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Comment by atleastoptimal

These kinds of attempts at labelling global labor arbitrage as "colonialism" always seem naive. For thousands of years, capital has always sought the cheapest source of labor. Via offering cheap labor, China went from a poor country to a middle-income to wealthy country in a generation. The international exchange of currency for productivity via mutually beneficial arrangements is the means through which global GDP continues to grow exponentially. Data labelling and such is just the latest incarnation of that.

Now there are many other risks of AI associated with its ability to centralize power, lead to chaotic outcomes, etc, but that is disconnected from this somewhat mundane reality of how capitalism works. It seems like many opponents of AI are focusing on the wrong things, like how data centers apparently used more water than entire cities or turned the water supply brown.

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