| I think its important to remember that humans are not that far removed from the native animals that we share the earth with. Civilization is just a thin layer of rules we use to try and keep the peace between us. Just being born doesn't entitle somebody to food and shelter, you have to go out and find it. You have to work. A magpie is not provided food and shelter, it has to hunt, fight for territory, and build its nest. Humans don't have some inalienable "worth". But if you can work, you might choose to trade it for some food and shelter. AI is not going change that. We might think the AI owners have a moral obligation to feed people who can't find work, but there is no guarantee this will happen. Also, for the short term at least, we need to stop talking about AI like its a thing, and talk about the companies that build and own the AI. Why would Google build an AI that can do everyone's job, then turn around and start building farms to feed us for free? Do we perhaps imagine our Governments are going to start building super automated farms to feed us. How are they going to pay Google for the AI with no tax income? |
>Humans don't have some inalienable "worth". But if you can work, you might choose to trade it for some food and shelter.
A magpie is a slave to its environment (high entropy). Humans are capable of building systems that alter the environment (low entropy).
If we are apathetical to AI, we choose to ignore the benefits and improvements from technology. And ever since the plow, bows and arrows and sharpened rocks, we have always depended on technology to improve our condition. Which is why naturalists find it amazing when we find other species of life on this planet use tools to give them advantages that nature and evolution didn't supplement them with through genetics.
There is a difference between "survival" and "purpose". We have developed our ape-selves to become more than meat in the circle of life. With purpose, we can be more than the magpie.
AI is not an environment - it's a technology as much as the hammer or plow. If it is built to concentrate wealth or kill more people, that's an architectural choice and not a law of physics.
Human labor is more than product outputs. If we cannot change the social contract that defines worth to shift towards human participation and stewardship, then it's a death sentence for the majority of the world's human population.
While companies are not charities, they do depend on consumers. If you take away the income of consumers, do you have a market? If anything, AI should be treated like the telephone or electricity - a public utility - where it can be used to re-engineer how systems, like agriculture, can be done.
At some point we will reach a point of post-scarcity. Where energy is effectively little cost if not free and is able to create all our needs. What happens when things are no longer scarce?
We (humans) need to work on ourselves to overcome our base natures like greed.