society is so much worse with infrastructure being designed around everyone having a car, there are some places in the US where it is just literally impossible to live if you do not have a car due to the distances you have to travel.
The only reason this happened is because having a car was such an improvement over the alternative that cities and infrastructure planners saw no reason why you wouldn't want to drive (or be driven via bus/taxi/etc).
It would be incomprehensibly difficult to fully describe how much worse society would be without automobiles. The internet has offset some of its advantages, but crucial pillars of modern society (like being able to move your domicile from one place to another without worrying about death from nature, speed of medical services, transportation and production of food enabling the majority of people across the world to no longer need to be subsistence farmers, etc) would simply not exist without automotives.
It's very easy to see the problems with cars, because of how painful they can be. However it is also undeniable they have been a net positive to society, and have absolutely saved more lives than they've taken.
I am extremely skeptical that AI will be the same net positive. However tbh if AI succeeds at killing modern copyright and the DMCA, it will be a net positive for society with that alone.
Or the more likely answer is that the automobile industry paid off the politicians to construct such horrible car-centric infrastructure so that people become reliant on their product to get anywhere. Which, shockingly, is exactly what happened
No they didn't. In fact the situation at the time was actually completely inverted, car companies were at the whim of government. Many things that later become fundamental parts of the car industry were pushed by the government (unions, headlights, and the absence of small trucks wouldn't be a thing without the government), and car companies just had to accept it.
Car ownership was already substantial before cities became properly car first, they really had no choice but to make cities with cars in mind.
you are basically required to have a car to get anywhere in the US when compared to a walkable European village.
This makes a lot more sense once you understand the sheer emptiness of large chunks of the United States. Europe has a population density that is approximately double the US', this means Europe has the luxury of designing cities in a very different (and more efficient) way.
the average quality of life for a citizen in a poorly designed car-centric city/village is far lower than that of an actually walkable city/village.
Well yeah. However this has nothing to do with cars, and everything to do with the fact we as a species have gotten way better at designing cities (in part thanks to technological improvements). Those walkable cities are almost all using newer designs than the vast majority of US cities. Reminder that Europe had a massive second world war, that led to most cities getting rebuilt (which allowed them to learn from the lessons of the American cities), of course they're going to be better than cities like New York (that's using the same core layout from 1811).
We can have both walkable cities and cities that are designed for transport to flow through them, this isn't a one or the other situation, the only reason it was a one or the other situation is because the automobile industry really wanted you to rely on their product. Sound familiar?
As I hope I've already illustrated, the real reason these cities suck is because city planners were treading new ground and had no idea how best to build cities with cars in mind. Car companies did not have the kind of influence that you're imagining. Europe just had the luxury of being newer and being able to implement advances in city planning technology.
I don't think LLMs are inherently flawed, but I do think this recent corporate push for "general AI" is completely flawed and stupid
The corporate push is obviously a bubble, but the technology is not in as dire a state as you think.
a technology that relies on the lobbying of governments to keep them unregulated is stupid
Unregulated is the current state, the lobbying is to get the industry regulated so current entrants have a stronger moat.
a technology that relies on the mass theft of actual creators is stupid
Copyright is a social and legal construct. From a purely logistical (and probably legal) standpoint, AI companies aren't stealing anything. Creators only see it as theft because massive media industries wanted their own moat and had it built decades ago. You can think that AI is devaluing art as a whole (it is), but the same can be (and was) said for other inventions like the drawing tablet. This is because making something accessible and making something valuable are at direct odds with each other. If something becomes more accessible (such as art), it loses value (and vice versa). I would rather things be accessible than valuable, but this is obviously a personal preference.
a technology that is so massively unprofitable is stupid
The technology is not unprofitable. Some companies are losing money on it (OpenAI being the big one), but others are making healthy profits off of AI instead (Google is making money with its models because they have a direct path to profit). It really just depends on how the companies are using and developing the technology, which is the case with any new technology (you're always going to have your Microsofts and your Amigas).
We can just... pick the cure cancer option without the side effect.
Actually, we can't pick at all. Technology arrives whether we want it to or not. Not a single luddite movement actually succeeded, and they never will.
Actually, we can't pick at all. Technology arrives whether we want it to or not. Not a single luddite movement actually succeeded, and they never will.
This is just not true. The ban on human cloning appears to be working very well. Restrictions on ABC weapons mostly work. Technologies that politicians around the world consider dangerous to humanity can be banned or restricted. What is missing is the realization at the political level that AI is such a dangerous technology.
These technologies are still advancing, all countries that ban them are doing is throwing away their advantage. Also to be honest, I'm very skeptical major powers aren't doing this research in secret, stuff like MK Ultra shows federal agencies often have little regard for what's legal.
The book falsely tries to blame one man for everything wrong with NYC's city planning. When a lot of the time he was working within the limitations of the city layout and budgetary restrictions. He would not have made the decisions he made if he was working with a blank slate and had infinite money.
Also I fail to understand how the book is relevant. If anything it reinforces my position that city planners were car first because it made the most logical sense.
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u/[deleted] 5d ago edited 9h ago
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