zlacker

I see this as much more of a hackers vs. corporations ideological split. Which imperfectly maps to leftism vs conservatism.

The perception on the left is that once again, corporations are foisting products on us that nobody wants, with no concern for safety, privacy, or respect for creators.

For better or worse, the age of garage-tech is mostly dead and Tech has become synonymous with corporatism. This is especially true with GenAI, where the resources to construct a frontier model (or anything remotely close to it) are far outside what a hacker can afford.

>>santos+(OP)
That makes sense, and there's definitely an element of truth to that position. The trouble is, the response is to dissociate with the technology, which is really not a tenable position if you intend to have a meaningful part in like... anything in the future. What I see-- and this is just my personal experience-- is that leftists tend to want to pretend it isn't happening, or that it won't matter. When it fact nothing matters more.

The deepest of deep ironies: I talk to people all the time talking about ushering in an age of post-capitalism and ignoring AI. When I personally can't see how the AI of the next decade and capitalism can coexist, the latter being based on human labor and all. Like, AI is going to be the reason what you want is going to happen, so why ignore it?

>>santos+(OP)
> I see this as much more of a hackers vs. corporations ideological split.

That framing may be true within tech circles, not the broader political divide. "Hackers" aren't collectively discounting and ignoring AI tools regardless of their enthusiasm for open-source.

Safety-ism is also most popular among those see useful potential in AI, and a generous enough timeline for AGI.