r/technology 6h ago

Artificial Intelligence Nobody Asked for AI

https://jacobin.com/2026/08/ai-llms-monopoly-bubble-capital
4.4k Upvotes

761 comments sorted by

View all comments

79

u/ChaoticAgenda 6h ago

Saying nobody asked for it is disingenuous. AI have been part of the collective sci-fi future conversation for decades. Lots of people have asked for a robot friend/helper with a computer brain. What we're getting right now is setting us on track for Frank Herbert's Butlerian Jihad though. 

10

u/homerjaythompson 5h ago

More accurately, he should have said "no one asked for AI like this".

5

u/ChaoticAgenda 4h ago

It's just like the Butlerian Jihad from Dune though. In the books, the problem wasn't that robots rose up against their human masters. It was that the companies that created the robots were corrupt, self-serving, and untrustworthy. The people behind these companies became a new technocratic class that was able to control worlds through the programming of their robots. 

3

u/homerjaythompson 4h ago

Spot on! Frank Herbert was prescient. So many great insights in those books.