[ryandrake]

An optimist can hope AI and robotics brings us into a post-scarcity world and that society responds with utopia rather than just disposing of the 99% of people who become economically irrelevant. History has a pessimistic vibe though.

[senordevnyc]

History has the most optimistic vibe imaginable, what are you talking about?? Look at where we are as a species right now, vs century ago, a millennium ago, ten thousand years ago!

What period of history would you want your children to be born into, with zero control over where or who they’d be born to? Just a random person on the earth on a date you choose, what would be your choice?

[ryandrake]

There is none, and that’s my point. Despite technological advances throughout history that made things easier to do and less scarce, over and over we keep the scarcity mindset and winner-takes-most economics around, funneling the majority of the value and benefits up to the few. At every point when some advancement could have greatly improved everyone’s lot in life, humanity chose to spread that improvement around to the masses as thinly as possible, just enough to avoid social upheaval, and shipped the rest of the value into the pockets of the richest 1%.

[senordevnyc]

Nonsense. The median human is wildly better off than ever before.

[skeledrew]

A pessimist would preempt the disposal of that 99% by ensuring the 1% doesn't monopolize AI and robotics. By whatever means necessary.