Is it worth living forever if *everyone* does?

[meadowlander]

34. I didn't say that it would offer an utopia.

I suggested that it will accelerate advancements in medicine that will extend human lifespans and posed some questions on what the implications for that would be for our society.

And I've said repeatedly that Democrats should focus on regulation to address the worst potential abuses.

But to get regulation you have to win. So what is your plan to win?

Silicon Valley isn't a monolith and many of the workers are liberal, even if the CEOs and VCs are less and less so. They tend to be more libertarian than culturally conservative. If they sense that the nativist anti-immigrant wing of the Republican party is going to cut off their sweet, sweet cheap visa pipeline, they could swing back or break off altogether. If we were the party that was working with them to put sensible controls in place but also to fund and support obvious opportunities, we'd have them back in our camp again.

Most actual human beings already use AI at work now and that will be more and more true in the next few years. As they use it, they will see that it's not a boogey man. It's a powered up version of Clippy or Alexis that can work quickly with massive data sets. It needs to be regulated so it doesn't become something worse than that. But to pretend that it offers no potential benefits for people, that the fact that the companies are owned by weird ammoral douchebags (as if 99% of current companies aren't already), and to set ourselves up as the party that opposes all AI makes us look like out of touch contrarians who are sitting on our comfy retirements and don't care about what happens to young people.

Why did we lose the last election? Because Trump told young people that Democrats were coming for their TikTok. And because the Republicans have spent the last 30 years painting Democrats as holier than thou scolds who want to take away your hamburgers, make you take cold showers in the dark, and live in a shoebox composting your own poo until the flood waters carry you away.

Just wait until everyone under 35 has an AI girlfriend or boyfriend and a AI therapist, has a job that relies on AI and spends 90% of their free time generating AI photos and videos to enjoy and share and see how far we get as the party that wants to take AI away from them.

"AI will inevitably lead to a dystopian nightmare so we might as well all just give up now" is not a party platform.

We win by being the party that is for something. What do you want to be for?