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by arvid-lind 32 days ago
> Don't halt the progress that has dramatically improved the human condition.

You clearly accept this as Progress, but isn't the core debate here that it doesn't improve life for humans?

1 comments

You can't say a technology isn't improving life for humans, what, just 4 years into the introduction of the technology? That is not even the blink of an eye.

Does literally no one look at things from a historical perspective? The history of automation is right there on the Internet, for you to peruse at will.

If a technology is improving life for a handful of people (that you happen to be part of)

but making it measurably worse for vastly more people

can you really say that that technology is "improving life for humans"?

> but making it measurably worse for vastly more people

It isn't.

What makes you so confident that it is improving life for humans? Are you seeing any specific signs yet?
If we only waited 4 years for any given technology to improve the human condition before abandoning it, we'd be in the Stone Age.
Theoretically, if a technology came along that destroyed the human condition in a four year time frame, your "let's wait longer than four years and see" philosophy would kill us all.
Okay, but you have no basis to assume a technology that automates labor will do that given your priors (previous technologies that have automated general labor en masse). In other words, the FUD is not based in anything, whereas the optimism most certainly is.
I'm not trying to argue whether AI is good or bad. I'm only pointing out the flaw in your philosophy.

Like, there will one day be a technology invented that could indeed wipe us all out in 5 years. On a long enough timeline, it's a certainty that someone will come up with such a thing. And when it comes, there will be people such as yourself saying "no technology has ever wiped us out before, therefore this one won't either". And then it will wipe us out, and there will be no one left to say "well I guess this time was the exception".