'It's going to be really bad': Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley

[moniss]

37. But at the heart of the matter is that with all of the bells and whistles

we have today on cars, in homes etc. we are a society where an ever larger proportion of the population cannot afford food and shelter for example. We are run and controlled by people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is not sustainable. All of this tech is going around in a capitalist frenzy and not, as people point out, as a thing of the commons.

I am not saying we shouldn't do research and development. That development in medical care is valuable but keeping in mind that application and availability is at the mercy of capitalism and/or political favor. But what I am talking about is that for the general population to have all of the gizmos we have a strong objective case can be made that we are worse as people because of most of it.

It is the folly of human beings to look at a highly tech oriented and involved culture and think it is "ahead" of a culture in the Amazon for example. It is in fact ignorant arrogance. One is a frenzied, always needing more, stressed, judgemental society pushing itself and it's members to constantly consume and want more and more while the other is a culture that sustains itself without all of the tech gizmos and by any measure of happiness and satisfaction with life the simpler culture wins. Until the other culture comes along and disrupts them, takes from them, kills them off etc. But that takes us into a digression.

Simply put I make the case that we are worse off as human beings by flooding ourselves with tech. Our society may find itself awash in medical advancements but it is more obese, more stressed and less healthy overall than 40 years ago. We are less connected to family and we have deemed "social interaction" to be reading or sending an e-mail or text message. We have waiting rooms full of strangers who immerse themselves in their phones and ignore social interaction with the person next to them. In fact they do so many times to specifically avoid the possibility of an actual face to face interaction.