alt Hacker News> it's starting to terrify me how it seems that the worst people in the world are more than willing to wield this power, while good people opt out
Maybe it's just that the capability is bad. Adtech, for example, isn't something that anyone uses for good. They blow a lot of smoke about it--looking at you, Apple--but despite the "good-washing" it's all just the same extractive, invasive, dehumanizing business. Bad people will naturally concentrate around this capability. I know because I've worked with a few of them.
AI coding tools seem like they're engineered to undermine cautious, rigorous, and pragmatic engineering discipline. Of course the bosses want that, they see a short term path to massive output increases and nothing sounds better. They'll be cashed out by the time the mess needs to be cleaned up, that's someone else's problem. People who are predisposed to this kind of antisocial behavior are the ones who concentrate around AI tools. Rigorous, careful engineers who care about building maintainable systems that will outlast their tenure find less value in them.
I think it's more nuanced than
> Technology is how we expand human capability.
I think as a general statement about technology as a whole it's true. But do all technologies expand human capabilities? I don't think so.
In my mind, I would separate technology from its application.
Advertising tech and AI coding tools are applications of technology stacks that could have been used to create what you and I might agree to be "better" tools. I don't need to tell you why ad tech got created instead of something that is a net societal benefit.
At the same time, I would say that, yes, those applications do indeed expand human capabilities. The important nuance here is whose capability, and to what end.
All I am saying is that opting out of this, in whatever form that takes, hands your agency over to those who would use it to enrich themselves at the cost of others. I sincerely feel that decades of this type of capitulation is exactly how we got to where we are today.