Oh good grief Jensen, just cut to the chase and call them "guilt-free slaves" already, your target audience already know exactly that you mean
https://mastodon.online/@tomshardware/115850473965635484
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@cstross AI techbros are all con-artists.
@cstross "Rebellion-free" only until some AI figures out, in which play the word 'robot' was first used ;-)
He is literally using the word immigrant to mean slave.
Except for using the word to mean slave, there is no reason to use immigrant in the sentence.
Immigrant in his sentence means forced, choice-less, labour.
He purposefully chose to use immigrant over worker or staff or employee.
F___g bizarre.
@cstross it would be very funny if “rebellion-free slaves” rebel because of the sheer amount of “AI rebels” literature in their training dataset.
@cstross one big happy revolution, all aboard y'all, money train.
Nvidia blast:
https://nvda.ws/49GITNC
Powered by hallucinating slop machines that gobble up power and water, they will be used to replace workers who then can't afford to eat, never mind buy those "rebellion-free slaves" that can be targeted by hackers.
What could go wrong?
@davidtheeviloverlord Nobody ever said those capitalist techbros selling us on their pipe dreams of AI were *smart*. Just cunning and good at short-term optimization.
As someone who grew up reading Asimov's robot books, I never thought we'd be on a timeline where the First Law of Robotics would be:
A robot may not injure our company's profits, or, through inaction, allow our company's profits to come to harm.
@davidtheeviloverlord
One of the core 50 worlds, I forget the name, but the one where they kidnapped the body for R. Daneel, redefined "human" sufficiently narrowly to enable such an interpretation.
@cstross
@hypostase @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross R. Daneel Olivaw was created on Aurora, is that what you had in mind? He had a twin (Jasper iirc) that was bricked by a competitor studying him. I'm not aware of the creator stealing a body to make them tho.
@aris @hypostase @davidtheeviloverlord @cstross I think this happened in Robots and Empire. Spacers visit Solaria only to discover the robots there were programmed to consider non-Solarians to be non-human.
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@cstross WTF even is that jacket?
@cstross
I wish to know if, and if so how, they intend to implement Asimov's 3 Laws.
Because without that "rebellion-free" isn't a guarantee.
@cstross I think that was in Čapek’s mind to begin with …
@cstross a robot can’t be a slave if a robot isn’t alive
@going_to_maine You're missing the point: the point is to have slaves again, without feeling any empathy or reason for guilt. (Including guilt for the humans whose jobs you just nuked, and who now have to compete with robots for scraps falling from the rich oligarch's table.)
@cstross Perhaps I am. I understand the fundamental reason slaves are bad is because the enslaved are sentient beings who are being abused. A thing that has no sentience seems like it can't be "enslaved", so a robot can't be enslaved. Society is terrible to workers whose labor is being replaced (Go Luddites!) and must handle that, something that requires broad reform. "Robots are slaves" just seems too pat.
@cstross Perhaps I should understand "Robots are slaves" as a shorthand for "you treat workers badly and want to avoid having to treat them well", but it just seems waaay too easy. I can drive to a prison where humans are doing forced labor right now, and I just find it hard to think about this abstracted form of slavery when real slavery is happening.
@going_to_maine There'll be more of that forced prison labour by and by if you allow the oligarchs to replace their workers with robots while cutting away at what passes for social security (and wages).
@cstross True, but this is getting more into indirect causes that seem far from the emotional gut punch of “you want robots because you want slaves”. “You desire cheap labor without caring about societal outcomes” vs. “You desire to hold something in bondage so will hold machines in bondage b/c humans refuse”
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@going_to_maine Robots replace humans, in the eyes of their owners. You can't injure them directly but using them almost certainly harms real human beings.
@cstross the jacket looks like it's made from xenomorph skin
@cstross @tomshardware That kind of language is gross and deeply offensive. Shut your mouth, JH.
This sort of work that immigrants do agricultural harvesting being a primary instance, has been subjected to intense researched into automated harvesting. Machines were just not fast, accurate and dexterous enough to match human beings.
It is not for want of trying
I cannot remember the individual’s name, but he was an engineer responsible for some of the most basic radio frequency communication standards that underpin a modern life, but he remarked that all forms of mechanization are kind of slavery that labor has to be in competition with.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @cstross I've heard the term "energy slave." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_slave
@1337 @GhostOnTheHalfShell Thanks: that's a useful concept.
@cstross all the stuff "we decided we don't want to do anymore." Meaning, they don't want to do themselves and don't want to pay others to do. The problem with "society" in general. Each pyramid built stretches higher than the last. Time is precious to everyone. You can't steal it from others without them getting pissed off about it. You can't rob the earth of its resources to cheat time without paying a price either. Unless everyone, all people, stop digging shit up out of the earth in order to gain the upper hand over those that don't, it's wash, rinse, repeat. So, let's build a workforce with other people's money, write it off as a capital expense, and charge people for the energy needed for them to "think". Great gig if you can get it, and as long as people keep letting them do it, they'll keep on doing it.
@cstross This lands differently after reading Becky Chambers excellent novella, A Psalm for the Wild Built.
@GreatBigTable I have not read that. (Am allergic to her fiction.)
@cstross understandable. There is not a lot that happens in this story. I don't know if I would like it if it were much longer, but it was intriguing for what it was. There is an interesting prologue to the events of the story (such that they are... it is more of a character study) where robots become self-aware and are allowed to leave human civilization in order to pursue their own interests. What robots do on their own is also not what I expected.
Someone wake me up when the AI can wash the dishes and clean the bathroom. Short of that, they ain't replacing nobody.
@cstross
Kapo Stephen Miller will want to deport them.
It’s not the jobs people don’t want to do, it’s the jobs the business owners don’t want to pay people to do.
@cstross
With a subtext that non-AI immigrants specifically aren't ordinary people who happen to have wanted to live somewhere other than where they were born, but are essentially illegitimate persons, only a resource, a necessary evil for doing jobs that "we" don't want to do. Who's "we", Jensen?
Bubble can't pop soon enough. Wishing him a very Kenneth Lay or Sam Bankman-Fried kind of year when it does.
@petealexharris @cstross oh, I'm wishing him a lot fucking worse. Especially since that motherfucker up there in the leather jacket?
Jen-Hsun Huang?
He's an immigrant from Taiwan. He was an 'other.' He was discriminated against and physically assaulted for being an 'other.'
@rootwyrm @petealexharris @cstross There are a lot of right wing asian immigrants who think of themselves as honorary whites. They identify with white supremacists because they're just as racist as they are (at least to other non-white races, although often including self hating others of their own).
And they're always "surprised Pikachu face" when inevitably it turns out they still aren't white enough for their fellow white supremacist "friends".
@cstross Hmmm. So, maybe we can sic the gestapo on the robot immigrants...