Artificial Intelligence

[JimC]

LLMs do not have the draconian pressure of natural selection to constantly hone their abilities...

They do. That's what AI companies basically do during some of the training.

If so, it's artificial selection, as in stock breeding programs...

[NineBerry]

LLMs do not have the draconian pressure of natural selection to constantly hone their abilities...

They do. That's what AI companies basically do during some of the training.

If so, it's artificial selection, as in stock breeding programs...

That's actually quite a good comparison.

[Tero]

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[Tero]

Using AI for my book shopping:

With population growth and economic growth slowing down, pure capitalism is not going to solve poverty. Is there a recent book discussing this dilemma?

The Core Argument: Jason Hickel's widely discussed work on post-growth economics focuses heavily on the structural failures of capitalism when forced into a world of finite boundaries. Hickel outlines how the capitalist model is inherently a "growth imperative" machine; when growth slows down naturally due to demographic and resource constraints, the system defaults to intensifying exploitation, worsening poverty and inequality rather than solving it. He champions a managed shift toward distributing resources more equitably outside the parameters of GDP

Looks like my kind of book. That is, 300 some pages. Well, 250 would be better.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel (Author), Kofi Klu (Foreword), Rupert Read (Foreword) Format: Paperback

Human reviewer:

This book tells the stories of real people who have been exploited, maimed and killed in the name of capitalism in central and south America with Big Fruit (i.e Chiquita, Dole, DelMonte). It explores how transnational companies rule the world instead of the governments we vote in. How they hide their money in safe tax havens. How treaties are formed in in big Capitalistic countries of the West pushed onto developing countries and then used to litigate against these nations and democracies when these countries try to put forth environmental protection rules against these companies due to pollution and expropriation (taking land forcibly from other humans). Yes, countries can be and are sued by transnational companies whose only aim is to extract from the planet at any cost. How the IMF and World Bank have problematic branches that fund some of these transnational companies and increase class divide instead of decreasing inequalities and ending poverty; enforcing a new world order of enforcing predatory capitalistic debt to be repaid therefore preventing developing countries from actually developing themselves. I can go on and on, but these two journalists were on planes exploring all the continents and exposing all the negatives most of us are unaware of created by the monster that is capitalism which is destroying the planet, worsening class divide, as the capitalists accumulate and accumulate excess unnecessary stuff and money and skirt the law. My eyes continue to be open with these books and I am buying more and more. Amazing read.

[pErvinalia]

technology.jpg

[Brian Peacock]

...

With population growth and economic growth slowing down, pure capitalism is not going to solve poverty. Is there a recent book discussing this dilemma?

...

Hickel is the obvious choice, because he's got strong ideas and writes very well.

Others might include:

Gary Stevenson: The Trading Game
Grace Blakeley: Vulture Capitalism
Paul Robbins: Lawn People
Nancy Fraser: Cannibal Capitalism
Kunkel & Seaton (ed): Who Will Build the Ark?
Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese: Half-Earth Socialism

The dilemma isn't that 'Capitalism is not going to solve poverty' because that's not its purpose. Capitalism is a structure, a way of organising society. It doesn't have a purpose beyond increasing the capital resources of people with capital resources, because that's what it's been structured to do. And ultimately 'capital resources' always boils down to actual, material resources in the real world. Like Hickel, the books above examine the structure of Capitalism while examining different ways to restructure and reorganise our societies.

[Tero]

Well, obviously. Capitalism. But there is a firm belief among MAGA voters that it is. This seems to be a main point in therir thinking that prevents them from voting for Democrats of any flavor. They want to see themselves as survivors and reject any welfare. It seems to embarrass them that they are getting anything. They have some glimmer of hope to rise up. They own a few riding mowers and a trailer and all of a sudden they are businessmen.

Ah, same as lawn people that you listed.

Robbins writes with a minimum of jargon and name-dropping -- any undergraduate could easily follow his arguments without much difficulty -- but also quietly engages with actor-network theory, Foucauldian and Gramscian notions of power, hegemony and subject formation, as well as putting ecology into political ecology. It's a book which could sit equally well on an undergraduate or graduate syllabus, which speaks both to its clarity and the sophistication of its analysis. Highly recommended.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah. The Robbins is a good book. It opens many cans of worms and doesn't shy away from forensically examining their contents - and yet I would still call it a 'light read', but in a very positive sense.

[Tero]

One of the books I started reading, but never got far. It has a lot of the figures on bad AI, without telling us AI is going to kill us.

Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
by Kate Crawford (Author) Format: Paperback

Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequity. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a material and political perspective on what it takes to make AI and how it centralizes power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

[rainbow]

T. S. Eliot

.......
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Brian Peacock]

...and in collateralised debt obligations!

[Brian Peacock]