[rybosworld]

Executives of these tech companies keep saying the automation of intelligence will drive job creation because previous waves of automation did the same.

To anyone with a brain, that is obviously not true.

If AI continues to improve at the pace that it has been, why would anyone hire a human to do the thinking? Human intelligence will be orders of magnitude more expensive, and much slower...

The tech executives know this and they actually just do not care. The reason they are saying it will drive job creation is just to temporarily keep worker anxiety levels to a minimum.

To be clear, I am not claiming that all human work will be automated away soon. Just that a huge portion of it will be.

[seanw444]

> To be clear, I am not claiming that all human work will be automated away soon. Just that a huge portion of it will be.

You don't even need to be a believer in the technology to be concerned. All that matters is that the people with all the money perceive some positive outcome for their wallets from all this investment and AI hype. That is where they'll put their money. Whether or not it ends bad or good. The economy has been reshaped around a hope. Either the hope is false and the economy tanks, or the hope is realized and jobs disappear. Lose-lose.

[bawolff]

> If AI continues to improve at the pace that it has been, why would anyone hire a human to do the thinking?

Sure, but that is the big if, right? It seems unlikely to me that AI will continue at this rate indefinitely. Every technology eventually hits limits.

[thrance]

It "just" has to reach human-levels, which I won't rule out entirely as being achievable.

[reducesuffering]

Exactly. If the AI owner class actually want anyone to believe that AI will bring jobs and prosperity, then people will want to see a little of that in action? You can't say "AI will bring even better jobs for you!" when all that's observed is 20% layoffs every single week.