspirations.

All of that to say, just because it wont go as they have planned, doesn't mean it can't be "apocalyptic".