Comment by mapcars

2 days ago

I see AI exactly as what will help future generations, the possibilities it provides in terms of learning, research, analysis are huge.

It confusing to me how people complain about jobs - there is no guarantee that any job will be there forever, there is no guarantee that current social and economic model will be there forever, things always change, you have to adapt, there is no other way.

Per CEO rhetoric's, the future generation will be useless and none of them will do research or analysis. They wont do art either. All that stuff will be done by AI. They will be either homeless or useless living of UBI if wealthy owners allow them to. They will never amount to anything that matters. Oh, and those powerful AI tools will be controlled by a winning monopoly corporation pretty much guaranteed to abuse non-rich people.

I do not see how is that supposed to be a vision that would help them. Why would you learn when you cant get a job, cant do research and are not worthy of doing analysis? In this vision, all of that will be like playing piano nowadays - nice wholesome but useless hobby.

I dont think the future has to happen that way necessarily, but I also do not see anyone trying to sell happy ai future for the average person. Schmidt was not selling them a happy future vision either. He was trying to convince them to accept the ugly one.

  • This is the thing - you define things "that matter" based on how they valued in terms of monetary compensation or social approval. But there are people who just enjoy playing a piano, there are people who just enjoy learning things.

    We see hobby as an inferior thing because there is a "real" job to do that earns us money. Once its gone - you have to find what to do with all that time, and then hobby becomes a real thing.

    We will have all the time to spend on what we like, simply because there is nothing else to do. Assuming the basic things will be covered by UBI or something like that.

> I see AI exactly as what will help future generations, the possibilities it provides in terms of learning, research, analysis are huge.

Do you really think a 20 years old that is afraid of not finding a good job today cares about potential benefits 10 or 20 years from now ?

  • >Do you really think a 20 years old that is afraid of not finding a good job today

    Someone who is afraid won't care about anything. The question is why are they afraid? Finding "good job" was never a guaranteed thing, its always better to prepare for the worst case, like having a basic job or no job at all.

Present generations see the primary role for AI as being identical to the biggest disruption to US business in the past century — namely the gigantic sucking sound from the outsourcing of millions of US jobs in order to reduce labor costs. Of course they're terrified of it. By singing its praises AND IGNORING THAT CONCERN, Schmidt showed that he couldn't be more out of touch with the top priority of this generation — WILL AI TAKE MY JOB?

It's like Steve Forbes cluelessly joking that rise of Private Equity will make it easier for the unemployed to buy another racehorse. WTF?

  • >WILL AI TAKE MY JOB?

    At this point I don't think its a concern, I think its going to happen sooner or later.

    1st world countries have a bunch of support programs for the unemployed/homeless, so its not the end of the world. 3rd world countries are more or less used to live off the land, I guess village lifestyle will make a comeback.

    Once enough jobs are lost then social and economic structures will change. I don't know how exactly, so I'm just working on my skills, maybe some of them will be useful.

The AI marketing scheme is to devalue the labor of incoming college graduates. The proof of the power of AI is the number of unemployed 20-something losers that middle aged Americans have in their basements.