People like Altman and Musk are saying that Universal Basic Income will be necessary once AI has fully automated away most jobs, but at the same time they aggressively fight against any kind of tax policy that would allow UBI to function.
I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
It isn't the backlash against AI that will get ugly, it will be the backlash against the ten people who suddenly own the entire world's money supply
It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
> It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
Careful with that. I think that kind of perfectionist, all-or-nothing thinking is an echo of the propaganda meant to help the rich guys' pitch. Basically: "doesn't the government suck because it's not perfect? Kill it! (BTW, it's also the only thing powerful enough keep the rich guys under control, so increasing distrust sets them free)."
I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
Fair point -- none of us want to be in the situation where all our current institutions have failed and there's nothing to replace them. That is chaos and anarchy and a true mess. Even the most hardened ideologues put in that environment would want a more orderly society. "Order" is another word to be careful of.
> I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
We agree on this as well. We currently don't put in the work to make a good and just society. I don't think it's that we're too lazy en masse, but too busy rings true. Too distracted as well.
Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Obviously I can't know the outcome. But it feels like we're all at a moment in history where major change is coming, which might be great or might be a new level of living hell.
> Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
Yes, but I think your more specific examples are more liberal-coded, and leave a false impression. Liberals aren't immune. I'd say the biggest example of "fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed" is political polarization. There are a lot of liberals that are unsalvageably deep into that, reject finding common ground (even in obviously self-defeating ways), and who seem to be able to only conceive of unity as being total domination of their other.
> But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Can you be more specific about who's been woken up?
I haven't decided which word I like best to describe it but if the citizens are not on the same team or if there isn't a team anymore everything goes to shit. Collective/community/unity etc
'Teeth suck because if you don't keep them maintained they degrade over time'
Isn't like the basic of reality that everything drifts? If you want to keep order it is a constant task, not a onetime creation be it an institution or a house?
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
This is exactly it. Also, even if UBI is implemented:
1) It's probably going to be just enough to let one scrape by as a member of a permanent underclass. You will not be comfortable on it.
2) I doubt it will be permanent, there will be a rug-pull once said underclass has been politically neutered. They'll kill off the UBI deprivation, mainly because they just don't care about those people.
Just because a hypocrite says something doesn't mean that thing is wrong. If a drug addict tells you not to use drugs, they're still right about that. UBI is the solution, isn't it? Capitalism both requires everyone to have a job while at the same time providing no guarantee that jobs are available. The idea doesn't get tainted just because the words left the mouths of a few rich hypocrites. We have to do it despite them.
UBI is an "entitlement". Just look at how well a certain slice of the powerful view other "entitlements" like Obamacare or Social Security.
I like the idea of UBI, but the biggest problem with UBI is that it relies on the government to fund it, and the government can be controlled and subverted. UBI might go away, get held up by government shutdowns, not be indexed to inflation, etc - there's a ton of ways things that could go wrong if peoples' entire livelihoods are under the control of one entity.
UBI is not solution. Not even in theory. A system where majority is powerless will be the system where majority is oppressed and that is what it will be.
It is a lie pushed by people who go out of their way to be cruel whenever they can.
Given how resistant American voters and politicians are against any sort of welfare or social assistance I doubt UBI would ever be possible here. Remember the backlash against "ObamaPhones" and "welfare queens!" We can't even get mandatory paid parental leave approved; UBI would be a non-starter.
Americans are fine with low taxes for billionaires and don't mind high inequality as one of their core beliefs is that upward class mobility is achievable and they might also get rich.
When the checks had trumps name on them during the pandemic they loved it. They don’t hate welfare on principle, they hate it when the propaganda tells them to hate it.
You do have to imagine the political environment where unemployment is rapidly climbing among the middle class rather than the current status quo if your intent is to accurately predict the future.
I'm skeptical. Even during the great depression FDR was only able to get work programs approved that assigned jobs like Conservation Corps, Public Works and WPA rather than just handing out cash.
And even then amongst bank collapses, failed farms, starving people and catastrophic unemployment there was STILL heavy opposition to any government assistance programs because there is a very deep fear entrenched in the American psyche that government aid creates dependency and weakens individual responsibility. There is a widespread false narrative that any sort of government help is leftist socialism and communism.
Elon's companies famously pay very little in taxes, he spent last year attempting to gut the federal government, he complains constantly about how much he pays in taxes, and he's been very vocal about California's recent efforts to tax very wealthy people.
The California Billionaire Tax is a bad idea. It's not that wealth taxes can't work (most of the US taxes property just fine), it's that taxes need to be fair and predictable. The phase-in is too narrow and its implementation is too arbitrary. Why $1B? Why $5%? Why won't CA voters hit up billionaires again?
Support for Trump, or even Republicans writ large, means support for reducing taxes (both estate and income) on the wealthy, while increasing them on consumers (via tariffs). Musk has been an ardent supporter of Trump.
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, this line of reasoning makes no sense in a two party state where each party offers a menu of positions. Supporters are forced to make tradeoffs and pretending otherwise just gives you an incoherent picture of reality.
"Two party state" as in a government where politics are bifurcated. In a one party state, a citizen's voting history isn't informative whatsoever about their beliefs. In a direct democracy, their votes give you a complete map of the positions on any issue that came up. In the US, we only know that an R voter prefers the entire set of R policies over the entire set of D policies. Maybe they're pro-taxes, pro-welfare, anti-immigrant, pro-life, and pro-gun, and they weight these positions such that it makes sense to sacrifice the taxes and welfare to get the rest. So, while the party is anti-taxes, everyone who supports it may not be.
UBI is a scapegoat, an easy answer to handwave the question about the job losses. People can't just live like that doing nothing and they won't. Before the current AI evolution the pro-UBI crowd would claim that in this utopia people would not need to work and they could create art. Now AI can create art and we see that with infinite supply it loses any kind of value.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving
Well, they are sociopaths so that checks out. What I find even more horrible is that they still somehow have an almost religious following, but it's also becoming clear they may be helping to flood the internet with bots that bolster their talking points against any push back. They especially have an audience here that defends them while they push an agenda to de-power and bury the working class.
Haven't really paid attention to Altman, so can't comment there, but on the Musk file I will say it is insane that anyone relies upon his future benevolence. And they do rely upon it given that America is 100% a plutocracy now and is run in the service of the ultra-rich who hold complete and utter control over government.
Musk's entire history on this planet betrays him to be a profoundly selfish individual with perilously little regard for anyone else. Musk and his ilk (Trump, Bezos, Page, Ellison, Thiel, etc) are more likely to see you ground up into Soylent Green than to offer largess like UBI.
> Already, as many as a quarter of Americans seem accepting of violence as a tool for achieving political change.
I'm surprised it's only a quarter: violence as a tool for achieving political change is the entire point of the right to bear arms.
EDIT: I'm not arguing for or against political violence, just noting an apparent inconsistency between Americans' views and one of the documents that they talk about as though it's holy writ.
I don’t condone it but I’m also expecting it to escalate. I grew up extremely poor and remained so until I dug myself out (through an absolutely ridiculous amount of work that no one should have to do this is not pro bootstraps).
Every week was a struggle to eat and the cost of living has significantly increased since then.
I guess the question is what is the terminal percentage of people who can’t afford to exist?
Some friends and I read "A People's History of the United States" a while back and were surprised at how true this is. US classroom history textbooks hold civil disobedience up as the One True Way to bring change, but it's alarming how often the backdrop of famous acts of civil disobedience was in fact incredible violence.
Our conclusion in our impromptu book club was that made sense: why would the state schools give students lots of examples of how violence against the state was an effective negotiating tool? It was extremely jarring to reconcile with the image of US history we'd been imbued with up to that point, which of course was also a reflection of our socioeconomic status at the time.
As a counterpoint, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" is also taught in schools, so it's possible I'm just selectively remembering things.
Ricks kinda beats a dead horse as he goes over and over again that non-violence is not unaggressive. It is typically quite militant when done well.
Non violence is a tactic, one that is typically better at achieving results than violence, as it tends to change the other side that is violent to adjust down to non violence as well. Like getting a drunk to be quieter by whispering to them (Note: that is a poor analogy).
Rick's book is just so very good and my poor internet comment can't possibly do it justice. He convinced me that the Civil Rights movement is so big because it gave the US a brand new tool in conflicts. It's not just violence or submission anymore.
And you can extend that to the history of the world. Change via non violent means is a historical aberration. We hold those examples up because they are so rare.
The true AI doomsayers believe in some sort of technological singularity, which means a point after which things become so strange that the world is radically transformed.
Things like "jobs" and "careers" are so integral to society that we can't really imagine what society would be like in a world where people don't have any clear purpose. That's why you won't get a definitive answer. The whole idea of a singularity is that people don't have the faintest clue what day to day life would look like after.
We often to choose to believe that a singularity can't happen, because we don't know what that even means. We can't answer the simple question. So it definitely better not happen, that would be very inconvenient.
I’m always amazed that when I tell people I intend to retire in my 50s, they tell me that I can’t possibly mean that and actively wonder how I could possibly fill my time. It’s as if we could not possibly function as humans without meaningless shifting of tangible/intangibles from one place to another.
Society is so hellbent on the idea that we need our job to be our identity, they lack the imagination for another other reality.
Sure working sucks, but have you tried not working? I think this is from lived experience because I've gone for stretches of not working (intentionally). It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment. I know it seems counter-intuitive but if you do succeed in your dream of retiring in your 50's I think you'll understand what I mean when you get there.
I think this varies wildly from person to person. I've also intentionally gone long stretches without working and those are the times when I've had a dramatically increased sense of purpose and fulfillment. Working for others reduces those things for me.
I'm in the age group where a lot of the people around me have retired. Some of them have fared very poorly, some have straight-up blossomed.
Ok but one of the great things about retiring when everyone else does is you have a community. If you stop working when you're young, everyone else in your network is probably still working.
I'm not against early retirement. One of my points was that, in general, it's harder to find fulfillment as a working age adult outside of work. Not impossible, just more challenging.
Sorry, but your comment isn't really responding to OP's main point.
> It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment.
If you actually get fulfillment from work, then great, continue to work. The critical thing that drives people to retire earlier than the average person is that their work doesn't give them a sense of fulfillment. It's literally just a way to fill out the day. Some people do have things that are more fulfilling than letting an employer tell them how to spend their day.
It is indeed ridiculous. People saying they're going to let someone else tell them what to do with their time, energy, and calendar, even if they hate doing it. The only explanation I have is that they have been letting the wrong people program them.
I believe that AI will continue to progress. I believe that we’re going to see a fast takeoff.
That said, some people are now discussing a “societal singularity” wherein society breaks before the actual emergence of AGI. I believe this is the trajectory we are on. The question is what happens to the unemployed. Democracies will not tolerate mass permanent unemployment, as we’ve seen over and over again.
UBI is a scam, many middle class folks would be worse off under UBI than they are under the current system. They will fight to defend the economic status quo.
In the end, I think capitalism is incompatible with the emergence of AGI, and I think an aligned ASI will smash the capitalist system simply out of pure egalitarianism. (Note: I was previously a proponent of capitalism.) I think many people will die trying to defend capitalism. We’re at the beginning of the AI wars.
In the US at least the middle class was already being hunted to extinction and it seems reasonable. This is just accelerant on that already burning fire.
It can't happen. For one - if it did happen it would mean all domains reach singularity at once, but we know the capability curve is jagged. Each domain advances at its own speed.
Second - the more you make progress, the harder it gets, exponentially harder. Maybe Newton could advance physics observing an apple fall, today they need space telescopes and billion dollar particle accelerators. The more tech advances, the harder it is. Will AGI be so "super" to cancel out exponentials?
And third - the AI progress is tied to learning signal, and we have exhausted the available data. In the last 1-2 years we have started using verified synthetic data (RLVR) but exponential difficulty is a barrier. Other domains don't even have built in verifiability like math and code. So there the progress will be slower. Testing a vaccine to be safe takes 6 months for 1 bit of information - that is how slow and expensive it can get in some domains. AI can't get the learning signal it needs across all domains fast enough.
You're asking a question that only applies to rational actors.
Corporations exist for one purpose: to get as much money as possible. Side concerns, which can range from "not destroying the environment" or "not destroying the economy," are objectively not their goal, nor do they consider them their responsibility. Those are things "someone else" should worry about.
AI destroying all jobs is similar to a nuclear arms race; these companies don't want to eliminate everyone's ability to buy things, but they don't want to be the only entity without that ability, so ...
That is mostly true but a bit of a simplification. They exist to do what the people who have power want them to do which is not always strictly profit maximization.
A ceo may realize rto will decrease profits but do it anyway because it increases the power delta between him and the workers.
The controlling votes are all part of the same social class. They would gladly give up a small amount of profit to keep the distance between them and the workers as large as possible.
To the extent it doesn't negatively impact the stock price sure but you would agree the CEO and any sort of power-trip they have is ultimately beholden to that right?
Why would the doomsayers be the ones who need to answer that? That’s kind of their point! It’s the AI boosters who need to answer that, and so far it’s just a big collective shrug + silence.
There are jobs AI can't easily come for... not always nice ones, but either too physically fiddly or too cheap to bother automating.
But jobs go "extinct" all the time. My ancestors going back generations were sugarhouse labourers. That job's gone, but the lineage isn't: we just do different things now.
The pattern seems pretty consistent: raise the floor (dishwashers, CNC machines, laundry), and people tend to climb to higher levels of abstraction. The real question is who captures those productivity gains; and historically, it isn't the workers.
Shoes are the classic example. Automation made them cheaper and accessible to everyone. Then, once the market was captured, mid-tier became the ceiling and anything above it got expensive again. Nobody won except the owners.
There will still be jobs. Manual jobs, the kind that break our backs and have us breath various stuff we shouldn't (dust, fumes). Robots are difficult and maybe not so economically viable when everyone is desperate for any job at any cost.
It's bizarre that some of the doomsayers are AI stakeholders. It's like they don't realize that most people don't have net worth in the 7-8 figures.
I console myself with the fact that without a functioning economy, AI will implode since capital will dry up. Then all of the investment in data centers, R&D, etc. will never be recovered. Then we'll be back to rational thinking? Maybe?
Yeah, but it doesn’t implode all at once - it’s not distributed evenly.
Something like over half of the US consumption is done by the top 10%, or something insane like that. This leads me to believe that a lot more people will eat shit, before enough feel real pain.
The consumer economy only exists to extract value from common people and funnel it up the wealth ladder. If robots and AI take over all the production, you don’t need a consumer economy, the robots produce and their output directly goes to the top. The rest of us are left to starve.
Eh, no? If everything goes to top, then economy of scale just don't work and whole automation is pointless, because you can make the goods in artisan way.
Take any econ 101 course, and you'll realize that this isn't a factor in the capitalist system. Capitalism is simply concerned with maximizing profit, and in this case, returning shareholder value. It's just simply not in the purview of the system to think about what happens when you completely get rid of your labor force.
Envisioned another way, the future of labor might look the way it did for laborers over 100 years ago, before major industries unionized; making 'Amazon-bucks' that can only be redeemed at the 'Amazon company store'.
No wages -> Nobody buys stuff and services -> Companies are going bankrupt -> No taxable income from consumers nor companies -> States are going bankrupt.
You can either go through UBI taxing automated work by 90%+ and pretend that capitalism is still a thing, or just nationalize everything and go with communism.
Henry Ford understood this problem with his Model T and realized that if he wants to sell it, he also needs to pay workers to be able to afford it.
Fully automated luxury space fascism doesn't really need buyers. A risk of high automation/post-scarcity is that abundance exists but remains under the control of people who are not interested in justice or equality or freedom. Lots of people feel that describes the leadership of most AI tech companies.
If they don't need your labor, and they don't need you as a customer, and they don't care about you as a person... where does that leave you?
[to be clear, I think post-scarcity, even in knowledge work, is a lot further off than most ai-doomsayers or ai-worshipers who take statements from people like Altman and Musk at face value]
They may they may not. The nobility has learned a lot in the past 200+ years. Powerful propaganda machines, powerful weaponry, and a small group of loyalists have proven extremely effective at controlling large populations.
I saw a talk by Brian Merchant (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/) a while back where he talked a lot about the Luddites and their revolts against automation. He's definitely not a fan of AI, but it was very interesting to hear the comparisons of AI resistance now to Luddite resistance to automation in the 1800's.
There was unfortunately no Q&A in the lecture, as probably the one question I would have asked him was this: What if the Luddites had gotten their way? What do you imagine our society and world would be like right now?
It's not meant to be a trick question or a "gotcha" question. Society would indeed have been different. Maybe it would be all wonderfully Star Trek utopia and we'd have found a win-win for everyone. Or maybe we'd just be not nearly as technically advanced as a society as we are now.
Ignoring CEO predictions, can anyone point to any major revolutionary technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life and employment statistics? AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable. Revolutions like this do create widening inequality while also increasing long run productivity. Yes inequality rises but what you should care about is your quality of life and that will also improve over time. There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well but…this happens during every major revolution—electricity the internet etc. so why do people treat AI like it’s a uniquely damaging phenomenon?
"Over the long run, it’s true that the Industrial Revolution radically boosted economic growth. But living through it was another matter entirely. Many people saw their wages stagnate and working conditions deteriorate as factory owners and industrialists came into immense wealth. (Just read a Charles Dickens novel, and you’ll get the idea.) This led to riots and, occasionally, attacks on the industrialists themselves."
Even if some tech were presented, people would just nitpick and quibble, saying the tech wasn't actually revolutionary, didn't truly have a net negative impact on quality of life, didn't truly have a net negative impact on employment, or the timeframe of the latter two.
Personally, I'd nominate gunpowder, DDT, leaded gasoline, and nuclear fission.
You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?
My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?
Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?
You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument.
That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.
Industrial revolution made lives of many people into a hell. In the long term we gained, but only after those people went through periods of violence and fights.
> AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable.
At this point, a lot of AI is hot water rather then powerful shift in our way of life.
We treat it as uniquely damaging, because it's touted as uniquely enhancing, or even uniquely revolutionary. "AI is not just any tool" is often the response to some asking to exercise choice in the tools they use. "You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does".
- If (big If) AI actually replaces workers, then we have a problem, because lots of folk lost their jobs
- If AI doesn't replace workers, then we have a recession, because a lot of the US economy now sits on top of corporations betting on it. And this will tank the economy and lots of folk will lose their jobs
It feels that the only path forward is a narrow one where AI removes some jobs, but not too many, but still enough so that the (immense, disproportionate) hype that was put on it does not come with a vengeance and the house of cards falls.
I don't think it an either / or. The current AI models, as they are, improve productivity quite a bit. They're just super expensive but the expense is being subsidized so it appears reasonable.
An alternative possibility is that the models become much cheaper and their use becomes more ubiquitous which would be helpful.
If your competitor is cutting jobs because of AI you can either race them to the bottom or you can use the humans you already have to leverage AI to expand your product offering, become more competitive, tackle more work, deliver better quality results etc. I don't see a world where AI does the work and humans sit around poor and idle.
Basically the whole point of existence for St. Sam is make sure that his corpo is too big to fail. So either he strikes gold, or he is bailed out by the taxpayer money a-la "investments".
If one of both cases happens you can be sure the people most responsible will be the least affected.
That is why this can get ugly. Honestly they deserve for it to get ugly. We can keep giving the Musks, Zuckerbergs, Altmans and co the benefit of the doubt
There is a third and, to me, so much more likely outcome that it's not even worth talking about the other two: AI makes workers more productive and unlocks more economic activity.
1. If AI is like other technologies, there will be job displacement and temporary upheaval after which new jobs will be created and prosperity increases - this is by far the only good way to increase prosperity
2. If AI is so good that it is a proper superset of humans and can do all jobs humans can do, this is a huge deal and we don’t even have the vocabulary to express what would happen
They could though. They could see job creation occurring AS the internet grew. I saw Netscape become an actual company. Saw CISCO grow. Saw tons of startups that employed people and saw the kinds of jobs it was bringing.
AI proponents says 'jobs appeared in the past after X, therefor they will magically appear in the future after Y' ignoring the industrial revolution started in the late 1700s and the lifestyle they brag about it delivering didn't come along until the late 1940s/1950s.
People like Altman and Musk are saying that Universal Basic Income will be necessary once AI has fully automated away most jobs, but at the same time they aggressively fight against any kind of tax policy that would allow UBI to function.
I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
It isn't the backlash against AI that will get ugly, it will be the backlash against the ten people who suddenly own the entire world's money supply
It's the same "give me a lot of money and everything will be great for everyone!" pitch that rich guys have been running for the history of humanity.
It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
Or something :)
> It is almost like the interconnectedness the internet has given us has laid bare the fact that human institutions aren’t to be trusted. That the longer an institution exists the further it drifts from whatever its stated purpose. That they all tend towards corruption, aggregation of power, and actions that are by most people’s definition evil.
Careful with that. I think that kind of perfectionist, all-or-nothing thinking is an echo of the propaganda meant to help the rich guys' pitch. Basically: "doesn't the government suck because it's not perfect? Kill it! (BTW, it's also the only thing powerful enough keep the rich guys under control, so increasing distrust sets them free)."
I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
> Careful with that
Fair point -- none of us want to be in the situation where all our current institutions have failed and there's nothing to replace them. That is chaos and anarchy and a true mess. Even the most hardened ideologues put in that environment would want a more orderly society. "Order" is another word to be careful of.
> I think the reality is human institutions require work to function, and if the common people are either too lazy or too busy to do that work, they get corrupted. Also, a certain level of unity is required, and maintaining that unity has been extremely unfashionable for many decades.
We agree on this as well. We currently don't put in the work to make a good and just society. I don't think it's that we're too lazy en masse, but too busy rings true. Too distracted as well.
Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Obviously I can't know the outcome. But it feels like we're all at a moment in history where major change is coming, which might be great or might be a new level of living hell.
I'm glad I'm around to watch what happens :)
> Our "elites" have set about breaking up our unity, fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed. The "fashion" is definitely to denigrate anything and everything that would build unity. Judge the other. Accuse the foreigner. Demonize those who look different.
Yes, but I think your more specific examples are more liberal-coded, and leave a false impression. Liberals aren't immune. I'd say the biggest example of "fracturing us into smaller groups that can be managed" is political polarization. There are a lot of liberals that are unsalvageably deep into that, reject finding common ground (even in obviously self-defeating ways), and who seem to be able to only conceive of unity as being total domination of their other.
> But that interconnectedness has woken many people up. The people are starting to see clearly now that what has been required for much of human history may no longer be required. And so we see the existing power structure panic, and try and double down on whats worked in the past: violence, divide and conquer, rule through force.
Can you be more specific about who's been woken up?
I haven't decided which word I like best to describe it but if the citizens are not on the same team or if there isn't a team anymore everything goes to shit. Collective/community/unity etc
Maybe "social capital"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital
"Anarchy" seems appropriate
'Teeth suck because if you don't keep them maintained they degrade over time'
Isn't like the basic of reality that everything drifts? If you want to keep order it is a constant task, not a onetime creation be it an institution or a house?
I keep warning people that promising UBI and not delivering UBI both serve the same end, undermining opposition.
By the time you find out that their promises of UBI are empty it’s too late to do anything about it.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving; they're trying to convince us that there will be a solution to the destruction of the economy as we know it, so that we'll just let them do whatever they want.
This is exactly it. Also, even if UBI is implemented:
1) It's probably going to be just enough to let one scrape by as a member of a permanent underclass. You will not be comfortable on it.
2) I doubt it will be permanent, there will be a rug-pull once said underclass has been politically neutered. They'll kill off the UBI deprivation, mainly because they just don't care about those people.
Just because a hypocrite says something doesn't mean that thing is wrong. If a drug addict tells you not to use drugs, they're still right about that. UBI is the solution, isn't it? Capitalism both requires everyone to have a job while at the same time providing no guarantee that jobs are available. The idea doesn't get tainted just because the words left the mouths of a few rich hypocrites. We have to do it despite them.
UBI is an "entitlement". Just look at how well a certain slice of the powerful view other "entitlements" like Obamacare or Social Security.
I like the idea of UBI, but the biggest problem with UBI is that it relies on the government to fund it, and the government can be controlled and subverted. UBI might go away, get held up by government shutdowns, not be indexed to inflation, etc - there's a ton of ways things that could go wrong if peoples' entire livelihoods are under the control of one entity.
UBI is not solution. Not even in theory. A system where majority is powerless will be the system where majority is oppressed and that is what it will be.
It is a lie pushed by people who go out of their way to be cruel whenever they can.
Given how resistant American voters and politicians are against any sort of welfare or social assistance I doubt UBI would ever be possible here. Remember the backlash against "ObamaPhones" and "welfare queens!" We can't even get mandatory paid parental leave approved; UBI would be a non-starter.
Americans are fine with low taxes for billionaires and don't mind high inequality as one of their core beliefs is that upward class mobility is achievable and they might also get rich.
When the checks had trumps name on them during the pandemic they loved it. They don’t hate welfare on principle, they hate it when the propaganda tells them to hate it.
They love programs that benefit them, and hate programs that benefit the "wrong" people. Also, the definition of "wrong people" is very easy to guess.
You do have to imagine the political environment where unemployment is rapidly climbing among the middle class rather than the current status quo if your intent is to accurately predict the future.
I'm skeptical. Even during the great depression FDR was only able to get work programs approved that assigned jobs like Conservation Corps, Public Works and WPA rather than just handing out cash.
And even then amongst bank collapses, failed farms, starving people and catastrophic unemployment there was STILL heavy opposition to any government assistance programs because there is a very deep fear entrenched in the American psyche that government aid creates dependency and weakens individual responsibility. There is a widespread false narrative that any sort of government help is leftist socialism and communism.
What’s an example where they took a side on taxes?
Elon's companies famously pay very little in taxes, he spent last year attempting to gut the federal government, he complains constantly about how much he pays in taxes, and he's been very vocal about California's recent efforts to tax very wealthy people.
The California Billionaire Tax is a bad idea. It's not that wealth taxes can't work (most of the US taxes property just fine), it's that taxes need to be fair and predictable. The phase-in is too narrow and its implementation is too arbitrary. Why $1B? Why $5%? Why won't CA voters hit up billionaires again?
Maybe, maybe not, but it's an example of Elon taking a side on taxes, per the original post.
Why is my tax rate 30-40%? Why are billionaires like 0.1%? Why won't the U.S. and state governments hit me up every single paycheck, year after year?
Like holy smokes, who amongst these rich men will not be harmed!
Google is your friend.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-bashes-government-t...
A few days ago he tweeted something along the lines of:
“Bitches Money No Taxes Party”
I think he deleted it afterwards
Support for Trump, or even Republicans writ large, means support for reducing taxes (both estate and income) on the wealthy, while increasing them on consumers (via tariffs). Musk has been an ardent supporter of Trump.
While I don't disagree with your conclusion, this line of reasoning makes no sense in a two party state where each party offers a menu of positions. Supporters are forced to make tradeoffs and pretending otherwise just gives you an incoherent picture of reality.
In which states does the Republican party support increasing taxes?
"Two party state" as in a government where politics are bifurcated. In a one party state, a citizen's voting history isn't informative whatsoever about their beliefs. In a direct democracy, their votes give you a complete map of the positions on any issue that came up. In the US, we only know that an R voter prefers the entire set of R policies over the entire set of D policies. Maybe they're pro-taxes, pro-welfare, anti-immigrant, pro-life, and pro-gun, and they weight these positions such that it makes sense to sacrifice the taxes and welfare to get the rest. So, while the party is anti-taxes, everyone who supports it may not be.
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UBI is a scapegoat, an easy answer to handwave the question about the job losses. People can't just live like that doing nothing and they won't. Before the current AI evolution the pro-UBI crowd would claim that in this utopia people would not need to work and they could create art. Now AI can create art and we see that with infinite supply it loses any kind of value.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving
I mean yeah, obviously. You can’t trust a word out of either of their mouths.
> I am convinced that their talk of UBI is just handwaving
Well, they are sociopaths so that checks out. What I find even more horrible is that they still somehow have an almost religious following, but it's also becoming clear they may be helping to flood the internet with bots that bolster their talking points against any push back. They especially have an audience here that defends them while they push an agenda to de-power and bury the working class.
Haven't really paid attention to Altman, so can't comment there, but on the Musk file I will say it is insane that anyone relies upon his future benevolence. And they do rely upon it given that America is 100% a plutocracy now and is run in the service of the ultra-rich who hold complete and utter control over government.
Musk's entire history on this planet betrays him to be a profoundly selfish individual with perilously little regard for anyone else. Musk and his ilk (Trump, Bezos, Page, Ellison, Thiel, etc) are more likely to see you ground up into Soylent Green than to offer largess like UBI.
> Already, as many as a quarter of Americans seem accepting of violence as a tool for achieving political change.
I'm surprised it's only a quarter: violence as a tool for achieving political change is the entire point of the right to bear arms.
EDIT: I'm not arguing for or against political violence, just noting an apparent inconsistency between Americans' views and one of the documents that they talk about as though it's holy writ.
I don’t condone it but I’m also expecting it to escalate. I grew up extremely poor and remained so until I dug myself out (through an absolutely ridiculous amount of work that no one should have to do this is not pro bootstraps).
Every week was a struggle to eat and the cost of living has significantly increased since then.
I guess the question is what is the terminal percentage of people who can’t afford to exist?
It's 100% accurate to say that the history of the United States is filled to the brim with political change via violence.
Some friends and I read "A People's History of the United States" a while back and were surprised at how true this is. US classroom history textbooks hold civil disobedience up as the One True Way to bring change, but it's alarming how often the backdrop of famous acts of civil disobedience was in fact incredible violence.
Our conclusion in our impromptu book club was that made sense: why would the state schools give students lots of examples of how violence against the state was an effective negotiating tool? It was extremely jarring to reconcile with the image of US history we'd been imbued with up to that point, which of course was also a reflection of our socioeconomic status at the time.
As a counterpoint, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" is also taught in schools, so it's possible I'm just selectively remembering things.
Tomas Rick's Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement 1954-68 should be required reading at this point
https://www.amazon.com/Waging-Good-War-Military-1954-1968/dp...
Ricks kinda beats a dead horse as he goes over and over again that non-violence is not unaggressive. It is typically quite militant when done well.
Non violence is a tactic, one that is typically better at achieving results than violence, as it tends to change the other side that is violent to adjust down to non violence as well. Like getting a drunk to be quieter by whispering to them (Note: that is a poor analogy).
Rick's book is just so very good and my poor internet comment can't possibly do it justice. He convinced me that the Civil Rights movement is so big because it gave the US a brand new tool in conflicts. It's not just violence or submission anymore.
Your "poor internet comment" got me to check the book out, so I'd say it's a pretty good comment!
A truly fantastic book. I'm glad to hear of more people checking it out.
And you can extend that to the history of the world. Change via non violent means is a historical aberration. We hold those examples up because they are so rare.
It’s 25% increase…for every meal missed.
> They want to replace workers
A simple question none of the ai-doomsayers can answer... who buys anything when nobody has a job cos robots do everything?
The true AI doomsayers believe in some sort of technological singularity, which means a point after which things become so strange that the world is radically transformed.
Things like "jobs" and "careers" are so integral to society that we can't really imagine what society would be like in a world where people don't have any clear purpose. That's why you won't get a definitive answer. The whole idea of a singularity is that people don't have the faintest clue what day to day life would look like after.
We often to choose to believe that a singularity can't happen, because we don't know what that even means. We can't answer the simple question. So it definitely better not happen, that would be very inconvenient.
I’m always amazed that when I tell people I intend to retire in my 50s, they tell me that I can’t possibly mean that and actively wonder how I could possibly fill my time. It’s as if we could not possibly function as humans without meaningless shifting of tangible/intangibles from one place to another.
Society is so hellbent on the idea that we need our job to be our identity, they lack the imagination for another other reality.
It’s ridiculous.
Sure working sucks, but have you tried not working? I think this is from lived experience because I've gone for stretches of not working (intentionally). It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment. I know it seems counter-intuitive but if you do succeed in your dream of retiring in your 50's I think you'll understand what I mean when you get there.
I think this varies wildly from person to person. I've also intentionally gone long stretches without working and those are the times when I've had a dramatically increased sense of purpose and fulfillment. Working for others reduces those things for me.
I'm in the age group where a lot of the people around me have retired. Some of them have fared very poorly, some have straight-up blossomed.
Ok but one of the great things about retiring when everyone else does is you have a community. If you stop working when you're young, everyone else in your network is probably still working.
I'm not against early retirement. One of my points was that, in general, it's harder to find fulfillment as a working age adult outside of work. Not impossible, just more challenging.
It's harder for -you- to find fulfillment outside of work. This is not a true statement for most or "in general".
I have tried not working and it's great.
I think you need to do better at not working. It's great actually.
Sorry, but your comment isn't really responding to OP's main point.
> It can be challenging to find a sense of fulfillment.
If you actually get fulfillment from work, then great, continue to work. The critical thing that drives people to retire earlier than the average person is that their work doesn't give them a sense of fulfillment. It's literally just a way to fill out the day. Some people do have things that are more fulfilling than letting an employer tell them how to spend their day.
Yes, it was responding. One of my points was that it has nothing to do with society's expectations but people's lived experiences and observations.
You seem to think I'm advocating for working your entire life. I'm just trying to share my lived experience so please take it easy.
There is some bitterness that's coming across in your response.
It is indeed ridiculous. People saying they're going to let someone else tell them what to do with their time, energy, and calendar, even if they hate doing it. The only explanation I have is that they have been letting the wrong people program them.
I believe that AI will continue to progress. I believe that we’re going to see a fast takeoff.
That said, some people are now discussing a “societal singularity” wherein society breaks before the actual emergence of AGI. I believe this is the trajectory we are on. The question is what happens to the unemployed. Democracies will not tolerate mass permanent unemployment, as we’ve seen over and over again.
UBI is a scam, many middle class folks would be worse off under UBI than they are under the current system. They will fight to defend the economic status quo.
In the end, I think capitalism is incompatible with the emergence of AGI, and I think an aligned ASI will smash the capitalist system simply out of pure egalitarianism. (Note: I was previously a proponent of capitalism.) I think many people will die trying to defend capitalism. We’re at the beginning of the AI wars.
My sentiments are fairly similar.
In the US at least the middle class was already being hunted to extinction and it seems reasonable. This is just accelerant on that already burning fire.
It can't happen. For one - if it did happen it would mean all domains reach singularity at once, but we know the capability curve is jagged. Each domain advances at its own speed.
Second - the more you make progress, the harder it gets, exponentially harder. Maybe Newton could advance physics observing an apple fall, today they need space telescopes and billion dollar particle accelerators. The more tech advances, the harder it is. Will AGI be so "super" to cancel out exponentials?
And third - the AI progress is tied to learning signal, and we have exhausted the available data. In the last 1-2 years we have started using verified synthetic data (RLVR) but exponential difficulty is a barrier. Other domains don't even have built in verifiability like math and code. So there the progress will be slower. Testing a vaccine to be safe takes 6 months for 1 bit of information - that is how slow and expensive it can get in some domains. AI can't get the learning signal it needs across all domains fast enough.
You're asking a question that only applies to rational actors.
Corporations exist for one purpose: to get as much money as possible. Side concerns, which can range from "not destroying the environment" or "not destroying the economy," are objectively not their goal, nor do they consider them their responsibility. Those are things "someone else" should worry about.
AI destroying all jobs is similar to a nuclear arms race; these companies don't want to eliminate everyone's ability to buy things, but they don't want to be the only entity without that ability, so ...
That is mostly true but a bit of a simplification. They exist to do what the people who have power want them to do which is not always strictly profit maximization.
A ceo may realize rto will decrease profits but do it anyway because it increases the power delta between him and the workers.
"not always strictly profit maximization."
Maybe in the short-term but public companies with shareholders won't allow this in any sort of long-term way right?
Not allow it? They insist upon it!
The controlling votes are all part of the same social class. They would gladly give up a small amount of profit to keep the distance between them and the workers as large as possible.
To the extent it doesn't negatively impact the stock price sure but you would agree the CEO and any sort of power-trip they have is ultimately beholden to that right?
If he goes against what they want absolutely. If he introduced a 4 day work week for example he would be in big trouble.
Why would the doomsayers be the ones who need to answer that? That’s kind of their point! It’s the AI boosters who need to answer that, and so far it’s just a big collective shrug + silence.
Nobody can answer that?
There are jobs AI can't easily come for... not always nice ones, but either too physically fiddly or too cheap to bother automating.
But jobs go "extinct" all the time. My ancestors going back generations were sugarhouse labourers. That job's gone, but the lineage isn't: we just do different things now.
The pattern seems pretty consistent: raise the floor (dishwashers, CNC machines, laundry), and people tend to climb to higher levels of abstraction. The real question is who captures those productivity gains; and historically, it isn't the workers.
Shoes are the classic example. Automation made them cheaper and accessible to everyone. Then, once the market was captured, mid-tier became the ceiling and anything above it got expensive again. Nobody won except the owners.
There will still be jobs. Manual jobs, the kind that break our backs and have us breath various stuff we shouldn't (dust, fumes). Robots are difficult and maybe not so economically viable when everyone is desperate for any job at any cost.
We shouldn't be surprised people have a negative view of AI when Altman et al. have stated on stage that the goal is to replace everyone.
Because it's not even logically possible, let alone practically
Maybe the Altmans and Amodeis should stop saying otherwise all the time then.
It's bizarre that some of the doomsayers are AI stakeholders. It's like they don't realize that most people don't have net worth in the 7-8 figures.
I console myself with the fact that without a functioning economy, AI will implode since capital will dry up. Then all of the investment in data centers, R&D, etc. will never be recovered. Then we'll be back to rational thinking? Maybe?
They realize it, and they don't care.
Yeah, but it doesn’t implode all at once - it’s not distributed evenly.
Something like over half of the US consumption is done by the top 10%, or something insane like that. This leads me to believe that a lot more people will eat shit, before enough feel real pain.
The consumer economy only exists to extract value from common people and funnel it up the wealth ladder. If robots and AI take over all the production, you don’t need a consumer economy, the robots produce and their output directly goes to the top. The rest of us are left to starve.
Eh, no? If everything goes to top, then economy of scale just don't work and whole automation is pointless, because you can make the goods in artisan way.
Take any econ 101 course, and you'll realize that this isn't a factor in the capitalist system. Capitalism is simply concerned with maximizing profit, and in this case, returning shareholder value. It's just simply not in the purview of the system to think about what happens when you completely get rid of your labor force.
Envisioned another way, the future of labor might look the way it did for laborers over 100 years ago, before major industries unionized; making 'Amazon-bucks' that can only be redeemed at the 'Amazon company store'.
No wages -> Nobody buys stuff and services -> Companies are going bankrupt -> No taxable income from consumers nor companies -> States are going bankrupt.
You can either go through UBI taxing automated work by 90%+ and pretend that capitalism is still a thing, or just nationalize everything and go with communism.
Henry Ford understood this problem with his Model T and realized that if he wants to sell it, he also needs to pay workers to be able to afford it.
Fully automated luxury space fascism doesn't really need buyers. A risk of high automation/post-scarcity is that abundance exists but remains under the control of people who are not interested in justice or equality or freedom. Lots of people feel that describes the leadership of most AI tech companies.
If they don't need your labor, and they don't need you as a customer, and they don't care about you as a person... where does that leave you?
[to be clear, I think post-scarcity, even in knowledge work, is a lot further off than most ai-doomsayers or ai-worshipers who take statements from people like Altman and Musk at face value]
But that also assume that peasants do not have agency and won't trigger another French Revolution.
They may they may not. The nobility has learned a lot in the past 200+ years. Powerful propaganda machines, powerful weaponry, and a small group of loyalists have proven extremely effective at controlling large populations.
the answer to every question: Agents, of course! With GPU-collaterized credit or some other idiocy.
I saw a talk by Brian Merchant (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/) a while back where he talked a lot about the Luddites and their revolts against automation. He's definitely not a fan of AI, but it was very interesting to hear the comparisons of AI resistance now to Luddite resistance to automation in the 1800's.
There was unfortunately no Q&A in the lecture, as probably the one question I would have asked him was this: What if the Luddites had gotten their way? What do you imagine our society and world would be like right now?
It's not meant to be a trick question or a "gotcha" question. Society would indeed have been different. Maybe it would be all wonderfully Star Trek utopia and we'd have found a win-win for everyone. Or maybe we'd just be not nearly as technically advanced as a society as we are now.
The robots will tell you what to do, you will own nothing, and you will be happy. I think that is the plan?
If you have a magic robot that builds everything you want you don’t need anyone to buy anything.
Jfc this site is the worst. Use your words instead of drive by downvoting.
Then all you have to do is magically convince the owners of the magic robot to give all their products away for free.
They already have way more than they could ever use and still try to take more.
Where do the raw materials for the thing it's building (or the robot itself for that matter) come from?
From the earth. Maybe in the future space.
Finite natural resources are by their very nature, limited.
Yes finite things are finite. Glad we cleared up it.
Finite means not free. Who will pay?
If your magic robot is magic enough you own anything you want. You pay with the oldest currency in the world. Might.
I don’t think pillaging the earth’s natural resources (even more than we already do) is going to go down well.
Agreed.
Ignoring CEO predictions, can anyone point to any major revolutionary technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life and employment statistics? AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable. Revolutions like this do create widening inequality while also increasing long run productivity. Yes inequality rises but what you should care about is your quality of life and that will also improve over time. There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well but…this happens during every major revolution—electricity the internet etc. so why do people treat AI like it’s a uniquely damaging phenomenon?
Don't ignore the transient.
The industrial revolution created a hell on Earth for workers for the better part of a century.
Or as the article puts it:
"Over the long run, it’s true that the Industrial Revolution radically boosted economic growth. But living through it was another matter entirely. Many people saw their wages stagnate and working conditions deteriorate as factory owners and industrialists came into immense wealth. (Just read a Charles Dickens novel, and you’ll get the idea.) This led to riots and, occasionally, attacks on the industrialists themselves."
> There will be suffering during transition and there will be many that don’t fare well
Yeah, and the people suffering are not going to like that. If people are afraid of being in that group, then they will not be very happy about it.
If you put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from AI, how comforting do you think your observations here are?
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Machine-Origins-Rebellion-Again... Has some pertinent examples.
Even if some tech were presented, people would just nitpick and quibble, saying the tech wasn't actually revolutionary, didn't truly have a net negative impact on quality of life, didn't truly have a net negative impact on employment, or the timeframe of the latter two.
Personally, I'd nominate gunpowder, DDT, leaded gasoline, and nuclear fission.
You are confusing the macro view with the personal. Try losing your job and being told "don't worry, your quality of life will improve over time!" Would you respond positively?
My point is: you can say the exact same thing for any other major technological revolution. Would you have preferred we stopped making the internet because some people didn’t fare well in the transition? The genie is out of the bottle so what do people want to happen here?
Yes? Life was almost certainly better before the internet.
For who?
Ok so you’re the most powerful person in your country in 1995, what’s your strategy? “I’m going to fight as hard as possible to legislate away the infra buildout and internet companies” and tank your country’s economy while other countries eat your lunch?
You originally asked if there was any technology that had a net negative impact on quality of life. Now you are arguing that is inevitable. Which may be true but it is a different argument.
That being said I am not convinced a society who decided not to allow the internet would have been worse off.
Industrial revolution made lives of many people into a hell. In the long term we gained, but only after those people went through periods of violence and fights.
> AI is an incredibly powerful technological shift in our way of life but where is the net employment hit taking place? Unemployment numbers remain stable.
At this point, a lot of AI is hot water rather then powerful shift in our way of life.
Agriculture for starters. The internet. The automobile.
We treat it as uniquely damaging, because it's touted as uniquely enhancing, or even uniquely revolutionary. "AI is not just any tool" is often the response to some asking to exercise choice in the tools they use. "You don't have to use AI in your work, but if you don't, you'll work for someone who does".
Plenty of people certainly seem to have desires to make it ugly.
http://archive.today/8PRnh
My main problem is this:
- If (big If) AI actually replaces workers, then we have a problem, because lots of folk lost their jobs
- If AI doesn't replace workers, then we have a recession, because a lot of the US economy now sits on top of corporations betting on it. And this will tank the economy and lots of folk will lose their jobs
It feels that the only path forward is a narrow one where AI removes some jobs, but not too many, but still enough so that the (immense, disproportionate) hype that was put on it does not come with a vengeance and the house of cards falls.
I don't think it an either / or. The current AI models, as they are, improve productivity quite a bit. They're just super expensive but the expense is being subsidized so it appears reasonable.
An alternative possibility is that the models become much cheaper and their use becomes more ubiquitous which would be helpful.
If your competitor is cutting jobs because of AI you can either race them to the bottom or you can use the humans you already have to leverage AI to expand your product offering, become more competitive, tackle more work, deliver better quality results etc. I don't see a world where AI does the work and humans sit around poor and idle.
Basically the whole point of existence for St. Sam is make sure that his corpo is too big to fail. So either he strikes gold, or he is bailed out by the taxpayer money a-la "investments".
Its probably a combination of both. Also, the "lots of folk" in the two scenarios are probably different orders of magnitude.
If one of both cases happens you can be sure the people most responsible will be the least affected. That is why this can get ugly. Honestly they deserve for it to get ugly. We can keep giving the Musks, Zuckerbergs, Altmans and co the benefit of the doubt
There is a third and, to me, so much more likely outcome that it's not even worth talking about the other two: AI makes workers more productive and unlocks more economic activity.
In life it's important to consider when our personal opinions might be incorrect and what the consequences may be.
Fixed pie fallacy.
Infinite pie fallacy.
1. If AI is like other technologies, there will be job displacement and temporary upheaval after which new jobs will be created and prosperity increases - this is by far the only good way to increase prosperity
2. If AI is so good that it is a proper superset of humans and can do all jobs humans can do, this is a huge deal and we don’t even have the vocabulary to express what would happen
I don’t foresee a third option.
the fact no one can actually describe these "new jobs" makes #2 appear increasingly more probable.
You can’t have predicted that an SDE 6 in Google working on ad tech using Google spanner and optimising for SEO at 1989.
That’s why you can’t say how jobs can be created now.
They could though. They could see job creation occurring AS the internet grew. I saw Netscape become an actual company. Saw CISCO grow. Saw tons of startups that employed people and saw the kinds of jobs it was bringing.
AI proponents says 'jobs appeared in the past after X, therefor they will magically appear in the future after Y' ignoring the industrial revolution started in the late 1700s and the lifestyle they brag about it delivering didn't come along until the late 1940s/1950s.
Let’s hope so