If the chauffeurs' power came from the inability for the driven to maintain and drive their cars, and that power was reduced when cars become more reliable and understandable, then I'm not sure how that is applied to modern developments: computer and software are as complex as ever, and we're understanding them less and less in favour of letting the computers themselves understand themselves. Are we not then creating a new chauffeur problem, and this time those who control the LLMs and the infrastructure for the LLMs hold the power after we intentionally cede it?

This article just seems a little bit unbelievable

> They ran roughshod over their new bosses. They went joyriding in the expensive cars in their care. Of course, they too skimmed their operations money, but they did so without the veneer of social decorum.

The word "roughshod" seems wholly unjustified unless it is some sort of pun on horses that I'm missing. I can imagine a chauffeur joyriding and skimming money, but to say that represents "run[ning] roughshod" seems a bit much. The employer obviously wasn't showing that much care to the money and how big a deal is it if the guy drives the car occasionally? The coachman was skimming money and could ride the horse around if he put his mind to it. The horse isn't going to dob him in.

> I spent years at the mercy of technical typists. They were underpaid, but they were in control.

Again, I don't see how "in control" can be used to describe an underpaid technical typist. It doesn't sound that hard to check what they typed and replace them with someone else. If they're underpaid then they're easy enough to replace.

I wouldn't usually jump at two word choices, but the article seems to hinge on some sort of power imbalance favouring employees that is not demonstrated.

Where's the rest of the article? Is there a rest of it? It gets to the end of what feels like the introduction, and then just... stops.

> (Theme music)

I like this guy already.

Sorry for not trying to be inventive but merely maybe contrarian

I've come to think that one unequivocal upside of "affordable ASI" would be to bring about a world of discourse where discursers would hesitate to think of (not to mention carry) themselves as experts.

[Perhaps it reminds me of Le Guin's thoughts on tech X power, especially as represented in The Dispossessed]

it would seem not just rude, but even snide, to bias your interlocutor towards not carefully verifying the dependencies of your arguments

Widely dispersed and affordable AI would help because it (certainly, imho) makes the alternative, "trust but verify", so easy

And it would be strictly easier than using cloud chatGPT to sow misinformation because there are extra steps in that (--- nonsockpuppets would be inclined to verify the gist of what they are about to say as indeed misleading)

[As a bonus, this seems compatible with TFA, non-ideological anti-anti-intellectualism, and

https://schipper.ai/posts/technical-leaders-should-have-the-...

if we default to assuming that technical leaders should be different (not more, not less) than expert engineers ]

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