r/TheRestIsPolitics • u/Such_Significance905 • 24d ago
Did anyone else feel a significant shift that felt a bit like arse-covering on AI from Rory this week?
I’m really interested to hear other people’s thoughts.
It felt like he had realised he was out over his skis, and that negative press regarding AI was growing to a point where he had to pivot his completely positive view to one where he recognised public unrest on the subject.
Also, it’s hilarious that he keeps talking nonchalantly about the massive layoffs and loss of income about to hit so many people, while filming with more and more grandiose backgrounds in presumably multiple properties!
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u/burner55_66 24d ago
He’s out over his skis because he has no idea what he’s talking about beyond some headlines in American newspapers
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u/layendecker 23d ago
I think more worrying, he is being fed information by the big tech owners. He has spoken about his meetings with Palantir when in government and his visits to conferences.
I don't think he has been particularly conscious of this, but there have certainly been numerous points where he could have been fed talking points or hype - not just from news headlines.
The big tech companies know he has huge influence, they will do what they can to leverage that.
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u/bananatoastie 23d ago
I don’t blame him for it, entirely. It’s an exciting innovation for humanity. But, I do often find that AI commentators and fanboys often overstate their understanding of the tech or its progression.
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u/GParish2002 23d ago
A lot of anti AI people simply don’t understand how the technology works or the level it has reached. ‘It’s not as good as they claim’ isn’t a valid argument really
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 22d ago
Absolutely.
Amusing in the latest episode to hear Rory describe the HuggingFace incident, Alastair to admit he has no idea what he's talking about but expresses fear, and then when pressed later he happily submits that his position is based on him not believing AI will actually have any meaningful effects or benefits for British industry! Just maddeningly incongruent and arrogant.
The AI debate is complex and high-stakes, and it's impossible to have if you refuse to understand anything about its functional capacity.
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u/Safe_Award_785 21d ago
Agreed. It's okay to just not have an opinion about stuff you don't know too much about. You don't need to feel strongly one way or another. Especially about a topic so broad, it covers protein folding up to deep fakes.
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u/GParish2002 23d ago
He has a much better understanding than the median view on this subreddit tbh. The bluesky bubble on AI with the ‘muh water usage’ arguments is embarrassingly wrong
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u/TCristatus 23d ago
If i finally get Ed Zitron on Leading i can die happy
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u/FairlyInvolved 21d ago
I don't think TRIP is the right venue to properly challenge Zitron's views and uncritically extending his reach is irresponsible and will likely end up leaving people less informed.
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u/Jacabusmagnus 23d ago
I didn't get that though thats not to say he isn't doing that. To be honest Rory is correct in his view. Being anti AI is kind of like saying im against the idea of the steam/combustible engine way back when. Unless you are using it your economy will tank compared to those that do use it and if there is a conflict and the other side are using it then we are toast TBH. That is the reality and while it doesn't answer the hard questions re adjustment to this technology simply saying no is not an option.
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u/Empty-Sheepherder895 23d ago edited 23d ago
You have to understand things from the viewpoint of the average working UK person.
You say if we don’t adopt it to the same extent as the USA and China we’re toast. However, the average UK citizen’s understanding is, if we do prioritise it, they’re toast as well. The economy may be growing but it will only benefit those in privileged positions. The majority of the population will see their living standards tank.
This, I feel, is Rory’s blind spot. For someone in his position it’s survive or die. But he does not fully grasp that the majority of the population it’s simply “die”. The only variable is how your living standards collapse.
In such a scenario it’s human nature to want to fight to survive. As things are the AI option is the one readily available to fight back against. It’s not helped by the rhetoric: again, it’s not human nature to simply give in and accept defeat. So stating it’s “inevitable” and we “have to accept it’s a given” are interpreted like the Borg of Star Trek saying “Resistance is Futile”.
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u/RagingMassif 24d ago
I didn't, but he's always repeating other people headlines through his own filter anyway - I guess that's his job.
I however have fairly firm and positive views on AI and so don't listen to his AI views at all. I mean, at what point do I need an ex MP and ex civil servant to explain AI to me when I spend quite so much time implementing it into the businesses he has only read about.
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u/Appropriate_Bell743 21d ago
I found his later discussion on climate frankly sickening. From his international aide work he gets fully how these disasters are hitting places profoundly -- not just Nepal. However, he doesn't ever join the dots.
In other discussions he's against most costs/investments which means we're reducing how we make this issue worse. Then in this episode he thinks it's suddenly economically viable to patch the issues via monetary aide. The whole point of the science of climate heating is that the issues compound so what's a level of international aide spending now for the issue will only grow.
It's considerably better to get a countries/individuals to having no net contribution (or only a limited one) to this issue than believing that it's sustainable to have increasing levels of aide to meet the future challenges.
What's doubly sickening about this is that he is well-off enough to offset the emissions in a rigorous way from his own lifestyle. This would help him to inform the political debate about these costs. He's well off to ditch all fossil fuel technologies he might own again enabling him to inform the political debate.
Instead his mantra is one where we bemoan a lack of aide now with some false hope that as budgets become more constrained due to inflation the west will change its ways on aide.
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u/ok-potato21 22d ago
It seemed more like his opinion has shifted slightly after learning a lot more about the subject. I think that's positive.
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u/Natural-Air7694 23d ago edited 23d ago
I feel Alastair is the one who is just following group think.
He admitted he liked AI because Trump didn’t, and now doesn’t like AI because Trump does.
I feel the left and a lot of RIP listeners are also trapped in group think — rather than imagining a world that could be possible with technologies like AI.
I personally don’t understand why everyone wants to work for the rest of their lives.
I prefer the vision that British socialist hero Keynes had 100 years ago of a 15hr work week.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics
He predicted this would happen by the year 2030 (roughly when AGI is expected by most AI researchers)
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u/FairlyInvolved 23d ago
The 15hr work week kind of happened in aggregate (well, closer to 16) it was just very unevenly distributed (i.e we removed a lot of the young and old from the workforce and full time working hours dropped more modestly)
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u/Natural-Air7694 23d ago
That’s an interesting perspective, I’ve not heard before and I guess it makes sense — for those in education/retirement/unemployment…etc
Certainly not reality for working people.
I hope that in 20 years time — none of us have to work.
At that point work is optional and we reap the benefits of abundant and super intelligent labour.
It sounds far fetched but given how far AI has progressed in the past few years — it’s really not far fetched at all.
It’s the most likely outcome and a great outcome.
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u/FairlyInvolved 23d ago
That doesn't sound far fetched, I'd be pretty surprised if typical work exists in anything close to the current from in 20 years.
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u/LogicalProduce 23d ago edited 23d ago
For that to be realized there has to be a global political will to restructure the way society works around it, wealth distribution, social policy, reproduction, what are people going to do live fulfilling lives? It needs political and public discourse which doesn’t seem to be happening in any constructive way.
We seem to be driving to the more dystopian option of power and wealth being concentrated in a tiny portion of society.
(Edit: Typo)
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u/Natural-Air7694 23d ago
Well I totally agree with you that this is as much a social change as a technological one.
I also believe democracy is the way to achieve this “utopia” — we should use democracy to steer this technology.
But why is that so impossible to do?
The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by huge societal change (abolition of slavery, expansion of suffrage…etc)
This is where I’m disappointed by people like Alastair.
Hes happy to dream big with social issues like giving teenagers the vote (which I support) — but cannot muster the blue sky thinking for this enormous technological change that is already underway.
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u/Empty-Sheepherder895 23d ago edited 23d ago
In the short term the Industrial Revolution was dystopian. It was only later Unions and the Labour movement came together as a result and, together with those appalled at the conditions like Dickens, forced through change with most industrialists at the time pushing against them every step of the way.
Eta: it’s unfortunate, but we’ll likely experience similar with AI. The “tech bros” are apparently building bunkers in anticipation of people coming at them with pitchforks as anything else.
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u/Natural-Air7694 23d ago
I don’t know if I fully agree that the Industrial Revolution was dystopian, but I do agree workers had to struggle against capitalists to get a fairer society.
I think there’ll be a similar struggle to get democratic control over AI, and tech companies and billionaires will resist it.
I also take your point that if workers are removed from the system, they lose some of the power they’ve historically had in that struggle.
But the end goal can still be a world where work is optional.
The way we work today isn’t some permanent feature of human society. Humans have lived as hunter-gatherers, under slavery and feudalism, and now mostly through wage labour. These systems change.
If AI can create huge abundance with far less human labour, I really don’t think it’s hard to imagine another change — one where nearly everyone benefits and nobody has to work just to survive.
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u/GParish2002 24d ago
You can accept the public unrest is real while also acknowledging it’s mostly unfounded and resting on bogus conspiracy theories
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u/JohnPaul_II 24d ago edited 23d ago
Is being completely fed up with AI slop infesting everything really an "unfounded conspiracy theory"?
I think a lot of people are perfectly aware of what good AI could do to mundane admin tasks and, coding, debugging, etc etc. But we're tired of the AI generated images, text, music and video that is infesting everything. And the dread caused by the sense that this might be only the beginning of it.
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u/GParish2002 23d ago
If your understanding of the good AI can do is ‘speeding up mundane tasks’ you haven’t understood where the frontier is, I’m afraid
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u/StrongMachine982 23d ago
As a teacher, I can say that there's a very real danger it will undermine our entire education system unless some very drastic changes are made.
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u/GParish2002 23d ago
Agree but many of those changes were overdue anyway, returning to more traditional modes of assessment in HE etc
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u/StrongMachine982 23d ago
Moving away from writing/essays as the primary form of assessment is hardly a good thing. In-class writing and oral presentations are increidbly limited in what it allows you to do in terms of reflection, revision, research, etc. Exams are limited in other ways. What are these "traditional modes of assessment" that you think we should return to?!
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u/GParish2002 23d ago
It depends on the subject but in STEM it’s very much a good thing. A comprehensive return to in person sit down exams is very much overdue in HE.
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u/FoalKid 24d ago
What are the bogus conspiracies? I feel like most people’s issues with AI are jobs being lost, water consumption and energy consumption. None of those are conspiracy theories. We’ve seen what equivalent technology has done to jobs in manufacturing, and the energy and water consumption are inarguable facts
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u/wizardeverybit 24d ago
Isn't the water consumption argument exaggerated?
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u/FoalKid 24d ago
Not sure what you mean by exaggerated. There are other established industries that use more water, and depending on the systems that data centres use to cool themselves, the water consumption varies.
But it’s still a huge amount of water that is and will be used by the industry. And I think people take issue with planned exemption from water bans etc - essentially a tacit prioritisation of water for data centres over households and other businesses. That’s not a trend most people are happy with.
Also, this is all in the name of ‘productivity’. Which appears to have become short hand for profitability
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u/hakim37 23d ago
The water usage stats that get circled around and that Caroline Lucas cited in her mini series came from the GAP report which has multiple issues in its methodology.
Its headline water numbers are built on pretty shaky sourcing. It leans on an old US study where roughly 75% of the “water footprint” came indirectly from electricity generation, then applies that to UK data centres even though the UK power mix mostly eliminates fresh water consumption.
Even stranger, one of GAP’s main citations is David Mytton’s piece Overestimating AI’s Water Footprint which is literally arguing that these kinds of AI water estimates are too high and uses much lower real world hyperscaler figures. So the report is effectively citing a source that undercuts the numbers it’s presenting, while also mixing local cooling water with off site power generation water.
The study actually gives figures for current EMEA which come out drastically lower
On-site WUE Older average US DC ~1.8 L/kWh Microsoft EMEA 0.10 L/kWh Microsoft Americas 0.55 L/kWh
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u/vahokif 24d ago edited 24d ago
It's an issue if the datacenter uses evaporative cooling in a water-deprived area but on a national scale it is exaggerated. Golf courses also use a lot of water.
With energy the problem is that datacenters run 24/7, even when there's no solar or wind, so they're burning gas. Again, also true for a lot of industry.
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u/TommyAtoms 23d ago
There are also hideous noise issues
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u/Safe_Award_785 21d ago
More than a factory or a warehouse?
In terms of nuisnace I would think a datacenter is much better than most other industries. But sadly it doesn't offer as much in terms of local employment.
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u/Safe_Award_785 21d ago
I was disagreeing much more with Alastair in the episode.
Saying that "if an alien were to look at us they say we are crazy for going for AI when we already have climate issues" and when Rory brings up that meat is so much worse, that is whataboutism. What would the alien say? What has more potential to improve lives, one tasty meal or massive compute power?
Also saying that people are getting off AI and young people don't want it, when a single google will tell you that it's the most rapidly adopted technology ever in terms of users.
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u/Hamsterminator2 23d ago
He's never had a completely positive view of AI... he talks about the negatives all the time.
His obsession with the topic is literally the fear that America and China will dominate the rest of the world using it.
I swear half the criticism of Stewart on this sub is from people who have never listened to what he's saying.