I would also challenge the idea that people have a choice

by Regular Joseph , Tuesday, June 02, 2026, 15:00 (7 days ago) @ HCE

It's not clear to me that the college students booing AI are private superusers, or if they are, that they are happy about it.

The idea that consumers are somehow implicated in this push for AI is just not accurate. I don't know anyone who is paying for AI or who has suggested that they would. We have been told there are strong business cases for its use to write code quickly or run predict consumer habits. Great. Let Pfizer game out how to manipulate public opinion while they also run data mining projects to find cures for cancer.

The private use case for AI remains incredibly weak if you can actually read and believe in your own moral worth. Even if you've done it, most people can transparently see the shittiness of turning in school essay without doing any work. If you tell that person that as a part of the bargain of being able to guiltily cut corners they have to accept being unemployed, enrich billioniares, and ruin their local and global environment, I would guess that most people would be more than willing to clarify their position.

This isn't a matter of personal moral confusion. When people can see what's happening they know what they want. It's a hard push by concentrated capital to force or convince everyone else this is good for them.

Also, this gets compared to the development of the internet. I don't recall the internet being massively unfavorable or having papal encyclicals written about it. Yes it is a technological revolution, but the terms are so different. Just one key difference is that the internet looked expand personal autonomy and association and AI appears designed to crush personal agency and diversity.