First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. Then, it built similar technology that generated full-motion video like something from a Hollywood movie.
Now, it has unveiled technology that can recreate someone’s voice.
The high-profile A.I. start-up said on Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like yours.
That doesn’t make sense. Some technologies are bad. One that actively and systematically dismantles rights, for example. Nearly every capitalist technological advancement has helped capitalists exploit workers for more profit—and we are nearing the endgame there. None of these things should “just be adapted to.” Passive consumerism isn’t exactly a heroic position lol
Is that really saying we’d be better off as serfs under feudalism? I can see the sustainability argument, but not the exploitation argument.
Well…serfs in the Middle Ages actually did work less than we do today. Which was the church’s idea in order to keep rebellions from happening.
Now, that was indentured servitude, so it’s not a 1:1 comparison. But if we’re talking about output, exploitation, and profit, we are working more, creating far more value, and we are still working to afford the ability to consume and live with necessities.
Now, I’m staunchly anti-capitalist. But as a logical anti-capitalist anarchist in modern times, I can still look back at history and say that capitalism is inextricably tied to some human progress…but only because it was the dominant system while humanity progressed. So, the progress that led to better, healthier lives cannot be separated from the outcomes of capitalism. Fine, capitalism has walked hand in hand with humanity through progress.
But. First off, “hand in hand” is a generous way of putting it. We work for a system, we sacrifice lives for a system, as opposed to bending or altering the system to better serve human lives. We squeezed people into an order that served capitalism.
My point is that as we’ve progressed, we held humanity back for the sake of capitalism. We had to fight capitalists/the ruling class for the most basic of human rights, and those were bloody, bloody battles. Capitalism and its proponents gleefully slaughtered people in service of a system that favors those with the money and power. And the “worker rights” we have today are the most basic imaginable. We fought for an 8 hour day, to keep kids from dying in mines, to keep harmful products away from money making ventures, to have days off at all…and after all of that, we still work more than middle age peasants.
And maybe “indentured servitude” isn’t exactly in practice today (in most of the world, but it’s definitely not completely eradicated), I don’t know exactly on a granular level, how those of us that survive by the skin of our teeth on incredibly low wage jobs really differs all that much from indentured servitude. People work to keep their houses and to keep from starving. And the majority of houses are still owned by the higher classes! And we have entire markets that thrive off of the suffering thatcomes with poverty. Credit card and credit reporting, payday loans, the entire system of rent, foods affordable for lower income people being addictive and deadly…we’ve built a system that pushes people down, and then wrings them dry. And we still work more than peasants in the Middle Ages.
The figures I can find suggest that medieval peasants worked longer hours than people today in Western Europe. I am not sure if the comparison is valid, though. The modern figures only give hours worked while employed. In any case, we work for a considerably higher standard of living for a much larger population.
You are right that this situation did not simply happen, but had to be brought about through social change; largely through unions.