What do we do with ourselves given accelerating AI?

[sarvasvkulpati]

Sometimes, it's hard not to feel mild existential crises with the rate AI is improving. What's the point if AI will eventually be able to do everything a human can but better? How do you think yourself out of this? Like what is the 'correct' thing to work on.

[senttoschool]

I have a more pessimistic outlook than most on AI's impact in society.

Yes, we will need universal basic income soon because human brains cannot retrain themselves fast enough to work in new fields. It takes years to retrain and get good at a career, sometimes more, and sometimes impossible.

Universal basic income will provide people with money. But it won't give people enough money to or incentive to have babies. Thus, human population will decrease. Actually, the poor population will decrease. But the elites will increase in population because they have more than universal basic income.

PS. One way you can hedge against this kind of future for yourself is to invest in AI companies (such as buying stocks of companies that are racing towards this future).

[cc101]

There might be some help in thinking about the fate of craftsmen during the rise of mass production. Consumers bought the new cheap manufactured goods because it greatly improved their lives, but craftsmen were left to find some way to survive. The Arts and Crafts movement was society's attempt to counteract soulless consumer junk with high quality hand-crafted work produced by out-of-work craftsmen.

However, Arts and Crafts pieces were so expensive that only the well off could afford them. The market for such work was small and didn't support that many craftsmen. It would be worthwhile to thoughtfully read some of the history of the movement because the analogy is quite deep. Successful application of the analogy, however, would not be straight forward.

[dougmwne]

Somewhere out there are a million people much better and smarter than you and me. Why is this software causing you existential dread instead?

[vinyl7]

The commoditization and automation of everything means that humans become worthless.

[dougmwne]

To me that is an oxymoron. Humans are the source of meaning and value. Nothing could make us worthless. We are the ones who assign value, without us the concept does not exist.

[vinyl7]

Sure, among us that is true. But to those who have power over us...the corporations and the government...our only value is our labor.

[behnamoh]

because this piece of software SCALES.