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[–] 68 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The legal reasoning cuts through corporate justifications—AI implementation is a voluntary business decision, not an unforeseeable catastrophe.

It makes sense. Nobody is ready to figure out what to do with those workers cause the chuds of the world are afraid of what happens when you give people UBI (they want to lord over other people through wealth and inequality)

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  • [–] 31 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    China definitely doesn't want that many workers suddenly disenfranchised and angry

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Why does the Chinese government worry about sudden mass unemployment in a way Western governments do not?

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    They're walking a thin line between restrictive policies and QoL guarantees.

    It's hard to explain as a non-native English speaker but they basically guarantee an acceptable way of living with mobility, housing, jobs and other stuff in exchange for control, surveillance and censorship.

    In Western government the equation looks different, at least for now.

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  • [–] 61 points 6 months ago (15 children)

    Nobody's considered who is gonna buy all the stuff when all the employees are laid off

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  • [–] 39 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    The future is two corporations, eternally B2Bing back and forth across the desiccated husk of the Earth. A perfect, all-encompassing synergy.

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    I think a statistic I saw recently was that nearly 50% of American consumer spending is attributed to the top 10% of consumers.

    Which would largely indicate that it doesn't matter because those who have the money will continue to spend it and those that don't will continue to get poorer.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    This is what's happening to Vegas, the number of visitors is dropping but the casino profit is increasing. The city no longer caters to the middle class but to millionaires.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Do Vegas casinos own a sizeable stake in online gaming? If so, it would be interesting to see what part of those increasing profits are due to us poors spending on online gaming increasing while we never set foot in Vegas.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I have always loved the saying: Lie, outrageous lie, statistic.

    Data is a wonderfull thing, but it often can be really easily to be presented in a way, that while being true, is not representing the truth.

    Like if we would just look the numbers containing just necessities and remove the luxury products it would not be that lopsided.

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  • [–] 64 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    I like this, and so should anyone who wants to see China on an ethical gradient, not black or white. This is unironically one of the advantages of centralized, authoritarian and undemocratic government: you can make decisions like this, just like that. And sometimes these decisions are good, far-sighted.

    Now let's not forget about the downsides of China's totalitarianism.

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  • [–] 17 points 6 months ago

    I appreciate your nuanced take of recognising achievements where they are made for humans and humanity, while also recognising that no country is perfect and that we are allowed to ask for more from our government and a better future for ourselves without exploitation.

    Something most of the tankies can't seem to appreciate for themselves.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    This doesn't seem like a totalitarianism issue, though. The High or Supreme courts (other courts are available) could rule that replacement with AI is not a valid reason for termination of employment, and the result would be much the same.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    This is unironically one of the advantages of centralized, authoritarian and undemocratic government

    Policy that benefits the plurality at the demands of the working class are centralized, authoritarian, and undemocratic?

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Policies that are implemented through centralized, authoritarian, and undemocratic means can benefit the plurality, and can be more easily implemented when desired by the ruling class.

    This is a very different claim from the one you’re trying to see.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    Policies that are implemented through centralized, authoritarian, and undemocratic means can benefit the plurality

    You're describing a technocracy, which claims benefits on paper to defend policy that is generally unpopular and requires enormous policing to impose.

    But Chinese policies are broadly popular and well received.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    They say they don't want to replace workers. They say they just want to use AI to make existing workers more efficient. Very well; let's hold them to their word.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    See the article or provide other suggestions before sea-lioning.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (4 children)

    It's possible that I'm just a dumbass, but...

    1. I don't see the part of the article that explains how you will hold them to their word. Am I overlooking something?
    2. This is the first time I've seen "sea lion" used as a verb (though maybe I can google this one)
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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    This kicks the can down the road a bit, but I don’t see how this is cause for celebration. Businesses will just open a new company and avoid having that company hiring humans to escape labor laws that relate to job elimination. This can all likely be escaped with a little legal hopscotch.

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  • [–] 30 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    That's what regulation is.

    Making things inconvenient over and over again so worse things don't happen, or take significantly longer and require more concerted effort to happen. It's a good thing. We should make it harder for bad actors to do shitty things.

    Pretending something is pointless because it may not be 100% effective is absurd.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago

    Honestly I think its China just protecting its economy, western businesses are already finding that AI now costs more than just hiring humans and gives a worse output, the chinese government is just preventing their own economy from falling into the same trap.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Because China’s government knows the last thing it needs is a bunch of unemployed people.

    It’s so weird how single-party rule can sometimes be more responsive to the people. Because there’s no illusion: if the people get unhappy enough, CCP is gone.

    Meanwhile the US we live with these bizarre illusions about how the people are truly in power, while our government is driven into the ground by plutocrats and their pet priests.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Will they suceed?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (9 children)

    It's so they don't have to think about/implement the utopia of no one having to work. If they made it possible for people not to need to work, those people without work would have time to educate themselves and think about how their ruling class is fucking them over, and to organize. This would probably lead to the ruling class going out of power, so they can't have that, it's better to keep them employed even though they don't have to be.

    Alternatively, if people go out of work and they don't implement the no-work utopia, the ruling class loses power because people whose survival is threatened will kill their leaders.

    The best the ruling class can do is keep inventing jobs no one needs and continuing to deceive people that the jobs need to be done.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    That is absolutely not the subject of this ruling. The ruling forbid the termination of a work contract for the reason of it being replaced by AI. That is a significant difference : the problem is not to replace workers with AI, it is of who will pay in the society for it. China rules that companies will pay for the transition, not the workers and the state.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    I don't understand your point, your job has just been made automatable, your skills superfluous... But you're supposed to stay employed at the same place for the same thing? And "paying", is not happening anyway, automation is a good thing, I guess you meant who is supposed to benefit from it? I completely agree that workers should not "lose" (https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/68074600/25823579), but it just logically does not make sense to stay employed when your job literally does not need to exist anymore... Instead, as a worker, you should just be able to chill now and do nothing, not indefinitely stay at a company that doesn't need you anymore.

    This isn't something that makes sense to be handled by companies. What if someone can not find a job in the first place because while they were studying, there was a breakthrough that made their field of study superfluous? Or someone loses (or voluntarily quits) their job because of any other reason, and then while searching for a new job, the automation breakthrough happens? Etc etc etc. Which company pays for them?

    This is just simply nothing that makes sense to be solved by individual companies, but by the government.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    You're missing the problem here.

    What will happen in the west (and is already happening) is that companies will automate the jobs and fire the employees because they don't need them anymore.

    But with this, bo more jobs will be created, and the liberals in power are hard at the task of deleting any employment. So people who are fired and can't find a new job will just starve or build an alternate economy cyberpunk style.

    The first step to prevent this crisis is to forbid companies to fire employees for this specific reason. This will give time for the society (people, government) to find solutions.

    Another problem of letting companies do whatever they want is what is expected to happen : companies fire people now not because ai can replace them, but in order to hire them later in much worse conditions than before, with ai monitoring the job of the workers.

    I 100% agree that ai is the future that can free us from work. But you can't simply let things happen, because it would severely disrupt the whole society.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    I dunno. I think this is better than getting laid off due to fake corporate bs (when it's actually outsourcing, layoffs, and a hidden recession)

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    The issue is not laying off people whose jobs were replaced by AI, the issue is what happens when people are laid off.

    Firstly, regarding the people that were laid off, if they continue to get paid their salary for some time, and then indefinitely get some basic social security, then being laid off is basically no problem for them, it just means some less luxury for some time.

    Secondly, if the profit from laying someone off goes towards public funds instead of the owner class' pockets, then simply everyone benefits from more automation.

    Of course, none of this is happening in China (and in the US, where you're probably from), so "continuing to do your job even though your job could be automated" seems like a good deal, but it is really not. But that's why I made my original comment, because we should be striving for the real solutions, not band-aids that maintain the status quo.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    Are you assuming that AI could actually effectively repkace humans? Because cost-wise it simply can't.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    No matter what AI currently means, originally it is just a term for artificial systems that can do intelligent things that previously only humans were able to do. As such, yes, I do think that AI can effectively replace humans, because it actually has done so in a lot of industries for a lot of tasks. For example, AI is a visual imaging system that can differentiate bad potatoes from good potatoes and automatically remove the bad potatoes from the conveyor belt. Previously that was done by humans, now, that is mostly done by AI.

    LLMs are just the latest flavor of AI, which also can effectively replace workers for certain tasks. The tasks LLMs effectively replace workers by is very limited though, and currently, LLMs are used for too many applications for which they are not suited for, at which they are not effectively replacing workers.

    For example copywriting ad texts, I think LLMs are perfectly capable of that and can and should effectively replace a large share of human workers. Solving new challenges in programming, LLMs are pretty terrible at that. Coding the 95 millionth ad website, LLMs are likely capable at that.

    In an utopian society, everything is automated by AI (not LLMs) and humans can focus on whatever they want to without having to worry about anything except keeping the automation running.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    In a socialized economy, unemployment should be a goal. If a worker can be replaced with AI, the employer's taxes should increase, and UBI should increase.

    The economy that demands humans perform work better performed by machines is deeply perverted.

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago* (17 children)

    I really doubt they'll actually stick to this in practice. Keep in mind, China is not a place with binding rule of law.

    When it gets in the way of whatever industrial expansion, workers rights to not have toxic rocket fuel falling on them or to get paid for their house being demolished aren't even respected.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    found the idiot who still believes that America is the pinnacle of following the laws and believes American propaganda about China. unlike America where pedophiles get rewarded with money and positions of power. China executes them publicly.

    Hell China is much harsher on criminals regardless of race... unlike America where blacks get jailed for doing drugs while white serial rapists get a pat on the head because "one mistake shouldn't ruin a a young kid's life". (with those kids being fucking adults).

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    If you're actually interested in Chinese justice vs. American justice, and how that's related to rule of law vs. party leadership, there's interesting things to say.

    However, a month old account coming in and fixating on race, which wasn't even mentioned in OP but rather later in response to someone else, seems more like trolling.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago*

    ah yes the old "you are a new account so anything you say is fake" defense. how fucking pathetic are you? wait don't answer that. I don't care about your delusional narrative. come back with an actual argument rather than a "your account is new so you must be fake" statement.

    China isn't perfect but it's at least not run by a bunch of pedophiles like America or a bunch of war crime creators like Canada.

    but what can I expect from someone who values account age over truth.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    The rule of law isn't an exclusively Western concept. But since you're speaking so confidently you must be an expert in the Chinese legal system.

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (8 children)

    I have family in adjacent, politically similar countries. Most likely, you're a white person with no connections to Asia who likes to project fantasies on it, which is why you're on .ml.

    It's a Liberal concept, not a Western one. Tudor England or whatever worked the same way before the age of revolutions. As did everything else all the way back to prehistory, more or less.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    I have family in adjacent, politically similar countries

    I got my answer, thank you very much.

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  • [–] -3 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    No, you got called out on basically being a left-themed orientalist, and now want to run away.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Most likely, you’re a white person

    Robin DiAngelo in the chat, trying to make labor issues about race again

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago*

    I mean, you can argue with .ml about political philosophy or economics, but it's a waste of time because that's not their real motive. You might as well argue rocketry with a moon landing denier.

    "These places you have funny ideas about are real places to me, and they're not like that" is more productive. They can either actually engage, or run away to protect themselves.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    China has about the same laws on property rights as elsewhere. It was introduced in 2007 which is why we see so many stories on funny "strong nail" houses from China.

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china-nail-houses-in-pictures-property-development

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  • [–] -2 points 6 months ago

    Yup, you can write anything. The USSR also guaranteed freedom of speech in it's constitution, IIRC.

    People who are purely Western often forget it, but laws that actually apply to everyone all the time are a very recent phenomenon. Historically, and in other places, they're more like guidelines for what to do when there's no other major considerations.

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