Comment by jiaosdjf

I'm more "the kids are showing healthy skepticism of corporate dystopia but AI is vital" camp, here is my argument:

1. Yes the risk of AI corporate/authoritarian dystopia is HUGE, we'll have to fight for our rights MANY times this century. Transcendental AI takeover is probably less of a risk than humans in power using armies of robots and Stasi-AI surveillance.

2. Our current economy is bs and the last century of 'relative prosperity' was a bit of luck + tech and population boom + globalist exploitation and massaging debt. We've tried variations of capitalism, socialism, communism, there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet.

3. AI is not like other tech, and tech does not 'create jobs', it creates business opportunities which up until now have always translated to jobs. We've never had a "drop-in replacement" for a human employee, it could replace anything from 40 to 99% of jobs.

Those are the risks, the potential rewards are:

- OpEx converted to CapEx making almost any kind of business extremely efficient

- Nobody has to spend weeks away from family or risking their health in dangerous or degrading jobs

- Extremely cheap housing and infrastructure with everything from mining to construction to maintenance automated. Fixing the broken window effect of rundown neighbourhoods and generally increasing quality of life

- Almost nobody needs to commute, or do all the other things around commuting, vastly reducing transport, congestion and pollution

- Food can be grown in better ways, even at home, with less mono-cropping, pesticides and waste. Your robot can weed by hand, work the land 24/7 and with the combined experience of millions of farmers, botanists etc

- Healthier society, no need for convenience food if your robot can cook and clean, and it can make far tastier traditional food than McDonalds

- Many products can be made at home or locally. Mass production favoured big dumb machines but a robot can build you a table exactly how you want it, with appropriate materials rather than commoditising everything down to shitty MDF off-gassing formaldyhide. You don't have time to pick through recycled wood - your robot does

- Our existing road network can have far higher capacity because barely anyone needs to commute and idiots don't hold up traffic or drive distracted. Streets aren't jammed with parked cars, taxis instantly have 20% extra capacity as they don't need to carry a driver. We may even get rid of or severely reduce traffic lights, not to mention safety

- Anything in your life that involves expensive repairs or buying more dumb shit is improved, every robot is a plumber with 100 million job experience, so many problems are solved with a machine that combines cheap labour and wide expertise

"Oh but humans need purpose" I just don't think 90% of jobs provide purpose. Purpose is raising kids, spending time with friends and family, working on some project, art, community improvement - it's absolutely insane we spend so much time working on bs.

Even just one of these things coming true is revolutionary - we have turned into fat commuter drones stress eating stuck in traffic thinking about some abstract spreadsheet report so far removed from reality but stealing our sleep and peace. AI isn't the problem here its corporate greed and concentration of power that AI could give