If Jesus were a U.S. citizen, he would certainly organize a general strike that would last until the oligarchs were driven out of the temple once and for all.

He probably tried that long ago, but received no support from the American people and was therefore forcibly shipped to a concentration camp in a foreign country thousands of miles away, where he likely perished … or even worse … no one knows where he is … the U.S. authorities refuse to comment on the matter, yet they continue to commit mass murder in his name…

Naturally, in this system, the logical response is to vote for the Democrats because they are the lesser evil.

If the U.S. had a majority voting system, it would never be possible for the U.S. to have the government it does. Unfortunately, however, this is a fact. So I can only say: Fuck off - I obviously know more about how the U.S. political system works than you do - and I’m not even a U.S. citizen.

Please don’t get me wrong: It’s great that New York has the mayor it does. But put that in a global context: In Europe, Mamdani would be a moderate centrist politician, by no means a radical leftist.

Here’s an outside perspective: Regardless of who is in the White House, the U.S. forces other countries under its thumb - using the tools of predatory capitalism, which is represented by the political parties in the U.S. no matter who’s in office. For the rest of the world, the only difference is whether this happens openly, as it does now, or is nicely disguised, as was the case with an eloquent president like Obama.

So there is just as little of an alternative for the world as there is for US citizens. Of course, we would like to see someone in power in the US with whom one can at least somewhat reason, but in essence it makes hardly any difference.

This is the reality for the world and also for US citizens.

Naturally, in this system, the logical response is to vote for the Democrats because they are the lesser evil.

However, that does not solve the fundamental problem for anyone. The problem lies in the fact that the US is by no means a democracy, as it is portrayed through Hollywood and all that.

The US is an oligarchic system very similar to today’s Russia. These are simply facts.

Posts like this don’t change the facts: If US citizens want a life worth living, there is simply no way around overthrowing the existing system.

It’s that simple, because even the U.S. Constitution, which was drafted with slave-holding states in mind, stands in the way of democracy.

What I’m saying here is simply reinforced by the fact that in the richest country in the world, there are no social benefits whatsoever, as are more than common in all democracies.

Edit: Since this comment is once again being downvoted simply for stating the facts. The answer is not violence, but mass civil disobedience by U.S. citizens. Together, they would have the power to put a stop to their billionaire rulers. Tomorrow, there is even a symbolic one-day general strike planned - but unfortunately, that is not enough: there must be a general strike by the citizens that lasts until the oligarchy is overcome. This is not utopian, but feasible, if only enough people understand that the U.S. system logically leads only further and further toward what it is constitutionally designed to do.

This is an approach that could never succeed in the U.S., because there the focus is always on throwing as much money as possible at the defense contractors so that the billionaires can get even richer.

A current example: the war of aggression against Iran that the U.S. is waging in violation of international law.

To my knowledge, not even a halfway plausible reason has been given for this. And so it becomes quite clear that this is simply about shifting state resources into the pockets of the super-rich - and U.S. citizens just go along with it, even though it isn’t even them who are dying by the thousands, but rather, among others, Iranian schoolchildren, hundreds of whom were murdered simply by a bombing of a school…

Yes, that’s right. And that’s exactly why he’s climbing the career ladder. That’s how it is in a country ruled by criminals.

The U.S. legal system is just as unlikely to hold him accountable as the administration, because it is so corrupt that it not only fails to fulfill its purpose but serves as a tool for these criminals to secure their power indefinitely. Another example of this is the Epstein case.

This system is obviously beyond repair. Yet it will continue this way, because U.S. citizens aren’t doing anything about it.

It doesn’t matter that you’re not a scientist. Your approach is still interesting - and yes: maybe it will inspire people or even spur research on these topics. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

That is true, of course, but LLMs, image and video generation, and so on, will, in my view, lead to fewer and fewer people being willing to publish their creative works, because the staggering output of AI models will not only make it increasingly unlikely that they will receive compensation for their work, but also that they will receive recognition for it.

As a result, I think, there will likely be fewer and fewer people willing to accept that their work is being used for free to train precisely those models from which only the people who steal their work benefit - without this theft, the business model of OpenAI and the like simply cannot function.

In my view, this will sooner or later lead to a vicious cycle in which the models are trained predominantly only with content they have generated themselves. This will then lead to a stagnation of what we understand as culture - for these models are neither creative nor intelligent: they can merely combine existing content to create something that appears new; however, they cannot produce anything truly new. Nevertheless, given its ever-expanding reach, it will likely be this repetitive AI output that has a significant influence on popular culture, at the very least.

That sounds very interesting - please keep us posted.

I think it’s very important to examine the effects of LLMs on society, how they influence discourse, their impact on the formation of public opinion, and the question of whether - and if so, to what extent - they shift the interpretation of words and narratives toward the few corporations that offer cloud models, and so on.

This is a broad field, but one that strikes me as quite important from a wide variety of perspectives.

It’s good to hear that there are people here who are looking into this from a scientific standpoint. I’d be very happy if you could update us on the state of research from time to time.

The more perspectives there are on this topic, the better.

But…

Yes, that’s probably how it will go.

Culture will likely always exist, but unfortunately it’s now increasingly competing with an even more massive, uniform, and uncreative flood of commercial bullshit.

I fear this will have a disastrous effect. The early signs are already very clear: misinformation on a massive scale, the centralization of “interpretive authority” in the hands of just a few, very powerful companies, and so on.

It’s not as if the internet wasn’t already full of what you might call products of the culture industry, but now these products aren’t even produced by people anymore -instead they’re churned out automatically in an all-consuming flood of mediocrity.

I’m aware of that - unfortunately.

I meant that ironically, since Germany, of all countries, has a history marked by totalitarian surveillance and oppression due to its Nazi past.

What is happening in the U.S. and what Palantir stands for bears a striking resemblance to the strategies of the Nazis during the Third Reich.

This makes it all the more alarming that even the Germans have clearly learned nothing from history and now want to engage in baseless mass surveillance once again - and to do so, of all things, with Palantir, a dystopian tech giant owned by a self-confessed fascist and enemy of democracy.

AI is a new way of combining what already exists. Moreover, these models serve as a tool of power for those who are already powerful.

“AI is good” is not a coherent argument.

The entertainment industry is obviously just one simple example.

The reason I mention this example is that you’ll have a hard time defining what culture is - and, consequently, why it makes sense to preserve it.

Attempting to engage in such a discussion on a social media platform is doomed to fail from the start.

I had assumed that what I mean would be clear enough. That’s why I included the comparison with climate change in the description.

I have no idea what you’re getting at, but it’s a fact that every minute - if not every second - AI-generated content is being published that you could never read in your entire lifetime.

That’s the scale we’re talking about.

Try to imagine what that might mean for people who make a living doing anything that could even remotely be called creative work.

I’m afraid it’s true this time. You do know how LLMs work, don’t you?

Edit: And you do have at least some idea of how the entertainment industry works, right?

Just a quick aside on this: ICE’s budget exceeds that of all other federal agencies combined (their budget is equivalent to the military spending of a medium-sized country). For obvious reasons, this “agency” is likely also Palantir’s biggest source of revenue.

I wonder if that’s a secret police force? I’m from Germany, though - and hey, what do I know about it…

I see, so the Meta employees have the typical conservative mindset: any misdeed is perfectly fine as long as it doesn’t affect you personally.

That’s what I thought - it’s probably not just the employees of social media companies who feel this way, but also those at Palantir and similar. Not to mention the “defense” contractors and the like.

I really wonder how these people can still look at themselves in the mirror.

Yes, it’s so obvious by now that even the Maga morons might be able to understand it.

And yet this is nothing new: The U.S. has been an oligarchy for at least thirty years or more, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that many, many people in the richest country in the world live as if they were citizens of one of the poorest Third World countries.

It’s unbelievable how absurd a country can be.