[aleph_minus_one]

> I suppose me pointing out the flaws breaks the illusion of magic that people want AI to have.

My impression is rather: there exist two kinds of people who are "very invested in this illusion":

1. People who want to get rich by either investing in or working on AI-adjacent topics. They of course have an interest to uphold this illusion of magic.

2. People who have a leftist agenda ("we will soon all be replaced by AI, so politics has to implement [leftist policy measures like UBI]"). If people realize that AI is not so powerful, after all, such leftist political measures whose urgency was argued with the (hypothetical) huge societal changes that will be caused by AI will not have a lot backing in society, or at least not considered to be urgently implemented by society.

[vidarh]

The left is generally extremely sceptical to UBI, as its main proponents tend to be classically liberal groups (so not "US liberal") pushing it as a means to contain and limit welfare systems by dropping welfare programs in favour of a general, low UBI.

The more leftist position ever since the days of Marx has been that "right rather than being equal would have to be unqueal" to be equitable given that people have different needs, to paraphrase from Critique of the Gotha Program - UBI is in direct contradiction to socialist ideals of fairness.

The people I see pushing UBI, on the contrary, usually seems motivated either by the classically liberal position of using it to minimise the state, or driven by a fear of threats to the stability of capitalism. Saving capitalism from perceived threats to itself isn't a particularly leftist position.

[therobots927]

I agree with your first point but regarding your second: I’m as far left as it gets and I don’t think that’s true at all. Most of the influencers I follow despise AI and also are highly skeptical of the outrageous claims made by Sam Altman etc. The reality is that the need for things like universal health care exists today. Tens of millions of people can not get medical care in the US. Insurance companies are allowed to deny claims with no justification. That has nothing to do with AI taking jobs BUT it does involve AI because United Health’s denial rate went through the roof right after they started letting AI determine which claims were covered by policy with no human review. So people on the left are talking about AI in contexts that it doesn’t seem you’re aware of