[SunshineTheCat]

Giant leaps in innovation almost always have a reaction like this.

It's new, people fear it. Sometimes justified, usually not.

People greatly feared the car because of the number of horse-related jobs it would displace.

President Benjamin Harrison and First Lady Caroline Harrison feared electricity so much they refused to operate light switches to avoid being shocked. They had staff turn lights on/off for them.

Looking back at these we might laugh.

We're largely in the same boat now.

It's possible AI will destroy us all, but judging from history, the irrational reactions to something new isn't exactly unprecedented.

[marginalia_nu]

Many innovations are also on the refuse pile of history. Indoor gas lighting[1] is one. People were quite justifiably skeptical of electricity, when its relatively short-lived predecessor frequently killed people in explosions, carbon monoxide poisoning, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting

[Aachen]

> when its relatively short-lived predecessor frequently killed people

If only it were this obvious when the polluted air isn't your home but the entire planet, killing not your grandma but taking a few healthy years of life from everyone simultaneously. Maybe people would feel like we need to reverse priorities rather than go full steam ahead on newly created energy demand and see about cleaning it up later

[meander_water]

Zeppelins are another notable one

[nicce]

None of the previous innovations haven’t similarly replaced the human itself.

[wewtyflakes]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_loom#Social_and_economic...

[meander_water]

Industrial Revolution? We're still here.

[nicce]

Nope. Did not replace the brain in general level.

[troupo]

Every invention is touted as the next electricity, or the next internet (crypto scams anyone?)

Meanwhile not every invention is. Electricity and internet are electricity and internet, and very few inventions come even close to that. Meanwhile LLMs have had arguably a net negative effect on the world at large.

[000ooo000]

Is it irrational to wonder how large swathes of the population will earn a living if their employable skills vanish in a couple of years, with little prospect for retraining into something else that AI hasn't replaced? Is it irrational to wonder what effect an influx of the AI-replaced will have on remaining AI-free fields? Is it irrational to wonder about the psychological impact of work where one simply operates the AI instead of thinking, creating, growing? Is it irrational to wonder if wealth inequality will spiral when these essentially-unobtainable resources are used by a select few to enact the above scenarios?

I can only assume you have easy answers for all of these questions given your casual dismissal of such concerns, likening them to being scared of a light switch.