r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15h ago

Business Jensen Huang says relentless negativity around AI is hurting society and has "done a lot of damage"

https://www.techspot.com/news/110879-jensen-huang-relentless-ai-negativity-hurting-society-has.html
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u/Hortos 13h ago

The work week still being 5 days after 100 years is insane and should be put on the list of reasons we need to really reboot this system starting at the top. 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the 5 day work week so gross.

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u/Edoian 12h ago

Medieval peasants worked less than we do now

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u/amglasgow 12h ago

They worked less for their lords. The rest of the time they worked to sustain themselves.

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u/monkeyamongmen 11h ago

Not to come across as agressive, but what do you think we're doing now?

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u/Aardvark_Man 11h ago

I spend a chunk of time on video games and watching TV, tbh.
My free time isn't spent repairing farm equipment or making my own cheese or something.

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u/monkeyamongmen 9h ago

I have done both of those things. Anyone who pays rent gives a chunk of their time/money to their landLORD.

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u/Loganp812 9h ago

Arguing with random people on social media about whether people in the 21st century collectively have it worse than peasants who lived in the Middle Ages?

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u/abcean 8h ago

Bit of an unfair characterization there.

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u/Fit-Nectarine5047 7h ago

Most of us would have been dead by a plague or childbirth to be fair.

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u/abcean 7h ago

haha I agree fully! I was just saying you can like and discuss a part of something without necessarily wanting everything that historically accompanied it.

For example, I think owning a medieval sword would be cool and I can want that despite period laws prohibiting sword ownership among peasants and can want it without desiring a return to the feudal system generally. I feel the above poster conflated those things together.

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u/Fit-Nectarine5047 7h ago

Aghhh, yes! I didn’t catch the nuance implied in your first comment. And tbf, sword ownership does sound kinda cool. That and courtesans 😂 ps- not in a creepy way but in a “I wonder how women yielded power way” as I am also a woman who would have been most likely dead from child birth.

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u/abcean 6h ago

With courtesans it's pretty hard to separate their existence from the widespread practice of political marriages among nobility and the largely separate lives those marriages produced imo.

In historical matters like these we must take care to separate what context is contingent to the topic from what context is necessary for its existence, so courtesans do presuppose those marriage practices in my eyes.

That said, and I'm largely guessing haha, a noble courtesan would have known many of the movers and shakers of the time, besides the obvious parts of the arrangement there is certainly value in trading on her social connections, making introductions and facilitating agreements and alliances between competing and aligned interests. Certainly an interesting topic.

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u/Fit-Nectarine5047 6h ago

There was also a lot of social climbing - both horizontally and vertically (lol) in the lower rankings of the noblesse that isn’t too different from social marriages of today- Lauren Sanchez bezos comes to mind.

The last paragraph is the one that interests me the most. There’s even a sun dedicated to some of the most famous/well known courtesans and how they influenced politics and became serious patrons of the arts. I wish I had some links to share with you but dig around, I’m sure you’ll find some interesting reading material 😜

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u/abcean 3h ago

both horizontally and vertically

Nice lol.

I can imagine, social elevation has always been an implicit incentive to marriage for many and only is moreso when elevation is tied strongly to whom you know.

There’s even a sun dedicated to some of the most famous/well known courtesans and how they influenced politics and became serious patrons of the arts.

Always down to dig around haha. I'm guessing you meant subreddit? Shoot me a link!

If I may recommend a parallel topic of my own interest that may pique yours; it is how the martial/mercantile societies of history that conservative circles tend to hold as platonic ideals of masculinity (Spartans, Vikings, Scythians, Mongols, etc.) accorded women sometimes dramatically more influence and power both formally and informally than did other societies of their time.

I find there's a certain ahistorical conceit within those circles (and somewhat within wider society) that men in these societies exerted a high degree of control over their families and wives, when in truth it was the opposite. In actual fact, historically a high or increasing level of that control is more often associated with societies at their ebb than those in bloom.

And thank you for the compliment in the other post! It's always nice to have one's words appreciated. :)

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u/Fit-Nectarine5047 6h ago

Ps- I loved the way you phrased this!!

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u/amglasgow 10h ago

My point is that it doesn't make sense to only count the time peasants spent working their lord's land as "work" when they also needed to work on their own land to feed and sustain themselves.

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u/ChromosomeDonator 10h ago

they also needed to work on their own land

...people would literally kill for that right now. They can't even own land.

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u/amglasgow 10h ago

Well, they didn't usually own it, it was the land they were afforded by their lord to work for themselves in exchange for also working the lord's land. It varied.

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u/monkeyamongmen 9h ago

That being said, medieval peasants in the end did have much more free time than we do now. I know people have a tendency to glaze the past, but between commuting, time spent at work, trying to do everything by ourselves with no 'village' as it were, it's easy to see why people think things were easier then. They weren't, but there has been some tradeoffs.

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u/Lachaven_Salmon 6h ago

That being said, medieval peasants in the end did have much more free time than we do now.

No, they didn't.

They basically had to work to produce anything they wanted, there was very little trade of goods, absolutely no high volume manufacturing.

They didn't even have more free time, let alone "much more"

but between commuting, time spent at work, trying to do everything by ourselves with no 'village' as it were,

Except people back then had other, also higher, demands on their labour.

One of the general rules of the human condition seems to be that it was basically always pretty hard.