The EA people who give money directly to poor people are great.

The EA people who decided to spend oodles of money working on AI ostensibly to prevent an insane thought experiment and then converted that effort into a for-profit corporation while insisting that actually giving money to the poor is bad because you'll have greater future utility by spending it on AI are worthy of scorn.

> The EA people who decided to spend oodles of money working on AI ostensibly to prevent an insane thought experiment and then converted that effort into a for-profit corporation while insisting that actually giving money to the poor is bad because you'll have greater future utility by spending it on AI are worthy of scorn.

That was the e/acc folks though. Different acronym, even though they were a spinoff from the original EA folks.

He is currently suing the government to get the NLRB declared unconstitutional. He spent mountains of cash to promote DOGE, which sought to cut government funding for various programs supporting the poor.

He is actively making it harder for the poor by applying his massive wealth.

"Backs" would mean that he takes material steps to make this happen. He is the world's richest man. Surely he could be putting billions into lobbying efforts for this.

No. Dude is just obsessed with his sci-fi future and is throwing out shit like this to try to convince people that he's not the most venal kind of capitalist possible.

Gamblers do care about losing their shirt. Appified gambling is just remarkably effective at getting humans to keep playing. It'd be one thing if we didn't hook up all of the dopamine feedback loops that we've developed over the past decade to a gambling machine but that's not the world we live in.

"A lot of" and "most" are different things.

Yes, a lot of places are not making their own jalepeno poppers. There's still plenty of stuff being made from raw ingredients all over the place.

AI creation kills cultural sharing.

People who create AI music are largely not sharing it with others for any reason other than to create a revenue stream. They are also not consuming new AI music to be able to develop influences and synthesize new ideas. The system builds brick walls where there was once osmosis.

How can art evolve under these conditions?

I'm not sure either Linkin Park or my friend's garage band are in any way affected by AI generated music.

How do you imagine that happening?

I agree that people who refuse to listen to AI music or create AI music will still continue on the same path as before in terms of the evolution of music.

But AI music can make it even harder for people to eke out a living as musicians, since they are competing with something that costs far less to make. And some people who would otherwise learn how to create music themselves will instead choose not to learn this skill because it is easier to use AI.

The net effect is a diminished culture.

They're describing the "music" that's churned out almost entirely hands off to siphon royalties. Even the creator isn't listening to 100% of what they're uploading, it's spam that can be produced in massive quantities and can overwhelm a platform if left unchecked (as the article describes, AI music is 1-3% of actual listens by users but 44% of uploads).

Actual artists who need years to create a few hours of handcrafted content don't have a chance in an environment where hundreds of hours of slop can be generated in less than a day for a few hundred bucks. Platforms like Deezer recognize they need to address that imbalance somehow or they'll eventually lose their high quality contributors in a vicious cycle if it becomes impossible to compete.

Because some crafts are more sacred than others. Making a painting is more sacred than smearing my shit in the Barns and Nobel bathroom stall, although arguably less fun.

Who decides that? We do, collectively. Why do we have that power? Because we define art. Why do only humans have this power? Because art is an innately human thing, so we get to decide.

I find one of the most unsettling things about 2025-2026 is how little people seem to agree with this point you're making. It's like this hyper-reductive thinking where it's all just "if the the outcome is the same, so what!?" has just metastasized and everyone is false-equivalence-ing their way into hell It makes me want to scream. like, beauty is not arbitrary, not everything can be homogenized into content paté, that does not make the world better. I'm sure really smart people will argue i'm wrong for some reason but it just makes me feel so sad

I don't agree, because I think the zeitgeist should be as concerned with my lowly output being automated away (as a IT worker drone) just as much. I'm sorry if you view that as a false-equivalence

I don't know what you mean by this. The same effect can be felt in other forms of art.

And when people do professional research on the topic, they don't find that every homeless person outside is an addict.

I was functionally homeless for 11 years but never used substances and wasn't psychotic.

There was a very large fraction of other homeless people who couldn't hold jobs because they were disabled, elderly, under-skilled, not presentable, or lacked the resources and support to "pick themselves up by their [invisible] bootstraps." Some had personality aggression issues that couldn't hold jobs too that didn't fall under danger to themselves or others and so they weren't necessarily able to access mental healthcare. And also some had debts, credit problems, and criminal records that presented obstacles to employment opportunities.

I knew 2 elderly retired teachers who were homeless because they lacked family and resources but were otherwise "normal", cool, and social-able.

I understand that it's human nature of privileged, inexperienced, ignorant people to scapegoat and dehumanize groups they don't understand.

homeless != sleeping on the streets.

> literally all of them are strugging from some sort of addiction.

This is what you found when you went out and interviewed how many people sleeping on the streets in which cities of which counries?

And _nobody_ working in the social services of any city in any country has ever found anything other to be a factor?

Remarkable.

The bill also affects people sleeping in tents.

I have an HSA managed by HealthEquity for work. Recently they forced us all onto passkeys.

About 80% of my login attempts now randomly fail with a “you are not authorized to see this page” error. What a system.

Sanctions are most directly felt by the people. I think it is very hard to believe that the US has had the interests of the people of Iran at heart in any meaningful capacity for decades (if ever).

In order to pay an effective federal tax rate of 33% you'd need to be making like seven figures and do nothing to reduce your taxable income.