[ESMirro]

I believe you’re simply taking the wording too literally.

You may not cease so exist, but a decent role for you in society might. The capital class have invested tens of billions of dollars into AI in the hopes that it will be enough to replace and heavily reduce the wages of knowledge and creative work.

Given the increasing wealth gap already emerging it’s highly likely the long term goal of technology like this (however overhyped it might currently be) is to essentially enslave the population.

Knowledge workers have had it good for a long time. This technology will attempt to ensure you have no further role. That’s what the OP is worried about, not some philosophical nonsense about the self, the long term possibility this profession, and thus a huge part of their identity, becomes obsolete.

[ChatGTP]

"AI in the hopes that it will be enough to replace and heavily reduce the wages of knowledge and creative work"

But that's not true because the best stuff capable of generating AI art today is open source and capable of running on commodity hardware? People might've invested, but if Microsoft can generate nice pictures, so can a lot of people now, at the same or even better quality.

There isn't a lot of proof that ChatGPT will be in the hands of OpenAI alone forever, so likely everyone will have similarly capable machines in the near future.

The only thing humans need to do to get the future right, is learn to live peacefully with each other, and the algorithms, can we may have a very incredible future on our hands.

We fear machines killing us because it's what we do to each other, if we didn't have these tendencies, maybe an AGI would accidentally kill us, but that would be better than it killing us because it learned violence and paranoia from us. It would of course suck, but it would suck less.

[ESMirro]

I feel like you’re missing the larger picture here.

You’re focusing the discussion around art. Historically art has always been a difficult way to make money. Open source tools that make it trivial will just reduce the number of individuals able to make a living creating art. The same is true across all areas of knowledge work should this technology eventually reach the promised heights. Any work that requires specialised knowledge on a computer would become as simple as creating art, and thus can be paid less and performed by a wider range of people. It will save the capital class a substantial amount of money and ensure that those left employed have even less power.

“There isn't a lot of proof that ChatGPT will be in the hands of OpenAI alone forever, so likely everyone will have similarly capable machines in the near future.”

Microsoft didn’t invest 10 billion dollars in an eventual open source project. There’s no way these tools or their source will be available to all, you’d have to be rather naive and completely ignorant of the history of the people involved in funding OpenAI to believe that (and I don’t just mean Microsoft).

Hence my belief that these tools will eventually be used to further the already growing class divide. Those with capital will have full control of the means of production, employees won’t need specialised knowledge (and thus have no bargaining power to extract decent salary and working conditions). Knowledge work has led to the best conditions for the working class in history. Its destruction is not a good thing unless you’re a member of the “elite”, which, as you’re posting on HN, you’re probably not.

I have no idea what you’re talking about in the final two paragraphs, this isn’t a science fiction film, nobody is talking about a Terminator scenario. This is a capitalism problem that tools like this will only intensify. There is little evidence to suggest a utopian vision, but plenty to suggest the opposite.

[ChatGTP]

If you're trying to tell me a lot of people aren't talking about scenes from sci-fi movies actually happening within the next 1-20 year(s) you're not being honest with yourself?

[ESMirro]

I’m not saying that, I just believe those people are myopic and completely missing the wider picture because they’d rather delude themselves with fantasy and thought experiments than consider the crude reality of the economic situation.

This technology doesn’t need to be AGI to complete its objective. It just needs to be good enough to replace or lower the skill threshold for humans in current knowledge roles.

If I were a wealthy capitalist I’d find it hysterical. I’m about to ensure vast portions of the current middle class are my future wage slaves and those same people, rather than realising the threat, are pontificating about science fiction or actively supporting the development of my technology thinking it’ll make them “more productive!”.