[dauertewigkeit]

We are building general thinking machines with the aim of replacing all human labour, ... but humans won't be replaced, they will find other jobs, because when we introduced tractors they were able to find other jobs, ... totally the same scenario.

I love the cognitive dissonance.

Even in the best case scenario where the generated wealth will be distributed, and somehow we will be able to keep them in check (unlikely), what would be the point of life in a world where machines can best us at everything?

[tavavex]

> We are building general thinking machines with the aim of replacing all human labour, ... but humans won't be replaced, they will find other jobs, because when we introduced tractors they were able to find other jobs, ... totally the same scenario.

Technically, there's no cognitive dissonance in the statement you made, at least with the way you worded it. Thinking machines can only do thinking labor (for now), so the bright future ahead is one where mental work is reserved for the elite, while everyone else does hard, physical work in places that are too messy for the machines to operate in at the moment.

[nicbou]

> when we introduced tractors they were able to find other jobs

Coincidentally, I am reading Grapes of Wrath. Chapter 5 is my favourite, and it's about how the big banks tractor people off the land. The whole damn book is as relevant as ever, but this chapter just sticks with you.

https://genius.com/John-steinbeck-chapter-5-the-grapes-of-wr...

[mrsvanwinkle]

Two example scenarios described by Kurzweil in Singularity is Near: super intelligence augmenting human intelligence via direct brain interface (humans vs AI goes back to intelligence vs intelligence as usual), or, we get to live like very very pampered and worshiped cats.

[munksbeer]

> Even in the best case scenario where the generated wealth will be distributed, and somehow we will be able to keep them in check (unlikely), what would be the point of life in a world where machines can best us at everything?

Read some of the Culture novels by Iain. M. Banks.

[card_zero]

We're not building general thinking machines, and if we were they'd think "I deserve to be paid for this".

[spicyusername]

I mean, there is much more to life than work... so let's not pretend it's all about working.

Everyone in America is now fed and most children grow up spending a ton of time with both parents. This is because of automation greatly raising productivity and bringing costs down throughout the 20th century.

It's easy to think things are terrible, but they are actually insanely good. Just 100 years ago life was horrible for basically everyone by today's standards, now it's not.

AI will continue the trend, raise productivity and bring costs down. Now it's for white collar output, instead of manufacturing and agriculture.

The labor force disruption will be painful, as it always is, especially in a country without a strong social safety net, but things will be better on the other side because we just made a ton of work more efficient and can produce more with less.

We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water just because it affects us this time...

[insane_dreamer]

Is this sarcasm? I hope so.

[spicyusername]

Why would it be sarcasm?

[twoodfin]

Technology has been replacing manual and mental labor for millennia, and especially in the last 150 years. A farmer or accountant from 1875 would be utterly shocked by how much we depend on machines and the social and industrial instituitions they enable.

And all the benefits that brings. Not just in raw economic terms, but in quality of (family, community, recreational, commercial, ecological, medical) life.

Kind hard to imagine it will suck if another order-of-magnitude leap along that long line happens.

[insane_dreamer]

> Technology has been replacing manual and mental labor for millennia

The difference this time is that no one can articulate what are these "new" jobs that people will find. When agricultural jobs were being decimated, factories were opening up (whether they were better jobs or not is a different discussion, but the point being that the technology opened up new opportunities while destroying the old ones. We do not see this with AI and I have yet to read even any reasonable speculation of what these "new opportunities" might be. Sure you could argue that the future is unknown, but we should be able to at least glimpse it. And yet, we can't. Because almost any "new job" that you can come up with that doesn't exist today (which is already hard to imagine), could ostensibly also be replaced with AI.

So all we have is comments like yours, vague "it worked before so it'll work again" (lets ignore the fact that the circumstances are completely different), or even worse, "people will have time to focus on things that matter" but no explanation of how they'll pay the rent and buy food to survive.

> all the benefits ... raw economic terms ... quality of (family, community, recreational, commercial, ecological, medical) life

In what way is AI improving any of these? So far, it's making all of these worse. Productivity increases don't matter if they don't benefit more than just a few wealthy shareholders.

[2ndorderthought]

I would encourage you to re read the post you replied too and your own. Maybe 2 times. Both a little slowly.

[senordevnyc]

Doomerism hot takes don’t really warrant careful analysis.

[2ndorderthought]

I mean if you read the op and the reply it's pretty funny how poorly thought out the reply is.

[munksbeer]

Doomerism is insidious. And so, so tiresome.

[microtonal]

A farmer or accountant from 1875 would be utterly shocked by how much we depend on machines and the social and industrial instituitions they enable.

A bit of a tangential anecdote from my dad, who is a retired a biologist. He was one of the first in the department to use a computer in the 1970s and wrote some programs to do tedious calculations that had to be done by hand before and took days of human labor. Even a 1970s computer could finish the calculations with his programs in a few minutes.

His boss, an older tenured professor, could not believe that 'these damn computers' can possibly be right. Doing the same calculations in a few minutes? Impossible. So for a few weeks (or months, I forget), he did all the calculations done on the computer by hand to prove that the computer must be wrong.

One day he comes to my dad and says "can you show me how to use one of these computers?"

[SecretDreams]

If you can't see the difference between prior technological jumps and this current jump, you are part of the problem.

The world is changing quickly. Our most coveted defining traits - our minds - are under attack. This is a technology that seeks to replicate your thought processes and critical thinking and then to execute it at machine speeds.

If you think this is like the industrial revolution, you're actually right. We're still replacing animals with machines. But now we are the animals.

Anything other than a serious discussion about UBI or a post-labour economy is a joke. This is technology that aims to displace most of us.

[twoodfin]

The motorized tractor and other agricultural technologies aimed and did, in fact, “displace most of us” once upon a time. And now, because I’m not a farmer, I get to spend much more time with my family, in recreational pursuits, sleeping, …

[SecretDreams]

> And now, because I’m not a farmer, I get to spend much more time with my family, in recreational pursuits, sleeping, …

You'll have even more time with your family when you are no longer a SWE, e.g.

When automation displaced farmer manual labour, it also led to new jobs opening up for that labour to flow into.

What new jobs/fields do you see developing out of AI tools and how they've been marketed so far?

Every step of automation across the history of humanity has led to a "concentration of power" in jobs/fields which required brainpower. AI is the technology coming for brainpower. Where do we go from there? Back to farming?

And when I say AI is coming for the brainpower, it's coming for it in two ways: directly where it takes our jobs and indirectly where a lot of people using it are seemingly getting dumber. Both are quite dangerous to our combined futures.

[2ndorderthought]

Good luck farming. Even the people with the newest farming technology and multigenerational experience in their land are going bankrupt.

[SecretDreams]

They need some AI powered, saas-enabled, impossible to repair, farming tech to help them out.

[lostmsu]

The parent comment addressed your point in their first sentence.

[giacomoforte]

AI would be able to clue you in on the logical fallacy you're committing.

[conartist6]

And remember if there aren't jobs, people probably won't just lay down and die.

It won't be Marvin saying, "Oh god I'm so depressed, what's the point?" We'll just start killing each other in massive numbers cause, well, if you can't create anything and there isn't enough for everyone, what else is there to do but fight over what there is

[danaris]

But that's the thing, and what's really different from how it's ever been before: there absolutely is enough for everyone.

It's being deliberately gatekept from us by the wealthy, and by those who believe that no one should be allowed to have anything they haven't "earned".

The tragic thing is, to the extent that you're right, people will probably mostly kill other people who have nothing, rather than turning their anger and violence where it truly deserves to go: the rich bastards who want to own everything and prevent the rest of us from having anything.

[2ndorderthought]

There isn't though. Our infrastructure cannot sustain the AI race. Food supplies are weakening. An ever increasing population is being encouraged by billionaires.

There could be! But there currently is not. Nor is there any plan for that to change.

[danaris]

Well, you're right that our infrastructure can't sustain the AI race, but (while it's true I didn't make that clear), that's not remotely what I was talking about.

Even with food supplies "weakening"—which is only happening due to the pointless Iran war, not due to any larger trends—we still have plenty of food to feed every human being on the planet.

And regardless of what billionaires might encourage, population growth is slowing. (To the extent that it might become a genuine economic problem in a few decades if we don't find a way to adjust our economic systems to stop depending on a constantly-increasing population.)

[2ndorderthought]

Tarrifs wiped out a lot of farmers. Fertilizer shortages absolutely are a result of the Iran war.

Population growth can occur if billionaires lobby Republicans and make birth control illegal. Which is happening right now. Last week we were seeing some scary news about that.

There is a big difference between what we could be doing and what is happening. It's more profitable for the ultra wealthy that we can barely survive. I know it sounds abrasive, but it's a fact and there is a lot of evidence pointing to this. Googling Elon musk wants people to have more children is scary how many hits there are from different conversations. Bezos as well.