Bill Hicks had a great bit on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJSZcxXe7IQ

I’m convinced it’s most often performative, consciously or otherwise, and a signal to make your ‘beliefs’ overt. Many seek to benefit from the perception of being associated with Christian beliefs, likely more than people who are truly living the prescriptions of their religious doctrine. I say this because Fox news hosts all have them and I can guarantee you none of those freaks are meaningfully sacrificing anything for those in need or performing works of good. I’m not advocating for this by the way, it’s a disservice to true believers to set a false pretense, and I’m one who believes actions speak louder than words. As far as I’m concerned wearing symbols and trinkets falls closer to the ‘words’ category of acts.

Missed opportunity to make them both the same gross old man.

“and if it doesnt thats a win for people and a loss for the shop.” This case is not a win for people. The people did not ask the shop to automate services better rendered by humans. Half the time shops have to have a human on hand to help the self checkouts when they fail or reader errors plague the customers. I personally have had those machines stall out or stop working and waste my time and that of one of the few workers still around the store which slows up service somewhere else cause of understaffing. These things are specifically not an advancement if you’ll turn your attention to the article that started this post.

“Your point about this being applied broadly and eliminating jobs is dumb.” How? Why is humans losing jobs dumb?

You want to vaguely gesture to all technology being good just by virtue of being new, but these things end up being terrible busienss decisions all the fucking time, too. Some work, some don’t, and almost all aren’t done for the benefit of anybody but the bottom line of the owners. You write like you have no point of reference or understanding of working life, or ability to connect to other people in society given the way you just handwave human replacement. It’s embarassing frankly, you want to call nuance brain rot to avoid engaging with it because you’re developmentally challenged.

That IF is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as the article will point out. People like convenience when they feel perosnally disconnected from it, but I’m always sensitive to the implication of the adoption of a technology and long term goals, and you should be too. You claim it’s a win/win, but if this were applied broadly it would eliminate jobs for people who might not have good alternatives, if any, with no provisions for acces to other future labour. This is bad for ALL of us, even if you’re not working in retail and you don’t think people should have to, because like a chain our society is only as strong as the weakest and most neglected parts. Retail is largely a undesireable job because of OUR culture of consumption that gives people free license to treat employees like shit, and for the owning class to pay them as little as possible and disrespect their labour.

This is why you need to expand your view and afford respect for every worker working any job, their labour has intrinsic value to society, remember that you, the consumer, are the one creating the demad for their job to exist. Don’t forget the knock-on effect for owners who see tactics like this succeeding leading to more automation projects to eliminate more labour costs for the exclusive benefit of CEOs and shareholders. Based on these facts, I’m telling you, you’re wrong to think of this so simplistically, and to make so many assumptions in the face of clear precedents in corporate actions for pure profiteering. I know the purpose of coporations is to generate profit, and that’s true, which is also why we can only tolerate their existence with strictly imposed limits on their growth because by design unregulated capital will cannibalize society, the retail workers are the canaries in that coal mine, so to speak.

Good. Just pay people, society is for people. All of these cost saving schemes from capitalists in service of infinite greed end up failing and wasting even more money than they would have made or saved simply by paying people for their labour. Also, wealth tax immediately, I mean now.

Neither do I, which is why it’s important to be clear with them.

That could be, and I definitely understand and sympathize with that stance a lot more. Sorry for coming across aggressively, I’m used to people refusing to engage but also complaining about the state of their world, so I don’t have a lot of tolerance for neutrality these days.

I understand not wanting to bear the labels of a group because that often comes with being tied to some views you don’t express or believe. This is the issue with party politics, as it’s not realistic to expect people to perfectly slot into a whole set of beliefs, we all have unique lived experience and so also unique profiles of understanding of the world we live in. It’s even more understandable when you consider how commonly the poisoned political discourse weaponizes labels to taint how people view your stance on one subject by associating it with other beliefs, or making up imaginary sets of beliefs to weigh down something most people would agree with (e.g. people should have freedom of movement, or some core element of privacy and a right to individuality in their lives). This is the importace of discource, and being able to challenge and advocate ideas together, and it’s what we’ve gradually been robbed of by social and legacy medias stealing the attention and the venues in which we have access to healthy discourse. I persoanlly think this reflex away from political engagement by saying ‘I’m not political’, is conditioned, and a response to how badly our societies have been fractured by monied interests, and that also ties in to the nature of the post. This all helps extremist groups recruit siloed individuals and indoctrinate them with a single set of views.

I won’t get into your stated views, though I’d love to, that’s not really the point here with the spirit of the post. I more appreciate your wilingness to state them. I know if we discussed them we would find areas of agreement, and middlegrounds to share because discourse is ultimately how you refine your closely held beliefs, and how you discover new understanding. It’s also how we build ideas worth mobilizing politically over to encourage change that will benefit us on lines of common interest. This is part of how you can see that crippling discourse enables class warfare and helps special interest lobbies advocate for their own interests at the expense of the majority, by occupying the void of activism. Be political, it’s intrinsic to human nature to participate socially, we’re evolved to do this and it’s the only reason our species earned this place in nature.

“you don’t know my reasoning for why I described myself as such and such.”

Well this is true, because you have given me nothing to work with. It’s okay to be afraid of expressing your views directly, and take the cowardly stance of “I believe a bit of everything but will also say nothing specific to avoid scrutiny”, it’s human. That doens’t make you non-political, however. Like Rush proclaimed: “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice”. This is why undecided IS a political faction. You’re still part of society even if you refuse to stand with any particular set of views or are incapable of expressing your own unique constellation of them. You still contribute to and benefit from systems that existed before you, even though you never had a choice to join or not; we are born into these systems, and I have sympathy for not wanting to feel part of them. But you really do need to be aware, refusing to engage is a luxury, and a reflection of your relevent level of comfort in society. People who are threatened by the rise of far-right ideology, and I mean that in a very material and existential sense, do not have the luxury of choosing not to choose. Some day you might not either, this is not a judgement on you perosnally, it’s a wake up call.

Yeah, fuck that guy though. He’s a grifting charlatan who played a direct role in this topic of discussion here by helping upend civil discourse with disingenuous sophistry. Also he’s a degenerate drug addict who doesn’t follow his own rules, since he just stole really common advice and pawned it off as revolutionary ideas. You mom told you to clean your fucking room for years and you ignored her, but some failed philosphy prof gets to be daddy for you because he work a funny suit and larped as and edgy joker boi? Pathetic. If that stings cause it’s close to home as well as an accurate read on lobster king, fuck you too.

Everyone is political. Politics is where alternate perspectives intersect in a social setting. Everything in life that involves multiple individuals shaping a shared experience is politics, and so you cannot functionally be the thing you claim. To say “I’m not political” is actually to say “I am afraid of taking a stand, I can’t handle conflict, and what I believe means less to me than the risks I fear for showing it”. Be political, embrace having views and things you care about and being ready to advocate for them, stand for them, and act, because I promise you the people who don’t believe your perspective matters or can be tolerated are acting on their beliefs.

Legalize sex work, tax corporations.

Ah I did not notice that, I often listen primarily to the streams, man that’s disappointing.

The Majority Report with Sam Seder - politics and humor

Crash Course - general learning

Just Have a Think - climate tech news

Astrum - cosmology and astrophysics learning

Some More News - politics and humor

Zeteo with Mehdi Hasan - politics

Josh Johnson - comedy

You couldn’t pay me enough to waste my brain cells on your disingenuous, fart-sniffing sophistry and bad faith horseshit, so no I don’t think I will, get better please.

You don’t think AI eliminating vast swaths of jobs and exasperating the wealth inequality that’s starving the economy has anything to do with an increase in poor and desperate people willing to resort to crime to surive? You do realise that data centers and AI are directly dependent, yes? That conclusion is just burying your head in the sand. Let’s not forget who started the moral finger wagging here, pointing to one crime while blinding themselves to another for whatever the irrational reasoning is. Like this particular crime is just happening in a vacuum, and AI isn’t infiltrating every aspect of society by design. What’s it like to be that selective?

“no copyright infringement has been found to have occurred in the training of flagship AI models” I’m just not going to engage with this level of disingenuous assertion, you’re either deluded or you’re a liar.

LLMs are built on theft of intellectual property and copyrighted products by capital managers who hoard wealth propped up on stolen wages and exploitation, look in the mirror before you yap on about selective application of morals.

Oh Look the antichrist enthusiast has things to say…

A question to the OP: After reading all of these comments, varying from emotional reaction to well reasoned assessment, all valid whether positive or negative, has this experiment helped you answer your question or changed your views on AI at all in retrospect? There’s nothing I can add that hasn’t already been said in one way or another by someone else, but I’m cruious if this is just a bait thread or you’re actually posing this question in good faith with a mind open to change… If it’s the latter I want to know your nuanced opinion.

You’ll have to forgive me for not trusting MS and their leadership after observing over a year of constant fuckery and failure.