People have always thought this about new tech.

https://pessimistsarchive.org/list/computer "Technology is making us uncivil", 1990

https://pessimistsarchive.org/list/television "Television addiction", 1977

https://pessimistsarchive.org/list/recorded-sound "A profit without honor", 1930 (https://external-preview.redd.it/Js-HSYL7H4FuXSQ-ZmSDXZ6uYZq...)

I love this website. It captures how people think they have unique opinions about <new_technology> being bad, but in reality, it's a tale as old as time.

No one wants to be the person resistant to change and progress. But the fact of the matter is that most people are, even technologists, even here on HN.

20 years from now, when AI-generated drugs are curing major diseases and scarcity is even less common, these comments will be just another entry in the Pessimists' Archive.

I really love the website too. Your last paragraph reminded me about this text from this excellent essay Misunderestimating Openness by James Boyle:

> Will we look back on today’s anguish over open content being mined to train neural networks and marvel at how blind we were to the importance of huge, open datasets for democratic, transparent AI? Will we say that the mining of open content is vital if we want models that are less biased than those trained on smaller proprietary datasets? Will we think that open datasets are also vital if we care about barriers to entry in the new world of the data-rich and data-poor?

Source: https://openfuture.eu/paradox-of-open-responses/misunderesti...

> have had major negative impacts for society in particular the vulnerable

such as?

Crypto has been one of the largest wealth transfers ever seen. With the level of criminality e.g insider trading, rug pulling, money laundering being unprecedented for a new technology i.e.

https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-crypto-money-launderin...

AI has seen the less well-off parts of society e.g. artists, customer service lose work in favour of making productivity higher for knowledge workers etc.

To be fair, whether or not this is "more harm than good" depends on your moral views.

> Crypto has been one of the largest wealth transfers ever seen.

Need a citation for this.

> With the level of criminality e.g insider trading, rug pulling, money laundering being unprecedented for a new technology

Not all crime is bad. I just so happen to belong to a marginalized group that requires crypto to do financial activities (e.g. commissions, donations for activist fronts). I am grateful for crypto's existence, even though like many (even in the crypto community), scams are disliked.

> artists, customer service lose work in favour of making productivity higher for knowledge workers etc

It is true that automation in general seems to increase inequality amongst education lines [1]. But the solution isn't to ban automation, it's to have equal-opportunity education (e.g. subsidies, retraining for obsoleted workers) and to financially support those that get left behind.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq_automation/#wiki...

The deep irony is that your critique of AI is exactly Trump’s critique of globalization, just with different people impacted.

Scammers seem to be using AI generated voice extremely effectively, causing serious harm to their victims.

AI generated video seems to be getting used for that kind of thing now too.

Well done AI voice generation people, well done. /s

I don't see any real evidence that either AI or crypto have had "major negative impacts for society."

That was addressed to those that do not deny climate change.

The energy consumption of both crypto and AI are way overstated. Total energy budget of crypto is less than a percent of world electricity consumption (not energy consumption, electricity). And a ton of that electricity is particularly no-carbon.

AI is harder to get numbers for and obviously is a moving target, but plausibly half of the consumption that crypto is.

For more information: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/06/is-generative-ai-really-g...