[csinode]

The problem here is societal, not technological. An end state where people do less work than they do today but society is more productive is desirable, and we shouldn't be trying to force companies/governments/etc to employ people to do an unnecessary job.

The problem is that people who are laid off often experience significant life disruption. And people who work in a field that is largely or entirely replaced by technology often experience permanent disruption.

However, there's no reason it has to be this way - the fact people having their jobs replace by technology are completely screwed over is a result of the society we have all created together, it's not a rule of nature.

[selcuka]

> However, there's no reason it has to be this way - the fact people having their jobs replace by technology are completely screwed over is a result of the society we have all created together, it's not a rule of nature.

I agree. We need a radical change (some version of universal basic income comes to mind) that would allow people to safely change careers if their profession is no longer relevant.

[departed]

Reminds me of Mondragón, a corporation and federation of worker coops in Spain. It builds new coops to meet the needs of its community, and when a coop ends, workers are given financial support and trained for new jobs in its other coops.

[b3ing]

No way that will ever happen when we have a party that thinks Medicare, Medicaid and social security is unnecessary for the poor or middle class. But you better believe all our representatives have that covered for themselves while pretending to serve us (they only serve those that bribe/lobby them)

[selcuka]

> No way that will ever happen when we have a party that thinks Medicare, Medicaid and social security is unnecessary for the poor or middle class.

This is obviously because the current ruling class can't see what is coming. Historically speaking, the motivation for the elite to support social programs or reforms has been the instinct to preserve social stability, not altruism.

The New Deal did not happen because "the party thought that Social Security and unemployment insurance are necessary for the poor or middle class." It happened to prevent civil unrest and the rise of radical ideologies.

[shafyy]

> The problem here is societal, not technological.

I disagree. I think it's both. Yes, we need good frameworks and incentivizes on a economic/political level. But also, saying that it's not a tech problem is the same as saying "guns don't kill people". The truth is, if there was no AI tech developed, we would not need to regulate it so that greed does not take over. Same with guns.

[jsjohnst]

> The truth is, if there was no AI tech developed, we would not need to regulate it so that greed does not take over.

Same could be said for the Internet as we know it too. Literally replace AI with Internet above and it reads equally true. Some would argue (me included some days) we are worse off as a society ~30 years later. That’s also a legitimate case that can be made it was a huge benefit to society too. Will the same be said of AI in 2042?

[visarga]

Oh the web was full of slop long before LLMs arrived. Nothing new. If anything, AI slop is higher quality than was SEO crap. And of course we can't uninvent AI just like we can't unborn a human.

[Sophira]

It depends on the metric you use.

Yes, AI text could be considered higher quality than traditional SEO, but at the same time, it's also very much not, because it always sounds like it might be authoritative, but you could be reading something hallucinated.

In the end, the text was still only ever made to get visitors to websites, not to provide accurate information.

[jsjohnst]

> it's also very much not, because it always sounds like it might be authoritative, but you could be reading something hallucinated

I keep hearing this repeated over and over as if it’s a unique problem for AI. This is DEFINITELY true of human generated content too.

[tpmoney]

> it's also very much not, because it always sounds like it might be authoritative, but you could be reading something hallucinated.

People telling lies on the internet is an old enough and well known enough issue that it’s appeared in children’s TV shows. One need only dive down the rabbit hole of 9/11 “truthers” to see how much completely made up bullshit is published online as absolute fact with authoritative certainty. AI is the hot new thing and gets all the headlines, but Scottish Wikipedia was a problem long before AI and long after society largely settled its mind about how reliable Wikipedia is.

[dotancohen]

  > the fact people having their jobs replace by technology are completely screwed over is a result of the society we have all created together, it's not a rule of nature.

How did the handloom weavers and spinners handle the rise of the machines?

[throwaway9153]

> How did the handloom weavers and spinners handle the rise of the machines?

In the past, new jobs appeared that the workers could migrate to.

Today, it seems that AI may replace jobs much quicker than before and it's not clear to me which new jobs will be "invented" to balance the loss.

Optimists will say that we have always managed to invent new types of work fast enough to reduce the impact to society, but in my opinion it is unlikely to happen this time. Unless the politicians figure out a way to keep the unemployment content (basic income etc.),

I fear we may end up in a dystopia within our lifetimes. I may be wrong and we could end up in a post scarcity (star trek) world, but if the current ambitions of the top 1% is an indicator, it won't happen unless the politicians create a better tax system to compensate the loss of jobs. I doubt they will give up wealth and influence voluntarily.

[tree-hugger]

> In the past, new jobs appeared that the workers could migrate to.

There was no happy and smooth transition that you seem to allude to. The Luddite movement was in direct response to this: people were dying over this. Factory owners fired or massively reduced wages of workers, replacing many with child workers in precarious and dangerous conditions. In response, the workers smashed the machines that were being used to eliminate their jobs and prevent them from feeding themselves and their families (_not_ the machines that were used to make their jobs easier).

[avereveard]

I think if we zoom out of the tech and into a bit more of economic the risk I see is that the incumbent hold a lot of advantages and also control the means of production due secondary factors like gpu scarcity.

If we want to draw some parallel this may trigger a robber baron kind of outcome more than an industrial revolution.

The existence of workable open weight models tips me more toward the optimistic outcome

Butthere's trillions at stake now and that must not be discounted it's the kind of wealth accumulation that can easily trigger a war. (And if you thinkit isn't you can look at the oil wars in the 90s and other more recent resources war bring fought in Europe today.

Expect "gpu gap" talks sooner that later, and notice there's a few global power with no horse to race.

[kragen]

The CPU-gap and GPU-gap talks started in 02015 and never ended before the rise of strategic AI: https://www.pcworld.com/article/426879/us-blocks-intel-from-...

[Piskvorrr]

Attempting to unionize. Then the factory owners hired thugs to decapitate the movement.

Oh wait, that's not the disneyfied technooptimistic version of Luddites? Sorry.

[qotgalaxy]

So it's simple: don't do anything at all about the technology that is the impetus for these horrible disruptions, just completely rebuild our entire society instead.