[cors-fls]

The comparison only starts to make sense in a post-work society where there is no working-class, whose existence depends on working.

Unfortunately these companies are working to eliminate jobs, but not in any way making a path for a transition to a post-work society.

[stevefan1999]

They are not eliminating job, you still have jobs in 1984 which is where we are heading to. You still need to hire someone to do the mass surveillance and policing, and enforcing the laws that are getting more and more draconian day by day. And you still need people to instigate-cough-motivate hate on something in order to keep the momentum of the society to shift the focus. Those still took labor but AI makes it easier.

We are indeed entering a post-job-scarity environment though. You see a lot of ghost posting and lack of response for years now, 6 out of 10 application is ghosted, 2 out of 10 said no, and just a few remaining. Jobs are getting rarer and are going to be more of a status rather than for breadwinning

[uncletaco]

It really sucks that everyone’s go to dystopia is 1984. Especially in this case given 1984 required the active participation of millions of citizens whereas Brave New World maps better where control is enforced through comfort and irrelevance instead of force.

The tech dystopia doesn’t even try to flatter us by assuming we’re important enough to oppress individually.

[joquarky]

If we're closer to BNW, then where are the comforts?

Everything that were comforts before COVID are far too expensive now.

Even the bread and circuses are gradually being taken away.

[AndrewKemendo]

>If we're closer to BNW, then where are the comforts?

Netflix/Sports/RealityTv + Onlyfans/PH + Doordash tacobell/chic-fil-a

[stevefan1999]

The comforts, you mean soma? Well, besides from the fentanyl and tranq that turns people into almost-literal zombies since they can't get high from oxycontin and from codein no more, now instead we have all the free dopamine hits from gacha game lootboxes, endless attention seeking short videos, that is, tiktok/youtube shorts and instagram reels. Sometimes you feel high in the ups and lows of stock market and crypto bro doing rug pulls too. I have to unfortunately say I also fell into some of those lately, mostly in gacha games and opening weapon cases in CSGO, and for some reason I got rid of instagram which is a good thing I guess?

After all, "attention is all you need". Although it is nothing but just a title of the paper who introduced us to "transformers", and enabled all this AI slop lately (note: I'm not against LLM "AI" but I'm against using it in an irresponsibly, e.g. vibe coding without knowing your domain knowledge in the first place is one), but it is quite a dark humor to me that we can actually use this title literally to describe a lot of real world phenomemon.

All of that to make you feel numb in the rat race to the bottom. I don't think your argument that we are closer to BNM than 1984 is wrong, just that the antifa and all the ICE, and the politics fiasco makes me feel like it is more 1984 than BNM. Or maybe we have a super deluxe package to have both.

[jjj123]

The comforts are digital. TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, video games.

[Someone]

> You still need to hire someone to do the mass surveillance and policing

Someone, yes, but not millions, maybe not even thousands anymore.

The Stasi needed 1 in 40 of the working population as informers (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/03/lessons-from-...), but large parts of surveillance can be automated now.

For policing, you may not need that much, either. To put out smaller fires, you only need local superiority in numbers. That can be achieved by having a small force that can be rapidly deployed.

For large uprisings, you can use drones. You’ll want to avoid that, though because that isn’t guaranteed to keep you in power.

[iberator]

This!

AI is taking jobs faster than making new ones!

No field is safe and trying to switch careers over 40 is almost impossible. Even flipping burgers is nearly impossible (very hard to do without pior experience at such age).

[anonzzzies]

Over 40 at least you are almost halfway. Definitely you can switch, if you are a half decent thinker, most things are possible; I am sure you can become an electrician and that, at least where I live, makes very good money. Plumbers you cannot find if you are keedeep in your own poop here. In my home country my old classmates (I have an electrician degree but became a software engineer) are making more than most programmers being electricians. Not sure what is wrong with someone who cannot flip burgers after 40.

[iberator]

Have you tried flip burgers after 20 years in IT and zero manual labor? Forced downshift is BRUTAL.

Youngsters are 2x faster than you and precise. I'm not from USA tho.

I was SHOCKED that I was the worst at flipping the burgers at McDonald's. Pace is CRAZY and stress is NOTHING in comparison to let's say dropping production database or shipping 2 months late in startup.

Shit just looks easy, but noise, speed, temp and pressure (constant KPI over your head) is CRAAAAAZY.

Got kicked out after 3 months :| Got new job at tech support

[squidbeak]

The elimination of jobs necessarily 'makes a path' to a post-work society. Post-work couldn't exist without it. Beyond that, it isn't in AI companies' power to shape economies and societies for post-work (which is what I assume you're really getting at here). All Altman, Amodei, Hassabis and the others can do is alert policymakers to what's coming, and they're trying pretty hard to do that, aren't they? - often in the teeth of the skepticism we see so much of on this site. Really if policy makers won't look ahead, the AI companies can't be blamed for the bumps we're going hit.

[jplusequalt]

>they're trying pretty hard to do that, aren't they

How so? Throwing out the term "UBI" every once in a while doesn't miraculously make it economically viable.

[squidbeak]

Do you really pay so little attention to the space that you think this is all they do? Almost every public discussion or interview involving these figures turns at some point to society's unpreparedness for what's coming, for instance Amodei's interview last week.

https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dario-amodei-2

[jplusequalt]

How do these interviews magically make the hard economics of UBI viable? Read up on UBI a little bit, and you'll quickly realize that it's far more expensive than universal healthcare, and we can't even get our politicians onboard with that.

[squidbeak]

That's uncertain in a post-work economy or even for the transition. Some mechanism will need to exist for the abundance resulting from automation to be distributed fairly - in both the post-work era and during the transition to it. Also measures to ensure production of essential goods that might otherwise disappear with deflation. This is all out of scope for AI companies, unless you fancy putting off a response until full automation, and anointing them as (fingers crossed) benign dictators for life?

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

Yes, these people are publicly warning about the risks of AI. Altman is promoting regulation that clearly favors OpenAI. This is called regulatory capture. It aims to strengthen one's own position. Furthermore, the claim that these companies cannot shape economies is simply false. They decide how quickly they deploy, which industries they automate, whether they cooperate with unions, etc. These are all decisions that shape the economy.

Widespread job losses as a path to post-work are about as plausible as a car accident as a path to bringing a vehicle to a standstill. You would have to be from another planet (or a sociopath) not to understand that this violates boundary conditions that we implicitly want to leave intact.

[ben_w]

> They decide how quickly they deploy, which industries they automate, whether they cooperate with unions, etc. These are all decisions that shape the economy.

They control how quickly they deploy, but I don't see how they have any control over the rest: "which industries they automate" is a function of how well the model has generalised. All the medical information, laws and case histories, all the source code, they're still only "ok"; and how are they, as a model provider in the US, supposed to cooperate (or not) with a trade union in e.g. Brandenburg whose bosses are using their services?

> Widespread job losses as a path to post-work are about as plausible as a car accident as a path to bringing a vehicle to a standstill.

Certainly what I fear.

Any given UBI is only meaningful if it is connected to the source of economic productivity; if a government is offering it, it must control that source; if the source is AI (and robotics), that government must control the AI/robots.

If governments wait until the AI is ready, the companies will have the power to simply say "make me"; if the governments step in before the AI is ready, they may simply find themselves out-competed by businesses in jurisdictions whose governments are less interested in intervention.

And even if a government pulls it off, how does that government remain, long-term, friendly to its own people? Even democracies do not last forever.

[squeefers]

> Widespread job losses as a path to post-work

who exactly is paying for you to live and why would they be so kind?

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

I want to live. And if you threaten my life, I will defend myself with whatever means I have at my disposal. It makes no difference whether you threaten me by taking away my livelihood or by withholding it from me. You therefore have a choice. Either you value my life as you value your own, or there will be war between us. And that is a war you will not win, because you are not only waging it against me, but against all people whose right to life you wish to deny.

[ben_w]

Notwithstanding that I do not believe he is competent, Musk is currently talking about turning the entire moon into a space data center factory, specifically with a capacity so large that the resulting products of said factory could freeze the tropics just by blocking out the sun.

It is fortunate for him that those of us who understand the implications of this, do not believe he can do it.

Do you believe he could do it? Would you act against him now, when most people think his success in this endevour is implausible? Or wait until he demonstates all the parts necessary, at which point action against him is impossible? Or do you believe his claims that him doing this will render work unnecessary rather than, as I fear, making it impossible without also making it unnecessary?

What about everyone else that you think would be on your side? If you need everyone on-side, timing matters too.

[ben_w]

That's a summary of my point, yes.

If I phrase it that succinctly, people tend to reply "democracy!" without considering who has the power and how they behave.

[squeefers]

post-work? is this from the same lot who cant work-from-office because theyd have a nervous breakdown? who exactly pays for my existence in this world where i dont have to work?

[UltraSane]

They ARE, just the post-work society is limited to the people who own the AIs

[squeefers]

post-work in that sense is as old as civilization. there is no post-work without some kind of dominating your fellow man