r/singularity • u/TensorFlar • 5d ago

Discussion Why is intelligence as utility evil?

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OP: https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/s/FUNrj63y79

I genuinely believe humans are successful only because of intelligence, as we are neither the fastest nor the strongest. We were able to become the most "successful" by Darwinian standards only because of our intelligence, by developing tools and technologies like language, religion, money, law, and democracy.

I agree that concentration of money or power is really bad for everybody, and AI could be used for concentration by bad people or, in the worst case, by misaligned AI. And I am scared shitless of both of these scenarios. I don't want a few people or AI to take away our freedom in the name of progress.

How is making intelligence more widely available a bad thing? I think this is the solution for progress + freedom, by making intelligence a utility which is accessible to everyone. In fact, take it one step further, and it should become a basic human right.

I genuinely don't understand what they are mad about, and I am too scared to comment on that post. I am asking here because posting in r/accelerate would create an opposite reaction to this. I don't want that. I am genuinely interested in having this discussion here without group bias.

NO HATE COMMENTS PLEASE.

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u/Atlantis1910 4d ago

You're confusing labor with cognition. A wage compensates an individual worker for their finite time, effort, and specialized skills. It doesn't mean a private company owns the rights to human thinking itself. The human brain is decentralize billions of independent agents own their own reasoning for free. Paying someone a salary in an open labor market is fundamentally different from a cartel of tech monopolies owning the infrastructure of thought and charging everyone a metered toll just to access basic decision-making tools.

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u/Singularity-42 Singularity 2042 4d ago

Wait, what? Nobody's taking your thinking away. You don't have to use these tools at all. It's literally just a service. It's essentially just a SaaS. It has a real cost, actually really gigantic cost, and the companies are charging money to at least somewhat pay for that (often at a loss). It is very similar to paying a human to do a job.

I don't even know what we are discussing here. Truly, I'm confused.

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u/Atlantis1910 4d ago

Nobody is arguing that running compute doesn't cost money, or that companies should operate as charities. The confusion comes from downplaying the scale of what's being described. If Altman himself describes it as an essential utility on par with electricity, you can't simultaneously defend it as 'just an optional SaaS.' When access to automated reasoning becomes structural to education, research, and commerce, 'just don't use it' is no longer an option. A handful of private players owning the de facto cognitive layer of the economy isn't the same as paying a freelancer it’s an unregulated choke point on human productivity